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.
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