Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Brief biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Basic ideas of Rousseau briefly

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of those philosophers who will provoke discussions for a long time. Does he belong to the galaxy of thinkers or, conversely, to its most implacable critics? Did he prepare the ground for the French Revolution or did he do everything to prevent it from happening? Many biographers have broken their spears arguing about who Jean-Jacques Rousseau was. We will consider the main ideas of this philosopher, who simultaneously belonged to the schools of naturalism and sensationalism, in this article. After all, it was this man who understood that progress brings misfortune, and despotism gives rise to the lack of rights of the majority. In a situation where the majority of people lived practically below the poverty line, he cherished ideas about universal equality.

The views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: what underlies them

The main motive of the philosopher’s ideas is the requirement to bring society out of the state in which it now finds itself. That is, from a situation of general depravity. His fellow educators argued that this was possible, if only the princes and rulers were educated correctly. And also establish a republic where everyone will receive equal material benefits and political rights. Rousseau believed that the main principle of a proper society lies in correct moral thinking. The philosopher said that “every person is virtuous” when his “private will corresponds in everything to the general will.” Morality for him was the main measure of everything. Therefore, he believed that without virtue no real freedom exists. But his life was like a refutation of his entire philosophy.

Biography. Youth and early career

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose main ideas we are analyzing, was born in the city of Geneva and, according to his religious beliefs, was a Calvinist in his childhood. His mother died during childbirth, and his father fled the city because he became a victim of criminal prosecution. From an early age he was apprenticed, but neither the notary nor the engraver, under whose subordination the future philosopher was, loved him. The fact is that he preferred to voraciously read books rather than work. He was often punished, and he decided to run away. He came to the neighboring region - Savoy, which was Catholic. There, not without the participation of Madame de Varan, his first patroness, he became a Catholic. Thus began the ordeal of the young thinker. He works as a footman in an aristocratic family, but does not settle down there and goes back to Madame de Varan. With her help, he goes to study at the seminary, leaves it, wanders around France for two years, often spending the night in the open air, and again returns to his former love. Even the presence of another admirer of the “mother” does not bother him. For several years, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose biography in his youth was so different from his subsequent views, either leaves or returns to Madame de Varan and lives with her in Paris, Chambery and other places.

Maturity

Rousseau ultimately found it impossible to remain for a long time as a protégé of an aging lady. He tried to earn money, but was unsuccessful. He was unable to teach children or work as the ambassador's secretary. He had problems with all employers. Misanthropy gradually penetrates into the character of this person. He doesn't get along with people. Nature is what begins to fascinate such a lover of solitude as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher's biography suddenly takes a sharp turn - he marries a maid serving in one of the hotels. She was a rude one, which he did not like at all, but she fed him. He sent all his children to the orphanage, later claiming that he did not have money to support his family. He continued to work in various temporary positions, and then, as a secretary, he entered the society of Encyclopedists, who met at home. One of his first friends was The latter was often persecuted for One day, when Jean-Jacques went to visit Diderot in prison, he read in the newspaper a competitive advertisement for a prize for the best paper on the topic of whether science and art are useful for society. The young man wrote an essay denouncing culture and civilization. Oddly enough, it was he, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who received first place. The main ideas of his philosophy were expressed in this text. This is how his biography as a thinker began.

Glory

Since then, Rousseau lived a brilliant ten years. He wrote music and operettas that were performed on the royal stage. He was fashionable in high society. And since his main idea was the rejection of his contemporary culture, he abandoned the principles of a rich and prosperous life, began to dress simply (and even rudely) and began to communicate vulgarly and offensively with his aristocratic friends. He made his living by copying music. Although society ladies showered him with gifts, all the gifts went to his greedy wife. Soon the philosopher wrote another work, which became popular. The political ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau appeared for the first time in this work. Arguing about how inequality occurred, the thinker believed that everything that underlies the life of modern society - the state, laws, division of labor - all this led to moral decline. One of Rousseau’s connoisseurs, Madame d’Epinay, built a special “Hermitage” for him on her property in the middle of the forest, where the philosopher could indulge in thoughts alone. However, after an unsuccessful affair with a young married aristocrat, which led to a scandal among the Eniclopedists, Rousseau breaks with his comrades.

Problems

The philosopher finds shelter with the Duke of Luxembourg, where he lives for another four years and writes many works. One of them brings the wrath of the Church upon him, and he flees from the court sentence of the Parisian parliament. Taking refuge in his native Switzerland, he sees that he is also not welcome here - the government of the canton of Berne is expelling the philosopher. The Prussian king provides him with a new refuge - Rousseau spends another three years in the village of Motiers. However, then his quarrelsome nature causes him to quarrel with all the surrounding residents. Trying to start a new life, he comes to Geneva and again accepts Calvinism, but he cannot get along peacefully with representatives of this denomination, and begins to quarrel with them. The apogee of these problems was the conflict with another “ruler of thoughts” of that era - Voltaire, who also lived near Geneva, on the Fernet estate. A mocking rival uses pamphlets to survive Jean-Jacques of Motiers, and Rousseau is forced to flee to England. He accepts the invitation of another philosopher, Hume. But it’s impossible to get along with him either, and after a while the new friend declares Russo crazy.

Wanderings and death

The philosopher returns to Paris, wanders again, finding refuge first with one friend, then with another. Voltaire begins to publish pamphlets about what a terrible life a man named Rousseau Jean-Jacques lived. The philosophy and actions of this “hypocrite” do not coincide with each other at all, the opponent notes. In response, Rousseau writes the famous “Confession”, trying to justify his past and present. But his mental illness is progressing. His health is rapidly deteriorating, and soon, according to one version, during a concert organized in his honor, the philosopher suddenly dies. His grave on the Isle of Willows became a place of pilgrimage for fans of the thinker, who believed that Rousseau had fallen victim to public ostracism.

