The Life, Works, and Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is difficult for the modern reader not draw psychological inferences in a study of the early life of the young Rousseau and his later accomplishments. Raised in a middle-class family that was disrupted by the death of his mother shortly after giving birth and later passed off to care in the hands of relatives after his father’s crime of assault, Rousseau was affected by several influences. Despite the fact that his father was forced to flee Geneva after assaulting a military officer, he is assumed to have had a great effect on the young Rousseau. According to one thought on his development, “Isaac Rousseau [Jean-Jacques’ father], with whom the precocious boy shared a passion for romantic novels, a passion that helped shape Jean-Jacques’s emotional and highly imaginative nature” (O’Connor, 2005). This early introduction to novels, then an art form in its infancy and the cause of much debate in literary circles, might also have contributed to Rousseau’s keen anticipation of romantic-era ideals about man’s relation to the natural world.