Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In 1745, Jean-Jacques Rousseau met Marie-Thérèse Levasseur, who came from a respected family, which had fallen into bad times. She was then working as a laundress and chambermaid at the Hotel Saint-Quentin, where Rousseau used to go for his meals.

They subsequently became live-in-partners and the two lived together till his death in 1778. From 1746 to 1752, she bore him five children, each of whom was given away to the Enfants-Trouvés foundling home, ostensibly because Rousseau’s income from writing was too meager to support and educate them.

On August 29, 1768, they went through a marriage ceremony, which was not legally valid. Before that, he had also looked for his children; but could not find any trace of them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712 in Geneva, at that time, a city-state under Swiss Confederacy. His father, Isaac Rousseau, came from a middle-class family of watchmakers and was himself involved in that trade. He was also well-educated and had a taste for music.

His mother, Suzanne nee Bernard Rousseau, came from an upper-class family. She was raised by her uncle, Samuel Bernard, a Calvinist preacher and the house they lived in was a gift from him.The couple had two sons; François and Jean-Jacques.

Nine days after giving birth to her younger son, Jean Jacques, Suzanne died from puerperal fever. Thereafter, his father sold the house and moving out of the upper-class locality, they settled down in an artisan’s neighborhood.

Living among the artisans, young Jean-Jacques learned to respect their trade. This was also the time when he watched the artisans agitating against the privileged class, which ran the city-state and thus became aware of class politics.

It is not known where or when he started his education. However, he later recalled how his father, intending to instill in them a love for reading, used to read out to them stories of adventures, often throughout the night.

At Savoy, Rousseau put up with a Catholic Priest, who introduced him to Françoise-Louise de Warens, a 29-year-old woman, paid by the King of Piedmont for proselytizing Protestants into Catholicism. She was a gorgeous woman with fine taste in arts and literature and Rousseau was easily influenced by her.

When he agreed to convert, he was sent to Turin for the completion of the process.In 1729, after spending sometime there unsuccessfully looking for jobs, he moved to Annecy and began living with Mdm. de Warens, initially as her son, but later as he reached twenty, as her lover.

Rousseau lived with Mdm. de Warens until 1742. Under her guidance, he became a man of letters and also a fine musician. He was mainly an autodidact and his studies ranged over every domain.

While reading, he carefully jotted down excerpts in a notebook. He also performed scientific experiments and made astronomical observations. In music, he studied scholarly works of noted musicians, gaining in-depth knowledge on composition and theory.

In 1742, Jean-Jacques Rousseau left for Paris with the intention of presenting a new system of numbered musical notation at the Académie des Sciences. Although he believed that it would make his fortune, it was rejected as impractical. However, they praised his mastery over music.

In 1743, he found an ill-paying job as a secretary to the French ambassador to Venice, Comte de Montaigue. Although he quit the job within eleven months, the period was highly important because it was in Venice that he conceived the ideas that would later find expression in his ‘Social Contract’.

On his return to Paris in 1744, Rousseau met another aspiring man from the province, Denis Diderot. Very soon, the two men struck up a friendship and became the center of a group of intellectuals, who gathered round the ‘Encyclopédie, Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers’

In 1749, Rousseau entered an essay contest organized by the Academy of Dijon. The topic was “Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?” He answered in negative and not only won the prize, but also earned a name for himself.

In 1750, he published his first major work, ‘Discours sur les sciences et les arts' (A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts). In it he established that man had become corrupted by society and civilization. He reverted to this theme off and on in his later works.