Rousseau Jean-Jacques. Philosophy of escapism

As already mentioned, the thinker’s first works were competitive “Discourses” on the arts, sciences and the origin of inequality. Subsequently, he wrote such works as “The Social Contract”, “Emile, or Education of the Sentiments” and “The New Heloise”. Some of his works are written in the form of essays and some as novels. It was the latter that Jean-Jacques Rousseau became most famous for. The basic ideas about denouncing civilization and culture from which one should flee, expressed by him in his youth, find their natural continuation. The main thing in a person, as the philosopher believed, is not the mind at all, but the feelings. The basic instincts of a moral being should be recognized as Conscience and Genius. Unlike reason, they do not make mistakes, although they are often unconscious. The Renaissance, which everyone admires, led to a real decline in society, because the sciences, arts and industrial development that began at that time led to the alienation of people from each other and the emergence of artificial needs. And the task of a real philosopher is to make a person united again and, accordingly, happy.

Historical views

But it was not only the Renaissance and its achievements that Jean-Jacques Rousseau denounced. The theory of the social contract is one of his main philosophical conclusions. Criticizing contemporary political ideas, he contradicts Hobbes, who was popular at that time. In the primitive era, Rousseau believes, there was no “war of all against all,” but there was a real “golden age.” The modern fallen society begins with the advent of private property - as soon as someone staked out a plot and declared: “This is mine,” the childish innocence of humanity disappeared. Of course, it is impossible to reverse science, but it is possible to slow down progress as such. To do this, it is necessary to conclude a social contract and create a republic of equal small owners. All issues there will be resolved not through separation of powers, but through referendums.

What should a person be like?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a lot about education. A person, first of all, must be a natural being, because all his basic principles are determined by nature. Since feelings, as we have already found out, are the main thing in people, then they should be developed. Superfluous reasoning only tires, and does not exalt at all. The real dignity of a person comes from the heart, not from the mind. People try not to hear the voice of conscience, but this is the call of Nature itself. In his pursuit of civilization, man forgot about this and became deaf. Therefore, he should return to his ideal, represented by the image of the “noble savage”, surrendering to the spontaneity of feelings, and not broken by the unnecessary demands of artificial etiquette.

Enlightenment and education

The philosopher's views are full of contradictions. While attacking culture and science, Rousseau, nevertheless, always used their fruits and recognized their necessity and undoubted merits in the education of man. He believed, like many of his contemporaries, that if rulers listened to philosophers, then society would become more perfect. But this is not the only contradiction that was characteristic of such a thinker as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher's pedagogical ideas place hopes on enlightenment, which he so criticized. It is this that can make it possible to raise worthy citizens, and without this, both rulers and subordinates will be just slaves and liars. But at the same time, one must remember that a person’s childhood is his memory of the lost paradise of the golden age, and try to take as much as possible from nature.

Virtue is the basis of everything

Although the philosopher's life did not correspond to his views, morality plays an important role in his works. Emotions and sympathy, from the point of view of the thinker, are the main basis of virtue, and the latter lies at the basis of man and society. This is what Rousseau Jean-Jacques thought. about morality, nature and religion are very similar. Both virtue and faith must be subordinate to nature, he said. Only then will society be ideal when harmony with the interests of all members of society is achieved between the inner world of a person, its moral, emotional and rational components. Therefore, individuals must overcome their moral alienation from each other and not become like politicians who are “more like rabid wolves... than Christians... wanting to bring their opponents back to the path of truth.”

Rousseau's influence on his own and subsequent centuries was undeniable. His ideas about the contrast between selfishness and virtue, justice and the treachery of false laws, the greed of owners and the innocence of the poor, as well as dreams of a return to nature were taken up by romantics, fighters for a better social order and social rights, seekers of solidarity and brotherhood.

Childhood

For more than 2 years, Rousseau wandered around Switzerland, enduring every need: once he was even in Paris, which he did not like. He made his treks on foot, spending the night in the open air, but was not burdened by this, enjoying nature. In the spring, Mr. Rousseau became again the guest of Madame de Warans; his place was taken by the young Swiss Ane, which did not prevent Rousseau from remaining a member of the friendly trio.

In his “Confessions,” he described in the most passionate colors his then love. After Ane's death, he remained alone with Madame de Varens until she sent him to Montpellier for treatment. Upon his return, he found his benefactor near the city of Chambery, where she rented a farm in the town of " Les Charmettes"; her new “factotum” was the young Swiss Wincinried. Rousseau called him brother and again took refuge with his “mother.”

Working as a home tutor

But his happiness was no longer so serene: he was sad, secluded, and the first signs of misanthropy began to appear in him. He sought solace in nature: he got up at dawn, worked in the garden, picked fruits, followed pigeons and bees. So two years passed: Rousseau found himself the odd man out in the new trio and had to worry about making money. He entered the city as a home tutor in the Mably family (the writer's brother), who lived in Lyon. But he was very unsuited for this role; he did not know how to behave either with students or with adults, he secretly took wine into his room, and made “eyes” to the mistress of the house. As a result, Russo had to leave.

After an unsuccessful attempt to return to Charmette, Rousseau went to Paris to present to the Academy the system he had invented for denoting notes with numbers; it was not accepted, despite " Discourse on modern music", written by Rousseau in her defense.

Working as a home secretary

Rousseau receives a position as household secretary to Count Montagu, the French envoy to Venice. The envoy looked at him as a servant, but Rousseau imagined himself as a diplomat and began to put on airs. Subsequently he wrote that he saved the Kingdom of Naples at this time. However, the envoy kicked him out of the house without paying his salary.

