Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In the early 1740s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the son of a poor Swiss watchmaker, made his way into the Parisian Enlightenment through his brilliant intellect. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau was passionately committed to individual freedom. Unlike them, however, he attacked rationalism and civilization as destroying, rather than liberating, the individual. Warm, spontaneous feeling had to complement and correct cold intellect. The basic goodness of the individual and the unspoiled child had to be protected from the cruel refinements of civilization. Rousseau’s ideals greatly influenced the early romantic movement, which rebelled against the culture of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century.

Rousseau also called for a rigid division of gender roles. According to Rousseau, women and men were radically different beings. Destined by nature to assume a passive role in sexual relations, women should also be subordinate in social life. Women’s love for displaying themselves in public, attending social gatherings, and pulling the strings of power was unnatural and had a corrupting effect on both politics and society. Rousseau thus rejected the sophisticated way of life of Parisian elite women. His criticism led to calls for privileged women to renounce their frivolous ways and stay at home to care for their children.

Rousseau’s contribution to political theory in The Social Contract (1762) was based on two fundamental concepts: the general will and popular sovereignty. According to Rousseau, the general will is sacred and absolute, reflecting the common interests of all the people, who have displaced the monarch as the holder of sovereign power. The general will is not necessarily the will of the majority, however. At times, the general will may be the authentic, long-term needs of the people as correctly interpreted by a farsighted minority. Little noticed in its day, Rousseau’s concept of the general will had a great impact on the political aspirations of the American and French Revolutions.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)

Early Enlightenment thinker excommunicated from the Jewish religion for his concept of a deterministic universe

John Locke (1632–1704)

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)

German philosopher and mathematician known for his optimistic view of the universe

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)

Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)

Montesquieu (1689–1755)

The Persian Letters (1721); The Spirit of Laws (1748)

Voltaire (1694–1778)

Renowned French philosopher and author of more than seventy works

David Hume (1711–1776)

Central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment; Of Natural Characters (1748)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

The Social Contract (1762)

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783)

Editors of Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts (1751–1772)

Adam Smith (1723–1790)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759); An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

What Is Enlightenment? (1784); On the Different Races of Man (1775)

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786)

Major philosopher of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment

Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794)

On Crimes and Punishments (1764)

Table 16.4: MAJOR FIGURES OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT