To his polemic against the Jansenists he added an attack on the philosophes, and issued a formal mandatory letter condemning Rousseau's Émile.

A sympathetic observer, British philosopher David Hume, " professed no surprise when he learned that Rousseau's books were banned in Geneva and elsewhere.

An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend, the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay " Of Civil Liberty ", in whose second part, entitled, " Of the Original Contract ", he stressed that the concept of a " social contract " was a convenient fiction:

For instance, without Hume, Jean Jacques Rousseau's ( 1712 – 1778 ) " return " to nature would have not been possible.

Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

Here we see the clear division of male-female attributes which confined the sexes to specific roles, under Rousseau's popular doctrines.

Rousseau's autobiographical writings — his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker — exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age.

Virtually, all our information about Rousseau's youth has come from his posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks.

Rousseau's break with the Encyclopedistes coincided with the composition of his three major works, in all of which he emphasized his fervent belief in a spiritual origin of man's soul and the universe, in contradistinction to the materialism of Diderot, La Mettrie, and d ' Holbach.

His tomb, in the shape of a rustic temple, on which, in bas relief an arm reaches out, bearing the torch of liberty, evokes Rousseau's deep love of nature and of classical antiquity.

This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage, which Arthur Lovejoy ' conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau's thought.

In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape, such as the orangutan as described by Buffon ; and the " natural " goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad.

Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism.

The kind of republican government of which Rousseau approved was that of the city state, of which Geneva was a model, or would have been, if renewed on Rousseau's principles.

Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi, Mme de Genlis, and later, Maria Montessori, and John Dewey, which have directly influenced modern educational practices do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau.

While Rousseau's notion of the progressive moral degeneration of mankind from the moment civil society established itself diverges markedly from Spinoza's claim that human nature is always and everywhere the same ... for both philosophers the pristine equality of the state of nature is our ultimate goal and criterion ... in shaping the " common good ", volonté générale, or Spinoza's mens una, which alone can ensure stability and political salvation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract theory states that governments draw their power from the governed, its ' sovereign ' people ( usually a certain ethnic group, and the state's limits are legitimated theoretically as that people's lands, although that is often not, rarely exactly, the case ), that no person should have absolute power, and that a legitimate state is one which meets the needs and wishes of its citizens.

" Lovejoy concludes that Rousseau's doctrine, as expressed in his Discourse on Inequality: declares that there is a dual process going on through history ; on the one hand, an indefinte progress in all those powers and achievements which express merely the potency of man's intellect ; on the other hand, an increasing estrangement of men from one another, an intensification of ill-will and mutual fear, cuminating in a monstrous epoch of universal conflict and mutual destruction fourth stage in which we now find ourselves.

Rousseau's collectivism is most evident in his development of the " luminous conception " ( which he credited to Diderot ) of the general will.

While Rousseau's social contract is based on popular sovereignty and not on individual sovereignty, there are other theories espoused by individualists, libertarians and anarchists, which do not involve agreeing to anything more than negative rights and creates only a limited state, if any.

She was fascinated by Rousseau's " back to nature " philosophy, as well as the culture of the Incas of Peru and their worship of the sun, about which she had books in her library.

His father, Jacques-François Deluc, was the author of some publications in refutation of Mandeville and other rationalistic writers, which are best known through Rousseau's humorous account of his ennui in reading them ; and he gave his son an excellent education, chiefly in mathematics and natural science.

In the mid-1750s, Rameau criticised Rousseau's contributions to the musical articles in the Encyclopédie, which led to a quarrel with the leading philosophes d ' Alembert and Diderot.

Opposed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of social contract, Barrès considered the ' Nation ' ( which he used to replace the ' People ') as already historically founded: it did not need a " general will " to establish itself, thus also contrasting with Ernest Renan's definition of the Nation.

As a disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre's political views were rooted in Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which promoted " the rights of man " ( Schama ; 1989 ; 475 ).

Rousseau's conception of alpine purity was later emphasized with the publication of Albrecht von Haller's poem Die Alpen that described the mountains as an area of mythical purity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's father Isaac was not in the city at this time, but Jean-Jacques's grandfather supported Fatio and was penalized for it.

Rousseau's father, Isaac Rousseau, was a watchmaker who, notwithstanding his artisan status, was well educated and a lover of music.

In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was ... — Confessions Rousseau's employer routinely received his stipend as much as a year late and paid his staff irregularly.

Rousseau's 1750 " Discourse on the Arts and Sciences " was awarded the first prize and gained him significant fame.

Sophie was the cousin and houseguest of Rousseau's patroness and landlady Madame d ' Epinay, whom he treated rather highhandedly.

Rousseau's 800-page novel of sentiment, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was published in 1761 to immense success.

Rousseau's choice of a Catholic vicar of humble peasant background ( plausibly based on a kindly prelate he had met as a teenager ) as a spokesman for the defense of religion was in itself a daring innovation for the time.

One of Rousseau's last pieces of writing was a critical yet enthusiastic analysis of Gluck's opera Alceste.

In 2002, the Espace Rousseau was established at 40 Grand-Rue, Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace.

France could not meet Rousseau's criterion of an ideal state because it was too big.

Such was not Rousseau's meaning.

At the time, however, Rousseau's strong endorsement of religious toleration, as expounded by the Savoyard vicar in Émile, was interpreted as advocating indifferentism, a heresy, and led to the condemnation of the book in both Calvinist Geneva and Catholic Paris.

Rousseau's idea of the volonté générale (" general will ") was not original with him but rather belonged to a well-established technical vocabulary of juridical and theological writings in use at the time.

Burke's " Letter to a Member of the National Assembly ", published in February 1791, was a diatribe against Rousseau, whom he considered the paramount influence on the French Revolution ( his ad hominem attack did not really engage with Rousseau's political writings ).

On similar grounds, one of Rousseau's strongest critics during the second half of the 20th century was political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

It was Rousseau's fellow philosophe, Voltaire, objecting to Rousseau's egalitarianism, who charged him with primitivism and accused him of wanting to make people go back and walk on all fours.