The Social Contract

Born in 1712 in the republic of Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the son of Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard, who died nine days after giving birth to him. As one of a minority of Genevans who were citizens and therefore able to participate politically, Isaac instilled a love of republicanism in his son, which would express itself strongly in later writings including The Social Contract. When Rousseau was ten, his father was forced into exile to avoid imprisonment after a quarrel. According to his memoirs, Rousseau only saw his father four more times in his life after that.

Throughout his teenage and young adult life, Rousseau volleyed between a series of vocations including engraver’s apprentice, domestic servant, and itinerant musician; he also trained briefly to become a Catholic priest. His career as a writer and public intellectual began in 1749 when, while walking on the outskirts of Paris, he saw an advertisement for an essay contest held by the Academy of Dijon. Rousseau’s submission, titled Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, argued in contrarian fashion that an immersion in the arts and sciences corrodes moral character and civic virtue. The thesis that society corrupts humankind emerges across his work, including in The Social Contract in which he ponders what type of political association is least likely to erode humanity’s natural rights and virtues.

His exploration of this thesis continued in 1754’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, in which he argues that as societies become more complex, individuals grow more competitive in their efforts to attract sexual partners and amass resources and property, all to gain recognition from their peers. This subsequently leads to profound inequality in wealth and status, which Rousseau seeks to address in The Social Contract by instilling “civil equality.” Without equality, he argues, there can be no liberty.

While these treatises brought Rousseau academic recognition, it was his 1761 novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse  that made him what modern critics call “the world’s first celebrity intellectual” (Bell, David A. “Happy Birthday to Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Why the World’s First Celebrity Intellectual Still Matters.” The New Republic. 22 Jun. 2012. https://newrepublic.com/article/104246/happy-birthday-jean-jacques-rousseau-why-worlds-first-celebrity-intellectual-still.). Unfortunately, as his professional and intellectual reputation thrived, Rousseau’s personal life began to disintegrate. He renounced his Genevan citizenship after the city-state banned The Social Contract and 1762’s Emile. He spent the rest of his life in exile in England and France, where he completed Confessions, which some consider the first modern autobiography and a major influence on Goethe, Stendhal, and Thomas De Quincey. Confessions was published in 1782, four years after Rousseau’s death of a stroke at the age of 66.