Jean Jacques Rousseau "The Confessions" Essay examples

Jean- Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712, in Switzerland. The European philosopher wrote a book called A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. His belief is that society is corrupted by evil and that man is good in his “state of nature” (Notes). He believed that man are naturally good and if we let them act on their own instinct, that they will act their true nature. He claims that politics are evil and corrupt the society with their systems.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher in 1712-1778. He believed that all humans are born innocent and what corrupt them and makes evil is society. He believes that if there was no society it would not make human beings feel so judged, shy or depended on others. Without society people would feel more equal they would not want to compare themselves Humans would feel freer. Rousseau thought that society weakens humans that if someone were to grow up in a natural place and place far from society they would be stronger. Compared o the people that grow up in a society they weaken.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was well respected philosopher in the 1700’s who was well respected by many other people. Rousseau’s beliefs are that the male being is corrupted by society itself. In my opinion he is saying that if we didn’t have a strict set of rules and we just let the male being come into our world , then they would be pure forever. In my opinion, this specific idea frightens me because it seems like he is just trying to make chaos and unstableness. Jean- Jacques Rousseaus had also lived during the enlightenment period. The enlightenment period consisted of new philosophy consisting of sayings, meanings, views, and new economic ideas. Since the period he lived in consisted of a stable good community, perhaps that is why he obtains his philosophy, that the typical male being is truly pure and controlled.

Philosophers during that time reveled in the concept of living the natural life happily. French social reformer Jean-Jacque Rousseau speculated on how and why human differences occurred over time. He believed that though men were born free they were always seen in chains. He was an advocate of happiness, and believed that to achieve this Utopian idea of self-happiness one must become advantageous. His belief was that individuals and society could become genuine and live genuinely which explains why he is referred to as the "hippie genius". He wanted society to return to nature and with this he created a radical change in which society didn't refer to nature as a nuisance but as a view to be appreciated for its beauty. His philosophy was dreamy and private which influenced the Romantics. Romantics during the Enlightenment were the polar opposites of the reasonable, skeptical, yet pragmatic philosophers of the time. They focused on the sentiments of human nature. The idea behind 'self discovery'. That the mysterious forces such as freedom, dreams/nightmares, imagination, and feelings could inspire human

Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau was shaped by the death of his mother and loss of his father at an early age. Sent to live with the Baroness de Warens, he gained a formal education that enabled him to write his later famous works. He loathed the Baroness’ values even when they eventually became lovers, but growing up in her educational environment allowed Rousseau to be exposed to different opinions that would eventually shape his Enlightened ideas, (Historyguide.org, www.historyguide.org/europe/rousseau.html.). This also exposed Rousseau to different religious ideas eventually forming his views that the church was corrupt, (Nardo, Don. “The Onrush of Modern Ideas.” The French Revolution, Cengage Learning, 2008, pp. 21–21.) Then in 1741, Rousseau fled to Paris where he wrote, “Les Muses Galantes.” This work allowed for Rousseau to meet Voltaire and exchange Enlightenment ideas. Being exposed to the “popular crowd” abled Rousseau in 1750 to write, “A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts” based off of a prison he visited holding Denis Diderot. Diderot was one of the people Rousseau was able to meet due to Les Muses galantes, it was there Rousseau got the inspiration to form an opinion on the following essay question, “Have arts and sciences improved or corrupted the morals of mankind?”( Historyguide.org, www.historyguide.org/europe/rousseau.html.). Rousseau believed the arts and sciences had not corrupted man just simply decreased their freedoms. Being around Diderot in prison abled Rousseau to write, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” which stressed his ideals of man’s natural goodness and the corruption of regularized life, which connects back to Rousseau’s visit to Diderot in an institutionalized prison. These events and works all lead up to Rousseau’s most famous and popular work, “The Social Contract.”

