Contribution of Rousseau (1712-1778)


Jean Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher, a social thinker and a novelist. His early life was very simple. But in 1749 his prize essay for the Dijon academy, the ‘Discourses on the Science and the Arts’ (pub.1751), also known as the ‘First Discourse’, brought him in limelight.

As a philosopher, he stood against the eighteenth century Enlightenment: he claimed in the First Discourse that “arts and science contributed neither to the virtue nor the happiness of human beings, but instead brought ruin and corruption.” Moreover he admired the ‘noble savage’, and preferred non-artificial life.

As a social thinker, like other two philosophers Hobbes and Locke, his great contribution was the ‘Social Contract’. According to him, men lived in happiness under the ‘state of nature’. But when there arose disorder they made a contract among themselves and gave the authority to govern them to the ‘General Will’. He advocated direct participation of the people in government of the democratic state.

As a novelist he wrote ‘Emile’ banned by the French government; and in ‘The Confession of Faith’, which has an autobiographical notion, Rousseau confesses the truth of his life.

Comments