Rousseau returned to Paris and filed a complaint against Montague, which was successful.

He managed to stage the opera he wrote " Les Muses Galantes” in the home theater, but she did not make it to the royal stage.

Wife and kids

Having no means of subsistence, Rousseau entered into a relationship with the maid of the hotel where he lived, Therese Levasseur, a young peasant woman, ugly, illiterate, narrow-minded - she could not learn to find out what time it was - and very vulgar. He admitted that he never had the slightest love for her, but he married her twenty years later.

Together with her, he had to keep her parents and their relatives. He had 5 children, who were all sent to an orphanage. Rousseau justified himself by saying that he did not have the means to feed them, that they would not allow him to study in peace, and that he would rather make peasants out of them than adventurers, like himself.

Meeting encyclopedists

Having received a position as secretary to the tax farmer Frankel and his mother-in-law, Rousseau became a household member in the circle to which the famous Madame d'Epinay, her friend Grimm and Diderot belonged. Rousseau often visited them, staged comedies, and charmed them with his naive, albeit imaginatively decorated stories from his life. He was forgiven for his tactlessness (he, for example, began by writing a letter to Frankel’s mother-in-law declaring his love).

Leaving the Hermitage, he found a new shelter with the Duke of Luxembourg, the owner of the Montmorency Castle, who provided him with a pavilion in his park. Here Rousseau spent 4 years and wrote “The New Heloise” and “Emile”, reading them to his kind hosts, whom he at the same time insulted with suspicions that they were not sincerely disposed towards him, and with statements that he hated their title and high social status. position.

Publishing novels

In the city, “The New Heloise” appeared in print, in the spring of the next year - “Emil”, and a few weeks later - “The Social Contract” (“ Contrat social"). During the printing of Emile, Rousseau was in great fear: he had strong patrons, but suspected that the bookseller would sell the manuscript to the Jesuits and that his enemies would distort its text. "Emil", however, was published; the thunderstorm broke out a little later.

The Paris Parliament, preparing to pronounce judgment on the Jesuits, considered it necessary to condemn the philosophers as well, and sentenced “Emile,” for religious freethinking and indecency, to be burned by the hand of an executioner, and its author to imprisonment. Prince Conti made this known at Montmorency; The Duchess of Luxembourg ordered Rousseau to be woken up and persuaded him to leave immediately. Rousseau, however, procrastinated the whole day and almost became a victim of his slowness; on the road he met the bailiffs sent for him, who politely bowed to him.

Forced link

He was not detained anywhere: neither in Paris, nor on the way. Rousseau, however, imagined torture and the fire; Everywhere he sensed pursuit. When he crossed the Swiss border, he rushed to kiss the soil of the land of justice and freedom. The Geneva government, however, followed the example of the Parisian parliament, burned not only "Emile" but also the "Social Contract", and issued orders for the arrest of the author; The Bernese government, on whose territory (the present canton of Vaud was then subject to it) Rousseau sought refuge, ordered him to leave his possessions.

Portrait of Rousseau in the Scottish National Gallery

Rousseau found refuge in the Principality of Neuchâtel, which belonged to the Prussian king, and settled in the town of Motiers. He made new friends here, wandered through the mountains, chatted with the villagers, and sang romances to the village girls. He adapted himself a suit, which he called Caucasian - a spacious, belted arkhaluk, wide trousers and a fur hat, justifying this choice on hygienic grounds. But his peace of mind was not strong. It seemed to him that the local men were too self-important, that they had evil tongues; he began to call Motier "the most vile place." He lived like this for a little over three years; then new disasters and wanderings came for him.

Even in the city, having arrived in Geneva and received there with great triumph, he wished to regain the right of Genevan citizenship, lost with the transition to Catholicism, and again joined Calvinism.

In Motiers, he asked the local pastor to admit him to the sacrament, but in a polemic with his opponents in the Letters from the Mountain, he mocked Calvin's authority and accused the Calvinist clergy of apostasy from the spirit of the Reformation.

Relations with Voltaire

Added to this was a quarrel with Voltaire and with the government party in Geneva. Rousseau once called Voltaire “touching,” but in fact there could not be a greater contrast than between these two writers. The antagonism between them manifested itself in the year when Voltaire, on the occasion of the terrible Lisbon earthquake, renounced optimism, and Rousseau stood up for Providence. Sated with glory and living in luxury, Voltaire, according to Rousseau, sees only grief on earth; he, unknown and poor, finds that everything is fine.

Relations became strained when Rousseau, in his “Letter on Spectacles,” strongly rebelled against the introduction of theater in Geneva. Voltaire, who lived near Geneva and, through his home theater in Ferney, developed a taste for dramatic performances among the Genevans, realized that the letter was directed against him and against his influence on Geneva. Knowing no limits in his anger, Voltaire hated Rousseau: he either mocked his ideas and writings, or made him look like a madman.

The controversy between them especially flared up when Rousseau was banned from entering Geneva, which he attributed to the influence of Voltaire. Finally, Voltaire published an anonymous pamphlet, accusing Rousseau of intending to overthrow the Genevan constitution and Christianity and claiming that he had killed Teresa's mother.

The peaceful villagers of Motiers became agitated. Rousseau began to be insulted and threatened, and a local pastor preached a sermon against him. One autumn night a whole hail of stones fell on his house.

In England at the invitation of Hume

Rousseau fled to an island on Lake Biel; the Berne government ordered him to leave there. Then he accepted Hume's invitation and went to see him in England. Rousseau was not able to make observations and learn anything; His only interest was in English mosses and ferns.

