Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I was born to a family whose morals distinguished them from the people.” (Josephson 9) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland on June 28, 1712. He became the son of Isaac Rousseau, a plebian class watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard, the daughter of a minister who died shortly after giving birth to him. Rousseau’s baptism ceremony was a traditional one held at St. Peter’s Cathedral on July 4, 1712 by the reverend senebies. He had an elder brother who had a “loose character”, but Rousseau loved him anyway.

At an early age, Rousseau found a love for reading. His mother had an inheritance of some money and many romantic books and novels, so those are the first that he read. He and his father would read for so many hours sometimes they would read continuously through the night and on into the next day. His father had a recklessly violent temper, and after a minor infraction with a police officer, fled from Geneva to Canten Vaud in Myon, which is 12 miles from Geneva, and there he continued his profession. Rousseau was ten years old. He was then sent to live with his maternal uncle Bernard, a military engineer in the service of the city-state, and aunt Madame Goncerut, who instilled in him a great passion for music.

Deprived of parental love and affection, Rousseau’s childhood was miserable. He was sent, along with his younger cousin, to be tutored by a Protestant preacher at Bossey, about four miles away at the base of Mont Salève. Rousseau loved living in a pleasant land of valleys and hills, and so found the love of nature. It was also at Bossey where Rousseau established a gruesome affection for the pastor’s daughter, who was thirty years old. Two years passed before uncle Bernard withdrew the two boys because they were wrongly accused and beaten for some petty fact. They were then taken back to his aunt and uncle’s home at the Grande Rue in Geneva. The boys were not placed back in regular school, but were taught mathematics and drawing by uncle Bernard.

They spoke of making him a pastor, but they did not have enough money to send him, so Rousseau was placed as a notary to his uncle who was a lawyer who thought Rousseau was unqualified and sent him back. He was next placed as an engraver in April 1725. His master was also a violent man like his father who fed Rousseau poorly and often treated him harshly. T...

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...Catholic and with 20 francs in hand.

Jean Jacques Rousseau…George R. Havens

Rousseau had only one brother, “on whom the spirit of the father came down in ample measure, just as the sensibility of the mother decended upon jean-jacques.” He was a rebellious boy and finally ran away to Germany, never to be seen again, so Rousseau was basically an only child.

Rousseau…..John Morely

The details of his childhoos are important because they helped him form the educational theories that are still up to date in our modern world, and also because they give some clues about why he acted the way he did in his later years.

Rousseau’s parents were very loyal and devoted to one another ever since the young age of eight. For almost thirteen years, Jean-Jacques father was inconsolable. According to his Confessions, his father said he say his wife in Jean-Jacques. But what Jean-Jacques did not understand is why his father did not realize that it was he who took her from him.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau….C.H. Dobinson

“I was born to a family whose morals distinguished them from the people.”

Parents married on june 2, 1704. First son, Francois born in 1705.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau- Josephson