Page 135 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 8: Jean Jacques Rousseau

freedom. He defended simplicity, innocence, poverty and virtue as opposed to refinement, wit, Notes
wealth and decadence. In many respects, Rousseau’s theory had a striking resemblance to the
subsequent indictment by Gandhi of modern Westernized, materialistic and technological
civilization.
Plato exerted a strong and powerful influence on Rousseau, leading to the revival of the influence
of the classical tradition in political philosophy.
What Rousseau got from Plato was a general outlook. It included, first, the conviction that political
subjection is essentially ethical and only secondarily a matter of law and power. Second and more
important, he took from Plato the presumption, implicit in all the philosophy of the city state, that
the community is itself the chief moralizing agency and therefore represents the highest moral
value.

8.1 Life Sketch

Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 in the city of Geneva. During his lifetime, he accomplished
many things including mastery in and writing on music, politics and education. His fame primarily
rested on his writings. His father was a watchmaker. His mother’s death within a month of his
birth disintegrated the family. His parents were Protestants, but Rousseau got converted to
Catholicism under the influence of Madame de Warens. He subsequently became Warens’ lover.
He led the life of a vagabond, and only after many years did he begin to educate himself. His
Confessions provide the details of his life.
At the age of 30, Rousseau went to Paris and befriended Diderot. The latter’s Encyclopedia included
some of Rousseau’s writings on music. From 1743 to 1744, Rousseau became the secretary to the
French ambassador in Venice. He developed an intimate relationship with Therese le Vasseur in
1745, who subsequently became the mother of his five children. All his children were abandoned
in an orphanage. He married Therese much later. His eccentric, egoistic and overbearing personality
made him sever his friendships with his former friends Diderot, Hume and Voltaire.
In the Discourses, he traced the rise of inequality and the consequent fall of the human individual.
The Discourses was dedicated to the natives of Geneva, a city that had left an indelible influence.
In the novel La Nouvelle Heloise (1761), the themes of his early essays reappeared, and his preference
for nature and the simple pleasures of country life became evident. His Confessions published
posthumously and his Reveries d’un Promeneur Solitaire contained idyllic descriptions of the beauty
and serenity of the country’s natural surroundings. It also had beautiful portrayals of the lakes of
Switzerland and the foothills of the Alps.
Rousseau also composed operas. One of his short operas, Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer)
was performed for the first time in Paris on March 1, 1753. It proved to be an instant hit. Even the
king of France, despite being tone-deaf, was overheard trying to hum its melodies. Rousseau’s
music remained the mainstay of the Paris opera for years to come. He also wrote a dictionary of
music and devised a new system of musical notation. He was persecuted for religious reasons. The
Social Contract and the Emile were burned both in Paris and Geneva. Facing the threat of
imprisonment, Rousseau went into hiding. He died in 1778.

Rousseau attained fame with his prize-winning essay Discourse on the Science and
Arts, in which he rejected progress based on the arts and sciences, as it did not
elevate the moral standards of human beings.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 129