His nervous system was greatly shocked, and against this background his distrust, scrupulous pride, suspiciousness and fearful imagination grew to the limits of mania. The hospitable but balanced host was unable to calm Rousseau, who was sobbing and rushing into his arms; a few days later, Hume was already in the eyes of Rousseau a deceiver and a traitor, who insidiously attracted him to England in order to make him the laughing stock of the newspapers.

Hume considered it necessary to appeal to the court of public opinion; justifying himself, he exposed Rousseau's weaknesses to Europe. Voltaire rubbed his hands and declared that the British should imprison Rousseau in Bedlam (madhouse).

Rousseau refused the pension that Hume had obtained for him from the English government. For him, a new four-year wandering began, marked only by the antics of a mentally ill person. Rousseau stayed in England for another year, but his Teresa, not being able to talk to anyone, was bored and annoyed Rousseau, who imagined that the British wanted to forcibly keep him in their country.

Return to Paris

He left for Paris, where, despite the sentence that weighed on him, no one touched him. He lived for about a year in the castle of the Duke of Conti and in various places in southern France. He fled from everywhere, tormented by his sick imagination: in Castle Three, for example, he imagined that the servants suspected him of being the poisoner of one of the Duke’s deceased servants and demanded an autopsy of the deceased.

Since then he settled in Paris, and a more peaceful life began for him; but he still did not know peace of mind, suspecting conspiracies against him or against his writings. He considered the head of the conspiracy to be the Duke de Choiseul, who ordered the conquest of Corsica, allegedly so that Rousseau would not become the legislator of this island.

In Paris he finished his Confessions ( Confessions). Alarmed by the pamphlet published in the city (“ Le sentiment des citoyens"), which mercilessly revealed his past, Rousseau wished to justify himself through sincere, popular repentance and severe humiliation of pride. But selfishness took over: confession turned into passionate and biased self-defense.

Irritated by the quarrel with Hume, Rousseau changed the tone and content of his notes, crossed out passages that were unfavorable for himself, and began to write, along with a confession, an indictment against his enemies. Moreover, imagination took precedence over memory; confession has turned into a novel, into an inextricable fabric Wahrheit und Dichtung.

The novel presents two disparate parts: the first is a poetic idyll, the outpourings of a poet in love with nature, the idealization of his love for Madame de Varan; the second part is imbued with anger and suspicion, which did not spare Rousseau’s best and most sincere friends. Another work of Rousseau written in Paris was also aimed at self-defense, this is a dialogue entitled “ Rousseau - judge of Jean-Jacques", where Rousseau defends himself against his interlocutor, "The Frenchman".

Death

In the summer, Rousseau's state of health began to inspire fear in his friends. In the spring of the year, one of them, the Marquis de Girardin, took him to his dacha in Ermenonville. At the end of June a concert was arranged for him on an island in the park; Rousseau asked to be buried in this place. On July 2, Rousseau died suddenly in Teresa's arms.

His wish was granted; his grave on the island of "Ives" began to attract hundreds of admirers who saw in him a victim of social tyranny and a martyr of humanity - a view expressed by the young man Schiller in famous poems, comparing him with Socrates, who died from the Sophists, Rousseau, who suffered from the Christians, whom he tried to make people . During the Convention, Rousseau's body, along with Voltaire's remains, was transferred to the Pantheon, but 20 years later, during the Restoration, two fanatics secretly stole Rousseau's ashes at night and threw them into a pit with lime.

Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's main philosophical works, which set out his social and political ideals: “The New Heloise”, “Emile” and “The Social Contract”.

For the first time in political philosophy, Rousseau tried to explain the causes of social inequality and its types, and to otherwise comprehend the contractual method of origin of the state. He believed that the state arises as a result of a social contract. According to the social contract, the supreme power in the state belongs to all the people.

The sovereignty of the people is inalienable, indivisible, infallible and absolute.

The law, as an expression of the general will, acts as a guarantee of individuals against arbitrariness on the part of the government, which cannot act in violation of the requirements of the law. Thanks to the law as an expression of the general will, relative property equality can be achieved.

Rousseau solved the problem of the effectiveness of means of control over government activities, substantiated the reasonableness of the adoption of laws by the people themselves, examined the problem of social inequality and recognized the possibility of its legislative solution.

Not without the influence of Rousseau's ideas, such new democratic institutions as a referendum, popular legislative initiative and such political demands as a possible reduction in the term of parliamentary powers, a mandatory mandate, and recall of deputies by voters arose.

"The New Eloise"

In "Letter to d'Alembert" Rousseau calls "Clarissa Garlot" the best of novels. His "New Heloise" was written under the obvious influence of Richardson. Rousseau not only took a similar plot - the tragic fate of the heroine who dies in the struggle of chastity with love or temptation, but and adopted the very style of a sensitive novel.

The New Heloise was an incredible success; People read it everywhere, shed tears over it, and idolized its author.

The form of the novel is epistolary; it consists of 163 letters and an epilogue. Nowadays this form detracts greatly from the interest of reading, but the readers of the 18th century liked it, since letters provided the best occasion for endless speculation and effusions on the taste of the time. Richardson had all this too.

Rousseau's personality

Rousseau's fate, which largely depended on his personal qualities, in turn throws light on his personality, temperament and tastes, reflected in his writings. The biographer has, first of all, to note the complete absence of correct teaching, which was late and somehow compensated for by reading.

Hume refused even this to Rousseau, finding that he read little, saw little and was deprived of any desire to see and observe. Rousseau did not escape the reproach of “amateurism” even in those subjects that he specially studied - botany and music.

In everything that Rousseau touched, he is undoubtedly a brilliant stylist, but not a student of truth. The nervous mobility, which in old age turned into painful wandering, was due to Rousseau’s love for nature. He felt cramped in the city; he longed for solitude in order to give free rein to the dreams of his imagination and to heal the wounds of easily offended pride. This child of nature did not get along with people and was especially alienated from “cultured” society.

Timid by nature and clumsy due to lack of upbringing, with a past because of which he had to blush in the “salon” or declare the customs and concepts of his contemporaries “prejudices,” Rousseau at the same time knew his worth, longed for the glory of a writer and philosopher, and therefore at the same time he suffered in society and cursed him for this suffering.

A break with society was all the more inevitable for him because, under the influence of deep, innate suspicion and hot-tempered pride, he easily broke with the people closest to him. The gap turned out to be irreparable due to the amazing “ungratefulness” of Rousseau, who was very vindictive, but inclined to forget the benefits shown to him.

Rousseau's last two shortcomings largely found their nourishment in his outstanding quality as a person and writer: his imagination. Thanks to his imagination, he is not burdened by loneliness, for he is always surrounded by the cute creatures of his dreams: passing by an unfamiliar house, he senses a friend among its inhabitants; Walking through the park, he expects a pleasant meeting.

The imagination especially flares up when the very situation in which Rousseau finds himself is unfavorable. “If I need to paint spring,” wrote Rousseau, “it is necessary that there be winter around me; If I want to paint a good landscape, then I need to have walls around me. If they put me in the Bastille, I will paint a great picture of freedom." Fantasy reconciles Rousseau with reality, consoles him; it gives him stronger pleasures than the real world. With her help, this man who thirsted for love, who fell in love with every woman he knew, could live to the end with Teresa, despite constant quarrels with her.

But the same fairy torments him, worries him with fears of future or possible troubles, exaggerates all minor clashes and makes him see evil intent and insidious intentions in them. She presents reality to him in the light that corresponds to his momentary mood; today he praises the portrait painted from him in England, and after a quarrel with Hume he finds the portrait terrible, suspecting that Hume prompted the artist to present him as a disgusting Cyclops. Instead of the hated reality, the imagination draws before him the illusory world of the natural state and the image of a blissful man in the lap of nature.

An outlandish egoist, Rousseau was distinguished by his extraordinary vanity and pride. His reviews of his own talent, the dignity of his writings, and his worldwide fame pale before his ability to admire his personality. “I was created differently,” he says, “than all the people I have seen, and not at all in their likeness.” Having created it, nature “destroyed the mold in which it was cast.” And this egoist in love with himself became an eloquent preacher and an abundant source of love for man and for humanity!

The age of rationalism, that is, the dominance of reason, which replaced the age of theology, begins with Descartes’ formula: cogito-ergo sum; in reflection, in consciousness of himself through thought, the philosopher saw the basis of life, the proof of its reality, its meaning. The age of feeling begins with Rousseau: exister, pour nous - c’est sentir, he exclaims: the essence and meaning of life lies in feeling. " I felt before I thought; such is the common destiny of mankind; I experienced it more than others».

Feeling not only precedes reason, it also prevails over it: “ If reason is the main property of a person, feeling guides him...»

« If the first glimpse of reason blinds us and distorts the objects before our eyes, then later, in the light of reason, they appear to us as nature showed them to us from the very beginning; so let's be satisfied with the first feelings...“As the meaning of life changes, the assessment of the world and man changes. The rationalist sees in the world and nature only the action of reasonable laws, a great mechanism worthy of study; feeling teaches you to admire nature, admire it, and worship it.

The rationalist places the power of reason in a person above all else and gives an advantage to the one who possesses this power; Rousseau proclaims that he is “the best man who feels better and stronger than others.”

The rationalist derives virtue from reason; Rousseau exclaims that he has achieved moral perfection, who has been possessed by rapturous wonder at virtue.

Rationalism sees the main goal of society in the development of reason, in its enlightenment; the feeling seeks happiness, but soon becomes convinced that happiness is scarce and that it is difficult to find.

The rationalist, reverent of the reasonable laws discovered by him, recognizes the world as the best of worlds; Rousseau discovers suffering in the world. Suffering again, as in the Middle Ages, becomes the main note of human life. Suffering is the first lesson in life that a child learns; suffering is the content of the entire history of mankind. Such sensitivity to suffering, such painful responsiveness to it is compassion. This word contains the key to Rousseau's power and its historical significance.

As the new Buddha, he made suffering and compassion a world issue and became a turning point in the movement of culture. Here even the abnormalities and weaknesses of his nature, the vicissitudes of his fate caused by him, receive historical significance; by suffering, he learned to have compassion. Compassion, in the eyes of Rousseau, is a natural feeling inherent in human nature; it is so natural that even animals feel it.

In Rousseau, it, moreover, develops under the influence of another predominant property in him - imagination; “The pity that the suffering of others inspires in us is proportioned not by the amount of this suffering, but by the feeling that we attribute to the sufferers.” Compassion becomes for Rousseau the source of all noble impulses and all social virtues. “What is generosity, mercy, humanity, if not compassion applied to the guilty or to the human race in general?

Even the location ( bienveillance) and friendship, strictly speaking, is the result of constant compassion focused on a certain subject; Isn’t wanting someone not to suffer the same as wanting them to be happy?” Rousseau spoke from experience: his affection for Teresa began with the pity that was inspired in him by the jokes and ridicule of her by his cohabitants. By moderating self-love, pity protects against bad deeds: “as long as a person does not resist the inner voice of pity, he will not harm anyone.”

In accordance with his general view, Rousseau puts pity in antagonism with reason. Compassion not only “precedes reason” and all reflection, but the development of reason weakens compassion and can destroy it. “Compassion is based on a person’s ability to identify himself with the person suffering; but this ability, extremely strong in the natural state, narrows as the ability to think develops in a person and humanity enters a period of rational development ( etat de raisonnement). Reason generates selfishness, reflection strengthens it; it separates a person from everything that worries and upsets him. Philosophy isolates man; under her influence, he whispers, at the sight of a suffering person: die as you know - I’m safe.” Feeling, elevated to the highest rule of life, detached from reflection, becomes in Rousseau an object of self-worship, tenderness for oneself and degenerates into sensitivity - sentimentality. A person full of tender feelings, or a person with a “beautiful soul” ( belle âme - schöne Seele) is elevated to the highest ethical and social type. Everything is forgiven to him, nothing is exacted from him, he is better and higher than others, for “actions are nothing, it’s all about feelings, and in feelings he is great.”

That is why Rousseau’s personality and behavior are so full of contradictions: the best characterization of him, made by Chuquet, consists of nothing but antitheses. " Timid and arrogant, timid and cynical, not easy to rise to and difficult to restrain, capable of impulses and quickly falling into apathy, challenging his age to fight and flattering it, cursing his literary glory and at the same time only thinking about defending it and enlarge, seeking solitude and craving world-wide fame, fleeing from the attention given to him and annoyed at its absence, dishonoring the nobles and living in their society, glorifying the charm of an independent existence and never ceasing to enjoy hospitality, for which he has to pay for witty conversation, dreaming only of huts and who lives in castles, who gets involved with a maid and falls in love only with high-society ladies, who preaches the joys of family life and renounces fulfilling his father's duty, who caresses other people's children and sends his own to an orphanage, who warmly praises the heavenly feeling of friendship and does not feel it for anyone, easily giving himself and immediately retreating, at first expansive and warm-hearted, then suspicious and angry - such is Rousseau.».

There are no less contradictions in opinions and in Rousseau's public preaching. Recognizing the harmful influence of the sciences and arts, he sought in them spiritual rest and a source of glory. Having acted as an exposer of the theater, he wrote for it. Having glorified the “state of nature” and denounced society and the state as founded on deceit and violence, he proclaimed “public order a sacred right, serving as the basis for all others.” Constantly fighting against reason and reflection, he sought the basis for a “lawful” state in the most abstract rationalism. While advocating for freedom, he recognized the only free country of his time as unfree. By handing over unconditional supreme power to the people, he declared pure democracy an impossible dream. Avoiding all violence and trembling at the thought of persecution, he hoisted the banner of the revolution in France. All this is partly explained by the fact that Rousseau was a great “stylist,” that is, an artist of the pen. Raguing against the prejudices and vices of cultural society, glorifying primitive “simplicity,” Rousseau remained the son of his artificial age.

To move “beautiful souls”, beautiful speech was needed, that is, pathos and declamation in the taste of the century. This is also where Rousseau’s favorite technique came from: paradox. The source of Rousseau's paradoxes was a deeply disturbed feeling; but, at the same time, this is also a well-calculated literary device for him.

Bork cites, from Hume's words, the following interesting confession of Rousseau: in order to amaze and interest the public, an element of the miraculous is necessary; but mythology has long lost its effectiveness; giants, magicians, fairies and heroes of novels, who appeared after the pagan gods, also no longer find faith; Under such circumstances, the modern writer, in order to achieve impression, can only resort to paradox. According to one of Rousseau's critics, he began with a paradox to attract the crowd, using it as a signal to proclaim the truth. Rousseau's calculation was not wrong.

Thanks to the combination of passion and art, none of the writers of the 18th century. did not have the same influence on France and Europe as Rousseau. He transformed the minds and hearts of the people of his age by what he was, and even more by what he seemed.

For Germany, from his first words he became a brave sage (“ Weltweiser"), as Lessing called him: all the luminaries of the then flourishing literature and philosophy of Germany - Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Fichte - were under his direct influence. The tradition that arose there is still preserved there, and the phrase about “ Rousseau's boundless love for humanity” even moved into encyclopedic dictionaries. Rousseau's biographer is obliged to expose the whole truth - but for a cultural historian, the legend that has received creative power is also important.

Works of Rousseau

Leaving aside special treatises on botany, music, languages, as well as Rousseau's literary works - poems, comedies and letters, we can divide the rest of Rousseau's works into three groups (chronologically they follow one another in this order):
1. denouncing the age,
2. instructions,
3. self-defense (this group was discussed above).

The revelation of the century

The first group includes both " Reasoning"Rousseau and his" Letter to d'Alembert about theatrical performances».

“Discourse on the influence of sciences and arts” aims to prove their harm. Although the theme itself is purely historical, Rousseau's references to history are minor: rude Sparta defeated educated Athens; The stern Romans, after they began to engage in science under Augustus, were defeated by the German barbarians.

Rousseau's argumentation is predominantly rhetorical and consists of exclamations and questions. History and legal sciences corrupt a person, unfolding before him a spectacle of human disasters, violence and crimes. Turning to enlightened minds that have revealed to man the secrets of world laws, Rousseau asks them whether life would be worse for humanity without them? Harmful in themselves, sciences are also harmful due to the motives that encourage people to indulge in them, for the main one of these motives is vanity. The arts, moreover, require for their prosperity the development of luxury, which corrupts man. This is the main idea of ​​the Discourse.

However, in " Reasoning“a technique is very noticeably manifested, which can be traced in other works of Rousseau and compared, due to its musicality, with a change of mood in a musical play, where allegro follows unchanged andante.

Instructions

In the second part " Reasoning"Rousseau goes from being a detractor of the sciences to becoming their advocate. The most enlightened of the Romans, Cicero, saved Rome; Bacon was Chancellor of England. Too rarely do sovereigns resort to the advice of scientists. As long as power is in some hands, and enlightenment in others, scientists will not be distinguished by lofty thoughts, sovereigns will not be distinguished by great deeds, and peoples will remain in corruption and poverty. But this is not the only moral " Reasoning».

Rousseau's thought about the opposition of virtue and enlightenment and that not enlightenment, but virtue is the source of human bliss, was even more deeply etched into the minds of his contemporaries. This thought is clothed in a prayer that Rousseau puts into the mouths of his descendants: “ O almighty Lord, deliver us from the enlightenment of our fathers and lead us back to simplicity, innocence and poverty, the only blessings that determine our happiness and are pleasing to You" The same thought is heard in the second part, through the apology of the sciences: without envying the geniuses who have become famous in science, Rousseau contrasts them with those who, without being able to speak eloquently, know how to do good.

Rousseau is even bolder in the next “ Reasoning about the origin of inequality between people" If the first Discourse, directed against the sciences and arts, which no one hated, was an academic idyll, then in the second Rousseau passionately touched upon the topic of the day and in his speeches the revolutionary chord of the century sounded for the first time.

Nowhere was there so much inequality sanctified by custom and law as in the then system of France, based on privileges; nowhere was there such displeasure against inequality as among the privileged themselves against other privileged people. The third estate, having equaled the nobility in education and wealth, envied the nobles in general, the provincial nobility envied the courtiers, the judicial nobility envied the military nobility, etc. Rousseau not only united individual voices into a common chorus: he gave the desire for equality a philosophical basis and a poetically attractive appearance

State law theorists have long toyed with the idea of ​​a state of nature in order to use it to explain the origin of the state; Rousseau made this idea public and popular. The British have long been interested in savages: Defoe, in his “Robinson”, created an eternally youthful, charming image of a cultured man brought face to face with virgin nature, and Mrs. Behn in her novel “Urunoko” exposed the savages of South America as the best of people. Already in the city of Delisle he brought into the comedy the savage Harlequin, who arrived from somewhere in France and, in his naivety, evilly mocked its civilization.

Rousseau introduced the savage into the Parisian salons as an object of affection; but at the same time he stirred in the depths of the human heart the inherent sorrow for a lost paradise and a vanished golden age, supported in every person by the sweet memories of the days of childhood and youth.

In Rousseau's first Discourse, historical data is very meager; the second is not so much a reasoning as a historical tale. The initial scene of this tale is a picture of the life of primitive man. The colors for this painting were borrowed not from travels in Australia or South America, but from fantasies.

Voltaire's famous wit that the description of savages in Rousseau's work makes one want to walk on all fours, however, gives an incorrect idea of ​​the primitive man as Rousseau portrayed him. His task required him to prove that equality had existed from time immemorial - and the image corresponded to the task. His savages are hefty and self-sufficient males who live alone, “without care or labor”; women, children, old people are not taken into account. Everything that savages need is given to them by kind Mother Nature; their equality is based on the denial of everything that could serve as a reason for inequality. Rousseau's primitive people are happy because, not knowing artificial needs, they lack nothing. They are blameless because they do not experience passions or desires, do not need each other and do not interfere with each other. So virtue and happiness are inseparably connected with equality and disappear with its disappearance.

This picture of primitive bliss is contrasted with modern society, full of senseless prejudices, vices and disasters. How did one come from the other?

From this question developed Rousseau's philosophy of history, which is an inside-out history of human progress.

Philosophy of history according to Rousseau

Philosophy of history, that is, a meaningful synthesis of historical facts, became possible only with the help of people of progress and progressive development. Rousseau sees this progressive development and even considers it inevitable; he indicates its reason, which lies in man’s innate ability to improve ( perfectibilité); but since Rousseau mourns the result of this improvement, he mourns the very reason for it. And he not only mourns her, but strongly condemns her, in the notorious expression that “ thinking is an unnatural state, a thinking person is a depraved animal e" ( animal deprave).

In accordance with this, the history of mankind in Rousseau represents a series of stages of successive deviation from the natural blissful and immaculate state. Rousseau completely forgets that, objecting to Voltaire, he attacked pessimism and defended Providence and its manifestation in the world; there is no Providence for him in the destinies of humanity, and his philosophy of history boils down to the most desolate pessimism. The initial happy state of people only further highlights the sorrowful history experienced by humanity. In this state, people lived independently of each other; everyone worked only for himself and did everything he needed; if they connected, it was only temporarily, like a flock of ravens attracted by some common interest, such as a freshly plowed field.

The first trouble came when people deviated from the wise rule of living and working separately, when they entered into common life and the division of labor began. The hostel leads to inequality and serves as an excuse for the latter; and since Rousseau votes for equality, he condemns society.

Another fatal step of man was to establish land ownership. " The first person to fence off a piece of land, saying that this land could be“I”, in the eyes of Rousseau, is a deceiver who has brought countless troubles to humanity; the benefactor of the people would be the one who, at that fateful moment, would pull out the stakes and exclaim: “you will perish if you forget that the fruits belong to everyone, and the land belongs to no one.” The emergence of land ownership led, according to Rousseau, to inequality between rich and poor (as if such inequality did not exist between nomads); the rich, interested in preserving their property, began to persuade the poor to establish public order and laws.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau- French thinker, a bright figure of French sentimentalism, educator, writer, musicologist, composer - was born on June 28, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland, although he was French by birth. Jean-Jacques's mother died after giving birth. In 1723-1724. the boy was a pupil of the Protestant boarding house Lambercier near the French border. For some time he was a student of a notary, and a little later of an engraver. Not accepting the way he treated himself, in March 1728, as a 16-year-old teenager, he left his hometown.

