Jean Jacques Rousseau is a scientist, philosopher, writer, composer and botanist. A man whose ideas had a great influence on the leaders of the Great French Revolution. The basic principles created by Rousseau in his works are now written in the American Constitution.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 in Geneva, known for its Protestant spirit. His mother, Suzanne Bernard, died just nine days after giving birth. Jean Jacques's father, Isaac Rousseau, was very upset by the death of his wife, which, of course, affected the boy himself. Throughout his life, Jean Jacques will call the death of his mother the first of his misfortunes.
The biography of this philosopher and scientist is extensive and varied. He was an apprentice to a notary and an engraver. At the age of 16, he left the city and converted to Catholicism. For some time he worked as a footman in an aristocratic house, but soon left there and spent more than two years wandering around Switzerland. He made his hikes on foot and spent the night in the open air.
For some time, I did not work very successfully as a home tutor. During this period, the first signs of misanthropy begin to form in him. Jean Jacques Rousseau finds more and more consolation in nature. He goes after pigeons and bees, works in the garden and collects fruits. After a while, Russo briefly takes a job as a home secretary.
In Paris, Rousseau marries Teresa Levasseur, a vulgar, illiterate, ugly peasant woman. The writer himself has repeatedly said that he was not in love with her. They had five children, all of them were sent to an orphanage. During this period, Rousseau begins to create his famous works.
Rousseau's ideas were based on the fact that art and science corrupt people, it is because of them that the moral decline in society occurs. The author most fully reflected his political thoughts in his 1762 treatise "On the Social Contract".
The scientist first tried to investigate the causes and types of social inequality. In his view, the state arose as a result of a social contract. The supreme power in the state belongs to the people, and its sovereignty is absolute and infallible. The law, in turn, is designed to protect the people from the arbitrariness of the government.
France at that moment resembled a powder keg. Rousseau's ideas got to the beneficent mail and became the original slogans of the revolutionaries. The philosopher himself was unable to observe the impact of his ideas, since he died in 1778. Byron called him "the apostle of sorrow." Rousseau lived a life full of wanderings and hardships, which to some extent shaped his political and social views.
