Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: /ˈruːsoʊ/, US: /ruːˈsoʊ/[1][2] French: [ʒɑ̃ ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher (philosophe), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.[3]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753
Born	(1712-06-28)28 June 1712 Geneva, Republic of Geneva
Died	2 July 1778(1778-07-02) (aged 66) Ermenonville, Picardy, Kingdom of France
Partner	Thérèse Levasseur (1745–1778; his death)
Era	Age of Enlightenment (early modern philosophy)
Region	Western philosophy
School	Enlightenment French philosophy social contract Sentimentalism precursor of Romanticism
Main interests	Political philosophy, music, education, literature
Notable ideas	General will, amour de soi, amour-propre, moral simplicity of humanity, child-centered learning, civil religion, popular sovereignty, positive liberty, public opinion
Influences Plato, Socrates, Plutarch, Pufendorf, Hobbes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, D'Alembert, D'Épinay
Influenced Kant, French Revolution, American Revolution, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Counter-Enlightenment, Romanticism, Hume, Paine, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Marx, Engels, Derrida, de Sade, Strauss, Bloom, Montessori, Goethe, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Dewey, Kitsikis, Madame de Staël, Schopenhauer, Staszic
Writing career
Language	French
Period	from 1743
Genre	Fiction (sentimental novel comedy libretto poetry) Non-fiction (treatise essay article epistle autobiography)
Subject	Social change
Literary movement	Sentimentalism
Notable works	The Social Contract Julie, or the New Heloise
Notable awards	Académie de Dijon (1750)
Signature

His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction.[4][5] His Emile, or On Education (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late 18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing.