Jean-Jacques Rousseau Maria Perez Mendoza Period 3 World History Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a distinguished writer, composer and philosopher of the eighteenth century whose works influenced the leaders of the French Revolution as well as many other later thinkers. His many published books aroused several controversies as well inspiration to many fashionable new thinkers. Rousseau was born In Geneva, Switzerland on June 28, 1712 to mother Suzanne Bernard and father Isaac Rousseau. On July 8 of the same year, only a couple of days after his birth into this world, his mother passed away leaving him only with his father to take care after him. Rousseau grew up in a household mainly dominated by his father, who was …show more content…
a clockmaker. His only other close family member, his brother, ran away from Geneva when Rousseau was still young, so his father figure was very prominent in his young days. Even then, his father inculcated Greek and Roman literature in Rousseau’s life.
Rousseau’s father had a creative mind of his own and taught his son some Greek values. His father, later on, got into a quarrel of some sort with a French captain, a wealthy landowner, who accused him of violating his property. In fear of imprisonment, Rousseau’s father ran away from Geneva and settled in Nyon in the territory of Bern; he would spend the rest of his days outside of Geneva never to come back. Rousseau was left behind and taken care by other family members, specially his maternal uncle. Rousseau’s uncle sent him, alongside his cousin, with a Calvinist minister to study in the village of Bosey. During his two-year stay, he studied mathematics and drawing and even believed he would want to pursue being a minister himself. Rousseau later, in 1725, started his trade as an engraver. He had some troubles with his master, who he believed was violent and abusive and resembled a tyrant, so in 1728 he followed his father’s footsteps and left Geneva. He fled and made a safe haven out of a Roman Catholic Priest in Annecy. It was during his days in there that he found Louise de Warens; she was one of the biggest influences in his life. Louise de Warens was a woman from the higher class.. Louise de Warens was the …show more content…
turning point for Rousseau’s religious beliefs. She was hired to convert Protestants into Catholics. She later convinced Rousseau to go to Turin to finish his complete conversion into Catholicism in April of 1728. This transition caused him to completely give up his Genevan citizenship, because of the rules in the city. This conversion also caused controversy in his family being that his father and uncle renounced him. Rousseau then had to take matters into his own hands and eeked out a living by working several professions such as a teacher, servant, secretary and musical jobs, in France and Italy. Mme de Warens was viewed by Rousseau as an inspiration, and influence in the thinking aspect of his life. Because he had lost his family relationships, he built a strong one with Mme de Warens. His relationship with her was at first nothing more than a friendship, but later became romantic. She introduced various new ways of thinking into his life and eventually transformed his thinking into a more philosophical one. Mme de Warens had a very intellectual group of friends that were educated members of the Catholic clergy, from whom she collected some of her ideals. She then introduced Rousseau to them and he built several more relationships with thinkers of the upper class. This new flow of ideas into Rousseau’s brain is what triggered many of his writings. Mme de Warens created a valuable outlet for Rousseau. She challenged Rousseau’s ideas, she had a great taste and she also had a vibrant personality with enormous amounts of energy. He took advantage of this and gained the talents he needed to be able to express himself in a world where new radical ideas were being trends. After receiving a small portion of his mother’s inheritance in 1737, he used part of it to pay Mme Warden for her financial support as well as her dedication and appreciation.
In addition to his philosophical approach, Rousseau always gained interest in the musical path. A big step in Rousseau’s career was reaching Paris. In 1742, he moved to Paris to pursue his goal of becoming a musical composer. After developing a system of writing down music with their rhythmic values, he thought it to be best if he presented it to The Academy of the Sciences. Despite his illusions, The Academy did not think highly of this new system so it rejected it. Rousseau then was forced to work in other fields such as being secretary in the Comnte de Montaiguie. While staying in France, he also had the pleasure to interact with other thinkers who shared some of his views. All of these thinkers were, each in their way, searching for fame through their literature and writings. On of the was Denis Diderot. Diderot and Rousseau came together and created a group of individuals that gathered to share their opinions. They created a form of literary magazine named the Encyclopédie. Rousseau’s writings were, in fact, the most eloquent, trendy and polished of them all. They also attracted a grand variety of audiences from different backgrounds and perspectives. On top of his philosophical and elaborated works, he wrote music as well. In 1752, he composed
the opera Le Devin du village. His music attracted the glorious admiration from the king and the court. His musical era reached its epitome during this time. He developed most of his operas and gained lots of new fame through his achievements.
Bibliography
"Jean-Jacques Rousseau Biography." - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.
Champlain was born in 1574 in Brouage, to a family of marines and sea captains. He was the son of Antonio de Champlain ( a captain in the French marines), and his mother’s maiden name is Marguerite Leroy. His hometown had many big ports and ships, so he was very connected to boats when he was little. He had very little education, but he was able to become very educated by himself. He knew a lot of things because he taught them to himself. While he was still young, he entered the army.
Samuel de Champlain, who is referred to as the Father of New France, was born in the Brouage, Saintonge province, Western France. He was born to a protestant family around 1570. His father Anthoine de Champlain was a sea captain. The fact that his father worked in the high sea as a navigator, gave Samuel a strong desire to be a sailor and an explorer. This came when he was barely twenty years, under the guide of François Grave, he made his first voyage trip to the North America. Samuel Champlain never acquired a formal education in either Greek or Latin literature, but he learnt to navigate, drawing art of nautical charts, and writing. He also learnt the fighting techniques as part of a requirement for French sailors and later he was enrolled as a soldier in the army under King Henry.
Jean Jacques Rousseau in On Education writes about how to properly raise and educate a child. Rousseau's opinion is based on his own upbringing and lack of formal education at a young age. Rousseau depicts humanity as naturally good and becomes evil because humans tamper with nature, their greatest deficiency, but also possess the ability to transform into self-reliant individuals. Because of the context of the time, it can be seen that Rousseau was influenced by the idea of self-preservation, individual freedom, and the Enlightenment, which concerned the operation of reason, and the idea of human progress. Rousseau was unaware of psychology and the study of human development. This paper will argue that Rousseau theorizes that humanity is naturally good by birth, but can become evil through tampering and interfering with nature.
The year 1776 brought about extreme reshaping for the colonies of what we now call the United States. Contributions from at least three philosophes during the Enlightenment period were instrumental in the formation of the foundation of a new government for the colonies. In addition to a freer-thinking people, The Enlightenment values of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau became a model for this new government of liberty, equality, and a new form of justice.
The political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx examined the role that the state played and its relationship to its citizen’s participation and access to the political economy during different struggles and tumultuous times. Rousseau was a believer of the concept of social contract with limits established by the good will and community participation of citizens while government receives its powers given to it. Karl Marx believed that power was to be taken by the people through the elimination of the upper class bourgeois’ personal property and capital. While both philosophers created a different approach to establishing the governing principles of their beliefs they do share a similar concept of eliminating ownership of capital and distributions from the government. Studying the different approaches will let us show the similarities of principles that eliminate abuse of power and concentration of wealth by few, and allow access for all. To further evaluate these similarities, we must first understand the primary principles of each of the philosophers’ concepts.
Montesquieu was a philosopher of the 18th century. He was born on January 18, 1689, Bordeaux, France. His father was a soldier and his mother died when he was little. Montesquieu went to college and at the University of Bordeaux to receive a law degree. He married Jeanne de Lartigue and had one son and two daughters. Montesquieu first came popular when he published a novel called Persian Letters. He also wrote many smaller works, but his other major work was The Spirit of the Laws. He was visiting many salons and soon was elected to be apart of the Académie Française which was an academy to revise the French dictionary. He visited many countries and lived in England for two years before coming back to France. Once back at France, he began his second major work, The Spirit of the Laws, and many other minors works. The Spirit of the Laws, by the Roman Catholic Church, was
One of the interesting things about Rousseau was that he had different views than previous philosophers, such as Hume and Locke, on the state of nature. In Rousseau’s point of view, humans in the state of nature would be most like a noble savage. What this means is that Rousseau believed that in the state of nature humans are naturally good, and are lead by basic appetites or sentiments. This would also be a prehistoric place where humans would not have discovered rationality or morality. This mainly applies because Rousseau believes that these prehistoric humans made, as later discussed, decisions based on sentiment and not on reason, thus since morality requires the ability to choose between right and wrong it would be impossible to be moral.
Michel Foucault his full name was Paul-Michel Foucault, was born October 15, 1926, Poitiers France—died June 25, 1984, Paris. He the grandson of a physician.You could say that he was born into a solidly bourgeois family, Also his father was a doctor so you can see that being intelligent runs in the family, his mother was just any ordinary housewife Foucault’s mother, Anne, was likewise the daughter of a surgeon, and had longed to follow a medical career, but her wish had to wait until Foucault’s younger brother as such a career was not available for women at the time. It is surely no coincidence then that much of Foucault’s work would revolve around the critical interrogation of medical discourses .Foucault was schooled in Poitiers during the years of German occupation Foucault excelled at philosophy and, having from a young age declared his intention to pursue an academic career, persisted in defying his father, who wanted the young Paul-Michel to follow his forebears into the medical profession. The conflict with his father may have been a factor in Foucault’s dropping the ‘Paul’ from his name. The relationship between father and son remained cool through to the latter’s death in 1959, though Foucault remained close to his mother.
The perpetual peace that Rousseau treats is that proposed by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, a fact that doesn't become clear until the latter end of the piece. Rousseau tells us that the Abbé has, over time, advanced a fair number of plans for peace and prosperity, all to the ridicule of contemporary thinkers (125). That Rousseau takes up this one plan, in particular, may simply be masturbatory: as a writer, Rousseau was not averse to cutting his teeth on the works of others that he found to be disagreeable, as evidenced by his disdainful treatment of Hobbes (112). However, before criticizing Rousseau's work or speculating as to why he carried it out, it serves first to understand it properly.
The problem is to find a form of association … in which each, while uniting
recognized as a writer. He became one of the most famous and well paid French
Emilie du Chatelet was not a conventional woman, given the time. Like many girls at the time she was educated at home. She valued her independence and wanted to marry someone who would value it as well. She married Marquise du Chatelet-Laumont in 1725. At the age of 27 she had her last child and went back to her study of mathematics. She wanted to join the discussion in salons, but was not admitted to join until she went dressed as a man. “Emilie’s interest in mathematics and science overlapped with her affairs of the heart.” She had a fling with one of her tutors, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertius. Her affair with Voltaire lasted until the end of her life.
Comte was born in the south of France in a city called Montpellier on January 19, 1788. He was the eldest of four children. His father Louis-Auguste Comte was a tax official and his mother, Félicité-Rosalie Boyer was twelve years older than his father. His parents were both of Roman Catholic faith and royalists. He attended the Citadel of Montpellier and the University of Montpellier. Comte also attended the École Polytechnique. While attending the Citadel of Montpellier, he abandoned the beliefs of his parents and picked up the beliefs of a movement called republicanism. “From 1818 to 1824 he contributed to the publications of Saint-Simon, and the direction of much of Comte's future work may be attributed to this association...
Rene Descartes was a French mathematician born in 1596 in La Haye, France and died in 1650 in Stockholm Sweden. The town’s name where he was born was changed to La Haye-Descartes in 1801, but in 1997 it was changed to just Descartes, France. The house where Descartes was born is now a small museum. He was named after one of his godfathers, Rene Brochard des Fontaines. Descartes fathers name was Joachim Descartes, he was a lawyer and a magistrate (Civil officer or a lay judge who administers the law.) Jeanne Brochard, Descartes mother, died the following May after he was born from giving birth to another child who also died. After his mother’s death, Descartes, his brother Pierre and his sister Jeanne were left to be raised by their grandmother
Source one is a quote by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He states that: “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The source states that even though human beings are all born free of chains, as they grow up and enter society, they find themselves unknowingly being put into chains. Rousseau believes that external and internal factors in society cause us all to become restricted and chained, that we believe we are free when we are constantly surrounded by restricting forces. The chains can be both physical or mental and are placed upon us by those who wish to control us. The source values self- determination, free-will, equality, and would favour constitutionally protected rights of citizens everywhere, such as those listed