Rousseau was born in Geneva (then an independent republic, today part of
Switzerland) and throughout his life described himself as a citizen of Geneva. His mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, died nine days after his birth due to complications, and his father Isaac, a failed watchmaker, abandoned him in 1722 to avoid imprisonment. His childhood education consisted solely of reading
Plutarch's Lives and
Calvinist sermons. In his childhood, Rousseau often read in the tranquility of a public garden – which he would later describe as the most serene part of growing up. After his father's departure, Rousseau's uncle put him in the care of M. Lambercier, a pastor at Bossey, near Geneva. According to Rousseau's own account in Book I of the
Confessions, his experience of corporal punishment at the hands of the pastor's sister was important in the formation of his
sexuality.
Rousseau left Geneva
March 14, 1728, after several years of apprenticeship to a notary and then an engraver. He then met
Françoise-Louise de Warens, a French
Catholic baroness thirteen years his elder who would later become his lover. Under the protection of de Warens, he converted to Catholicism which, according to his Confessions, he did to provide himself with an education.
In 1742 Rousseau moved to Paris in order to present the
Académie des Sciences with a new system of
numbered musical notation he had invented, based on a single line displaying numbers that represented
intervals between notes and dots and commas that indicated rhythmic values. The system was intended to be compatible with
typography. The Academy rejected it as impractical and unoriginal, but a version of the system remains in use in some parts of the world.
From 1743 to 1744, he was secretary to the French ambassador in
Venice, whose republican government Rousseau would refer to often in his later political work. After this, he returned to Paris, where he befriended and lived with
Thérèse Levasseur, a semi-literate seamstress who, according to Rousseau, bore him five children, though this number may not be accurate. All the children were deposited at an orphanage soon after birth and would most likely have perished soon afterwards, as the mortality rate for such children was very high. Rousseau's abandonment of his children became a source of embarrassment once he became known as a theorist of education and child-rearing, and was used by enemies including
Voltaire to attack him. In his defense, Rousseau explained that he would have been a poor father, and, implausibly, that the children would have a better life at the foundling home.
While in Paris, he became friends with
Diderot and beginning in 1749 contributed several articles to his
Encyclopédie, beginning with some articles on music. His most important contribution was an article on political economy, written in 1755. Soon after, his friendship with Diderot and the Encyclopedists would become strained.
In 1749, as Rousseau walked to
Vincennes to visit Diderot in prison, he read in the
Mercure de France of an essay competition sponsored by the
Académie de Dijon, asking whether the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial. Rousseau claimed that this question caused him to have a moment of sudden inspiration by the roadside, during which he perceived the principle of the natural goodness of humanity on which all his later philosophical works were based. As a consequence of this, he answered the competition question in the negative, in his 1750 "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences", which won him first prize in the contest and gained him significant fame.
During this period he continued his interest in music and in 1752 his opera
Le Devin du Village was performed for
King Louis XV. The same year, the visit of a troupe of Italian musicians to Paris, and their performance of
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, prompted the
Querelle des Bouffons, which pitted protagonists of French music against supporters of the Italian style. Rousseau was an enthusiastic supporter of the Italians against
Jean-Philippe Rameau and others, making an important contribution with his
Letter on French Music.
In 1754, Rousseau returned to Geneva where he reconverted to
Calvinism and regained his official Genevan citizenship. In 1755 Rousseau completed his second major work, the
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. This began a troubled period in Rousseau's personal relationships in which he gradually became estranged from his former friends such as
Diderot and
Grimm and from benefactors such as
Madame d'Epinay. He also pursued an important but unconsummated romantic attachment with
Sophie d'Houdetot. Following his break with the Encyclopedists, he enjoyed the support and patronage of the
Duc de Luxembourg, one of the wealthiest nobles in France.
Rousseau, in
1761 published the successful romantic novel
Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (
The New Heloise). In 1762 he published two major books, first
Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique (in English, literally
Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right) in April and then
Émile, or On Education in May. Both books criticized religion and were banned in both France and Geneva. Rousseau was forced to flee arrest and made stops in both
Bern and
Môtiers in Switzerland, where he enjoyed the protection of
Frederick the Great of Prussia and his local representative,
Lord Keith. While in Môtiers, Rousseau wrote the
Constitutional Project for Corsica (
Projet de Constitution pour la Corse).
Facing criticism in Switzerland – his house in Motiers was stoned on the night of
September 6 1765 – he took refuge with the philosopher
David Hume in Great Britain. Isolated at Wootton on the borders of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, Rousseau suffered a serious decline in his mental health and began to experience paranoid fantasies about plots against him involving Hume and others. Rousseau's letter to Hume, in which he articulates the perceived misconduct, sparked an exchange which was published in and received with great interest in contemporary Paris.
Rousseau fled back to France in 1767 under the name "Renou," although officially he was not allowed to return before 1770. In 1768 he went through a legally invalid marriage to Thérèse, and in 1770 he returned to Paris. As a condition of his return, he was not allowed to publish any books, but after completing his
Confessions, Rousseau began private readings in 1771. At the request of Madame d'Epinay the police ordered him to stop, and the
Confessions, was only partially published in 1782, four years after his death. All his subsequent works were also only to appear posthumously.
Rousseau continued to write until his death. In 1772, he was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for
Poland, resulting in the
Considerations on the Government of Poland, which was to be his last major political work. In 1776 he completed
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques and began work on the
Reveries of the Solitary Walker. In order to support himself through this time, he returned to copying music. Rousseau's final years were largely spent in deliberate withdrawal from public life, however he did respond favorably to an approach from the composer
Gluck, whom he met in 1774. One of Rousseau's last pieces of writing was a critical yet enthusiastic analysis of Gluck's opera
Alceste. While taking a morning walk on the estate of the Marquis de Giradin at
Ermenonville (28 miles northeast of
Paris), Rousseau suffered a hemorrhage and died on
July 2, 1778.
Rousseau was initially buried on the Ile des Peupliers. His remains were moved to
the Panthéon in Paris in 1794, sixteen years after his death and located directly across from those of his contemporary
Voltaire. The tomb was designed to resemble a rustic temple, to recall Rousseau's theories of nature. In 1834, the Genevan government reluctantly erected a statue in his honor on the tiny
Ile Rousseau in
Lake Geneva. In 2002, the
Espace Rousseau was established at 40 Grand-Rue, Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace.