Rousseau’s assumptions and beliefs of his era are society and the growth of social interdependence. He was from 1700, (1712-78) it was very different compared to our beliefs.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher who believed that man was born with a pure heart and good intentions; however, society inevitably corrupted man. He believed that any desire to be a good person must be internally initiated from the one seeking it. Once man has immersed himself into society, he allows himself to be persuaded that being good is not the only way of life.

Most importantly for Rousseau, however, is not necessarily how history lets him see how men might have been or how history lets him strike a balance between grasping the intricacy of human history and succeeding fluidly from one thought to another; it is how framing his work in such a way lets him give the greatest demonstrative proof of the point he makes. The first part of the work consists in a history of mankind until the institution of the social contract, and it reads easily and freely, just as man in Rousseau’s conception was in those days. The second part of the Second Discourse, which deals with the critique of the social contract itself, however, reads much more heavily, as if Rousseau were attempting to give the reader a taste of the gravity the social contract itself imposes upon man. The opening lines of the second half already launch his scathing attack on civil society by associating this notion with a man who takes advantage of his fellow men:

3.) In some ways I agree with Rousseau, but I do not agree with his larger claims in this piece. Rousseau branches off of the theories of other previous philosophers but assigns gender roles within human nature. Rousseau generalizes the roles of men and women by assigninh hunting roles to men as well as their power over women. He studies the roles of human nature as a whole and organizes society into two main categories: rich and poor. Although this seems valid for his time period, today's society includes a middle class that represents the majority of the

Rousseau views on human nature as an evolving person in their self. Rousseau wants the reader to see the human nature in themselves and also understand how it has evolved while reading the inequality of men. Men and animals are very similar to one another, however; men can talk. We cannot really understand how animals communicate with us. We wouldn’t understand what they are saying. In the state of nature, pity and self-preservation is mostly what men worry about. A man evolves, mentally,

Jean Jacques Rousseau in On Education writes about how to properly raise and educate a child. Rousseau's opinion is based on his own upbringing and lack of formal education at a young age. Rousseau depicts humanity as naturally good and becomes evil because humans tamper with nature, their greatest deficiency, but also possess the ability to transform into self-reliant individuals. Because of the context of the time, it can be seen that Rousseau was influenced by the idea of self-preservation, individual freedom, and the Enlightenment, which concerned the operation of reason, and the idea of human progress. Rousseau was unaware of psychology and the study of human development. This paper will argue that Rousseau theorizes that humanity is

Rousseau regards women as being domestic individuals who are best suitable for nurturing the home and the children. Although this is where women belong, according to Rousseau, it is also the origin of their illness. Rousseau senses that the family, as “the oldest of all societies and the only natural one” is fair. Instead, it is women that cause separation within society. The problem with his analysis of women is that he, like some several others within the bubble of political theory, flops to contemplate the integrity of the family. This is mainly challenging because of his disregard for women, the dispute for which principally rests on agreement and the absence of acute consideration of the matters of women and the

He believes that it is at that age that reason starts to develop until finally the child becomes an adult. In ‘Emile’ Rousseau emphasises that nature wants children to take advantage of being children before being adults and there is a period of acquiring knowledge before living in the real world. A theory of innocence of the child emerged giving a need to protect children from the harsh reality of the adult world.

The problem is to find a form of association … in which each, while uniting

By setting aside all the facts, Rousseau creates a state of nature that proves man to be naturally free and good. Once Rousseau sets aside the facts he creates a story that shows man should be “discontented with your present state, for reasons that herald even greater discontent for your unhappy Posterity, you might perhaps wish to be able to go backwards” (133). This is true because man is free. Rousseau starts by “stripping this being, so constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties he could only have acquired by prolonged progress” (134). Man in his beginning is unsophisticated and irrational nothing more than “an animal “(134). But, in nature man has no authorities. In nature “men, dispersed among them [other animals], observe, imitate their industry, and so raise themselves to the level of the Beasts’ instinct, with this advantage that each species has but its own instinct, while man perhaps having none that belong to him, appropriates them all, feeds indifferently on most of the various foods” (134-135). Men learn from other animals and imitate their moves but are forced to