How Did Jean Jacques Rousseau Influence Society

Jean Jacques Rousseau was the controversial, French philosopher whom brought about uproar due to his extremely radical views; his work on Emile and The Social Contract were banned by the French parliament and the Catholic Church due to his criticisms on religion. Rousseau believed that religion was a false consciousness whereby religion was a way to cover up the true situations that people found themselves in. This is stated in his second discourse whereby the people are said to be ‘living a lie’ (Strong, 1994). He also denied original sin meaning that he did not believe, as in many religions, that individuals are born innately evil, (O’Hagan,2001). Instead, Rousseau introduced his idea that humans are born good in their natural state and it is in fact the evils of society and it’s institutions that corrupt an individual, (Smith and Smith, 1994). Throughout I will discuss Jean-Jacques

France was in a state of debt and at the same time the French people were using religion as an excuse to cover up the fact that the monarchy was carrying most of the wealth of France. Rousseau’s ideas were the catalyst that enabled the French people to revolt. The Enlightenment period was a revolutionary period at the time of the 17th and 18th century, allowing for much social change to occur, meaning that Rousseau had an advantage, being the time he published his work in but he was to ‘attack’ the enlightenment period with his radical views, (Dunn, 2002); this is how he enabled to heavily influence leaders of the French Revolution, enabling the occurrence of the overthrow of the monarchy as well as to influence education. In addition to this, his ideas were influenced by the social state of the French people; the third estate who paid taxes found themselves in an unfair situation compared to the clergy and nobility who did not, therefore Rousseau’s ideas allowed for additional ammunition against the upper