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.

Burke maintained that the excesses of the Revolution were not accidents but were designed from the beginning and were rooted in Rousseau's personal vanity, arrogance, and other moral failings.

Yet despite their mutual insistence on the self-evidence that " all men are created equal ", their insistence that the citizens of a republic be educated at public expense, and the evident parallel between the concepts of the " general welfare " and Rousseau's " general will ", some scholars maintain there is little to suggest that Rousseau had that much effect on Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers.

For Stephen T. Engel, on the other hand, Rousseau's nationalism anticipated modern theories of " imagined communities " that transcend social and religious divisions within states.

" 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.

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.

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.

John Plamenatz in his critical examination of Rousseau's work considered that conscience was there defined as the feeling that urges us, in spite of contrary passions, towards two harmonies: the one within our minds and between our passions, and the other within society and between its members ; " the weakest can appeal to it in the strongest, and the appeal, though often unsuccessful, is always disturbing.

In Rousseau's state of nature, people did not know each other enough, and they did have normal values.

Enhancing the elegiac mood of these views were the altars and monuments, the ' Rustic Temple ', and other details meant to evoke Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse.

Rousseau's usual solution to how the Lawgiver may be able to do this is cultural homogeneity on the one hand and physically small states on the other.

Rousseau's natural man is more or less like any other animal, with " self-preservation being his chief and almost sole concern " and " the only goods he recognizes in the universe " being " food, a female, and sleep ..." This natural man, unlike Hobbes's, is not in constant state of fear and anxiety.

Many of Rousseau's suggestions in this book are restatements of the ideas of other educational reformers.

Covering the first fifty-three years of Rousseau's life, up to 1765, it was completed in 1769, but not published until 1782, four years after Rousseau's death, even though Rousseau did read excerpts of his manuscript publicly at various salons and other meeting places.

Besides the above, he published many works on antiquarian, economic and other subjects, including L ' Uomo libero, in confutation of Rousseau's Contrat Social ; an attack upon the abbe Tartarotti's assertion of the existence of magicians ; Observazioni sulla musica antica e moderna ; and several poems.

The mestizo Pierre Alexandre du Peyrou, rich inhabitant of Neufchâtel, plantation owner, writer, friend and publisher of some of Rousseau's oeuvre.

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:

Here he became intimate with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's friend Julie de Bondeli.

Rousseau's Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse ( 1761 ) as leading an expedition around the world which the novel's protagonist, St. Preux, is urged to join by his friend, Mylord Edouard ( himself a friend of Anson's ), so as to separate him from Julie, who is married to Mr de Wolmar.

Rousseau's natural man possesses a few qualities that allow him to distinguish himself from the animals over a long period of time.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue, however, that his concept of " general will " in the " social contract " is not the simple collection of individual wills and precisely furthers the interests of the individual ( the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason ).

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

Rousseau's mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, the daughter of a Calvinist preacher, died of puerperal fever nine days after his birth.

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

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.

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.

The cult that grew up around Rousseau after his death, and particularly the radicalized versions of Rousseau's ideas that were adopted by Robespierre and Saint-Just during the Reign of Terror, caused him to become identified with the most extreme aspects of the French Revolution.

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 ).

* Rousseau Association / Association Rousseau, a bilingual association devoted to the study of Rousseau's life and works

Rousseau then claimed the two had stolen the credit for the words and music he had contributed, though musicologists have been able to identify almost nothing of the piece as Rousseau's work.

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 ).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Rousseau's German disciples were also influences that shaped his view of life.

* Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Le Devin du Village ( part of Rousseau's response in the Querelle des Bouffons )

Some Rousseau scholars, however, such as his Rousseau's biographer and editor Maurice Cranston, and Ralph Leigh, editor of Rousseau's correspondence, do not consider Talmon's 1950s " totalitarian thesis " as sustainable.

Rousseau's natural man significantly differs from, and is a response to, that of Hobbes ; Rousseau explicitly points this out at various points throughout his work.

The article on fingering in Rousseau's Dictionnaire ( 1768 ) contains rules which the author presents ' with confidence, because I have them from M Duphli, excellent harpsichord teacher who possesses above all perfection in fingering ' ( though either Duphly or Rousseau overlooked the fact that these ' rules ' were lifted word for word from Rameau's, in his Pieces de clavecin of 1724 ).

Though the book is somewhat flawed as an autobiography — particularly, Rousseau's dates are frequently off, and some events are out of order — Rousseau provides an account of the experiences that shaped his influential philosophy.

He recalled Rousseau's visit to Britain in 1766, saying: " I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day and he left no doubt in my mind that he entertained no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity ".

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

His most important work, the Franco-Gallia ( 1573 ), found favour neither with Catholics nor with Huguenots in its day ( except when it suited their purposes ); yet its vogue has been compared to that obtained later by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Contrat Social.