JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

(1712 - 1778)
LEGAL PHILOSOPHY 1
LAW 105
 INTRODUCTION
Rousseau was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of
Enlightenment. His Political Philosophy led to the formulation of social
contract theory (or Contractarianism) which strongly influenced the
French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and
Socialist theory. He is considered to have invented modern
autobiography and He also made important contributions to music, both
as a theorist and as a composer.
 EARLY LIFE
Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland (although
he spent most of his life in France, he always described himself as a
citizen of Geneva). His mother, Suzanne Bernard, died just nine days
after his birth from birth complications. His father, Isaac Rousseau, a
failed watchmaker, abandoned him in 1722 (when he was just 10 years
old) to avoid imprisonment, after which time Rousseau was cared for
by an uncle who sent him to study in the village of Bosey. His only
sibling, an older brother, ran away from home when Rousseau was still
a child.
 EARLY LIFE
In 1728, at the age of 16, Rousseau left Geneva for Annecy in south-
eastern France, where he met Françoise-Louise de Warens, a French
Catholic baroness. She provided him with the education of a nobleman
by sending him to a good Catholic school, where Rousseau became
familiar with Latin and the dramatic arts, in addition to studying
Aristotle. During this time he earned money through secretarial,
teaching and musical jobs.
 MOVE TO PARIS
In 1742, he moved to Paris with the intention of becoming a musician and
composer. He presented his new system of numbered musical notation to the
Académie des Sciences but, although ingenious and compatible with
typography, the system was rejected.

He was secretary to the French ambassador in Venice for 11 months from 1743
to 1744, although he was forced to flee to Paris to avoid prosecution by the
Venetian Senate (he often referred to the republican government of Venice in
his later political work).
 ROUSSEAU’S IDEA OF
SOCIAL CONTRACT

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his influential 1762 treatise The Social

Contract, outlined a different version of social contract theory, as the
foundations of political rights based on unlimited popular sovereignty.
 SOCIAL CONTRACT
Rousseau's political theory differs in important ways from that of Locke
and Hobbes. Rousseau's collectivism is most evident in his
development of the "luminous conception" (which he credited to
Diderot) of the general will. Rousseau argues a citizen cannot pursue
his true interest by being an egoist but must instead subordinate himself
to the law created by the citizenry acting as a collective.
 SOCIAL CONTRACT

Rousseau believed that liberty was possible only where there was direct
rule by the people as a whole in lawmaking, where popular sovereignty
was indivisible and inalienable. But he also maintained that the people
often did not know their "real will", and that a proper society would not
occur until a great leader ("the Legislator") arose to change the values
and customs of the people, likely through the strategic use of religion.
 SOCIAL CONTRACT

Rousseau's striking phrase that man must "be forced to be free" should
be understood this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular
sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, then if an individual
lapses back into his ordinary egoism and disobeys the law, he will be
forced to listen to what was decided when the people acted as a
collectivity (i.e. as citizens). Thus, the law, inasmuch as it is created by
the people acting as a body, is not a limitation of individual freedom,
but rather its expression.
 SOCIAL CONTRACT

Rousseau saw a fundamental divide between society and human nature

and believed that man was good when in the state of nature (the state of
all other animals, and the condition humankind was in before the
creation of civilization), but has been corrupted by the artificiality of
society and the growth of social interdependence. This idea of the
natural goodness of humanity has often led to the attribution the idea of
the "noble savage" to Rousseau, although he never used the expression
himself and it does not adequately render his idea.
 SOCIAL CONTRACT
In "The Social Contract", he offered his own alternative conception of
the social contract. Opening with the dramatic lines, "Man is born free,
and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of
others, but remains more of a slave than they", Rousseau claimed) that
the state of nature was a primitive and brutish condition, without law or
morality, which humans deliberately left for the benefits and necessity
of cooperation.
 CONCLUSION

Rousseau died on 2 July 1778 of a hemorrhage while taking a morning

walk on the estate of the Marquis de Giradin at Ermenonville, near
Paris. Sixteen years later, his remains were moved to the Panthéon in
Paris (across from those of his contemporary, Voltaire).