Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born on June 12, 1712. He was born in Geneva. His mother, Suzanne Benard Rousseau died about a week after she gave birth to him. She was the daughter of a minister. His father was a watchmaker. He left Jean in 1722 while trying to escape captivity from fighting in a duel. Both of Rousseau's parents were Protestants. He was then cared for by his aunt and maternal uncle. He received very little training and never adopted ideas of meticulous discipline from them. He was then sent for a while to a school in the country, and was kept by a retired pastor. His childhood education involved mostly the reading of Plutarch Lives and Calvinist sermons.

On March 14, 1728, Rousseau left Geneva at the age of sixteen and went to Chambery. He then met Francoise-Louise de Warens whom was a French Catholic baroness. She later became Rousseau's lover, even though she was twelve years older than him. Under her protection he converted into a Roman Catholic. Rousseau had studied and read to become a teacher. In 1740, he became a tutor at Lyon. By 1741, he realized that he didn't like, nor was he good at teaching. He then moved to Paris. There, he earned his living with secretarial work and musical copying. That same year, he met Therese Le Vasseur whom was a dull and unattractive hotel servant. He ended up staying with her for the rest of his life, without marrying yet having five children with her. He gave up his children to an orphan hospital known as Enfants-Trouves. This was something that was very common, but Rousseau later expressed his eternal and bitter regret about it in his autobiography called The Confessions. The book is said not to be a true account of his life.

In 1742, Rousseau unsuccessfully presented a new system of music to the Academy of Sciences. Later, Rousseau returned to Venice and collaborated on the Encyclopedia. He then became a secretary to the French Ambassador Comte de Montaignu. By 1751, he had published Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. A year later, he produced an opera known as the Village Soothsayer.

In time, Rousseau returned to Geneva and took back his disowning of the Protestant religion.