Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva, was born 311 years ago today. When he was born, Geneva was a city-state, and his middle-class family had voting rights there. He was always proud of that, and signed his books with the “Citizen of Geneva” comment for his entire life. He never lived to see the Republic of Geneva join France, in 1798 (they weren’t conquered; they requested the move).
Not everybody who lived in Geneva could vote; that was mostly reserved for wealthy families (actually only the men in those families). This probably influenced Rousseau’s political philosophy, which is based on the idea that people are inherently good, and most of the bad behavior they exhibit is attributable to the societies they live in, which are fundamentally flawed. He maintained that if you could live in the “state of nature,” you would have “uncorrupted morals.”
Rousseau led a pretty tumultuous life. His mother died when he was just a few days old, and his father eventually remarried and moved away, leaving Rousseau and his brother to be raised by their aunt. He found himself completely on his own when he was a teenager, and supported himself through various odd jobs, and eventually moved to Paris.
At the time, he was primarily interested in music, and had invented a new form of musical notation. He moved to Paris to popularize it, and expected it to make him a fortune. Unfortunately the French Académie des Sciences considered it impractical and just told him to keep trying.
He didn’t; instead he got a job as a secretary to the French ambassador to Venice. He enjoyed Venice, particularly the Italian opera, but the job left him with a lifelong distrust of governments, bureaucracy, and large organizations in general. He continued to lead a tumultuous existence, getting chased out of various cities because of arguments and disputes, but he’d begun publishing his philosophical works and had a growing reputation. That led him to collaborate with the other leading philosophers of the day, including Voltaire, David Hume, and James Boswell.
He moved around a great deal, visiting some of those folks, and evading things like arrest warrants (based on some of his more bitter disputes). Of all things, he was walking on a street in 1778 in a town in northern France when he was thoroughly flattened by a large Great Dane dog running by. He probably suffered at least a concussion, and possibly internal bleeding, because he died shortly afterward.
He left behind a large collection of works that are still influential in moral philosophy, governing, child-centered learning, and more. His autobiography, Confessions, became the model for the way autobiographies are still written, and his unfinished book Reveries of the Solitary Walker heavily influenced the subjectivity and introspection you find in modern writing. His name even entered the language, as “Rousseauism” and “Rousseauvian.” But we’re still not using his musical notation.
