Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Genevan Philosopher - Research Outline

Outline

I. Early life

A. Born: 1712 Geneva. Mother dies soon after.

B. Father educates him to age ten, but then flees Geneva to avoid arrest. Rousseau is put in the care of a pastor in Bossey. Leaves at age sixteen.

II. Beginning of career

A. Meets a noblewoman named Francoise-Louise de la Tour, Baronne de Warens.

B. Converts to Catholicism in Turin, April 1728. Spends some time training to become a Catholic priest. Instead, becomes a traveling musician.

C. Returns to Mme de Warens to become her lover. 1740, leaves for Lyon to become a tutor.

D. Meets Thérèse Levasseur. She bares him five children, each of whom is left to the foundling hospital shortly after birth.

III. Discourse on Sciences and Arts

A. Submitted to an essay contest at the Academy of Dijon, taking first prize.

B. Claimed natural goodness of humanity and the corrupting influence of culture and society.

IV. Discourse on the Origins of Inequality

A.  Establishes a view on alienation and deals with the corrupting influence of society more directly.

V. Later years

A. Emile and The Social Contract are deemed religiously heterodox.

B. Rousseau flees to Switzerland and later England.

C. He returns to France in 1767 and dies in 1778.