During this period, Madame de Varan, a young wealthy aristocratic widow, appeared in his life, through whose efforts Rousseau was sent to the Turin monastery, where he became a Catholic and because of this lost his Genevan citizenship. In 1730, Rousseau continued to wander around the country, but in 1732 he returned to his patroness, this time as a lover. Their relationship, which lasted until 1739, became for him a pass to another world, which was previously inaccessible to him.

In 1740, through the efforts of his patroness, he became the tutor of a famous judge from Lyon, and this acquaintance served him well when leaving for the capital. In 1743-1744. Rousseau worked as a secretary at the French embassy in Venice, but returned to Paris, where in 1745 he met Therese Levasseur, who became his life partner, the mother of their five children. They all grew up in an orphanage, because... Rousseau the father believed that he could not raise them himself. His acquaintance with D. Diderot dates back to the same period in his biography.

In 1749 J.-J. Rousseau accidentally came across a newspaper advertisement: the Dijon Academy announced a competition for the best work on the topic “Has the revival of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals.” It was Russo who became the winner of the prize, and this event marked the beginning of the most fruitful decade in his activity. In the same year, Rousseau was involved in joint work on the Encyclopedia. In total, he wrote 390 articles for her, most of them musicological.

In 1750, a treatise entitled “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts” was published. The ideas voiced in it of contrasting a civilized society with the natural state were developed in the treatise “Discourses on the beginning and basis of inequality between people” (1755). In the 50s Rousseau moved more and more away from the capital's literary salons, which kindly received him. In 1754, having traveled to Geneva, he again converted to the Calvinist faith and regained his rights as a citizen.

Returning to France, during 1756-1762. Rousseau led a secluded life, settling in the suburbs of Paris. The novel “Emile” written in 1762 and the political treatise “On the Social Contract” forced their author to leave France to avoid arrest. His works were burned not only in Paris, but also in Geneva. He found refuge in the Principality of Neuchâtel, which belonged to the Prussian king.

In 1770 he returned to France, settled in the capital and was engaged in copying notes. No one was pursuing him, but the writer experienced constant anxiety associated with the conspiracies he imagined. In the summer of 1777, Rousseau's friends became seriously concerned about his health. In the spring of the following year, the writer was settled on the estate of the Marquis Girardin Ermenoville, where on July 2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau died suddenly. In 1794, his remains were transferred to the Pantheon.

Rousseau's system of views, his critical attitude towards civilization, urban culture, exaltation of naturalness and nature, the priority of the heart over the mind largely influenced the literature and philosophical thought of different countries. He was one of the first to point out the downside of civilization. His radical views regarding social development became the breeding ground for the Great French Revolution and served as its ideological basis. Rousseau's creative heritage is represented by a large number of prose works, poems, comedies, and poems. He also authored the first national comic opera - “The Rural Sorcerer”.

Biography from Wikipedia

Childhood

Franco-Swiss by origin, later known as the “Citizen of Geneva”, “defender of liberties and rights” (A.S. Pushkin) for his idealization of the republican order of his homeland, Rousseau was a native of Protestant Geneva, which retained until the 18th century. its strictly Calvinistic and municipal spirit. Mother, Suzanne Bernard, granddaughter of a Geneva pastor, died in childbirth. Father - Isaac Rousseau (1672-1747), a watchmaker and dance teacher, was acutely worried about the loss of his wife. Jean-Jacques was the favorite child in the family; from the age of seven he read “Astraea” and the lives of Plutarch with his father until dawn; Imagining himself to be the ancient hero Scaevola, he burned his hand over a brazier.

Due to an armed attack on a fellow citizen, his father, Isaac, was forced to flee to the neighboring canton and there entered into a second marriage. Jean-Jacques, left in Geneva under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, spent 1723-1724 in the Protestant boarding house Lambercier, then was apprenticed to a notary, and in 1725 to an engraver. During this time, he read a lot, even while working, for which he was subjected to harsh treatment. As he writes in his book “Confession,” because of this, he became accustomed to lying, pretending, and stealing. Leaving the city on Sundays, he returned more than once when the gates were already locked, and he had to spend the night in the open air. At the age of 16, on March 14, 1728, he decided to leave the city.

Maturity

Outside the gates of Geneva, Catholic Savoy began - the priest of a neighboring village invited him to convert to Catholicism and gave him a letter in Vevey, to Madame Françoise Louise de Varan ( Warens, born de la Tour du Pil; March 31, 1699 - July 29, 1762). This was a young woman from a wealthy family in the canton of Vaud, who had ruined her fortune through industrial enterprises, left her husband and moved to Savoy. For accepting Catholicism, she received an allowance from the king.

Madame de Varan sent Rousseau to Turin to a monastery where proselytes were trained. After four months, the appeal was completed and Rousseau was released onto the street.

Work as a footman

Rousseau entered an aristocratic house as a footman, where he was treated with sympathy: the count's son, the abbot, began to teach him Italian and read Virgil with him. Having met a rogue from Geneva, Rousseau left Turin with him, without thanking his benefactor.

He reappeared in Annecy with Madame de Varan, who kept him with her and became his “mother.” She taught him to write correctly, speak in the language of educated people and, as far as he was receptive to this, to behave in a secular manner. But “mama” was only 30 years old; she was completely devoid of moral principles and in this respect had the most harmful influence on Rousseau. Concerned about his future, she placed Rousseau in the seminary, and then sent him to apprentice with an organist, whom he soon abandoned and returned to Annecy, from where Madame de Varan left, meanwhile, for Paris.

For more than two years, Rousseau wandered around Switzerland, enduring every need. Once he was even in Paris, which he didn’t like. He made his treks on foot, spending the night in the open air, but was not burdened by this, enjoying nature. In the spring of 1732, Rousseau again became the guest of Madame de Varan; his place was taken by the young Swiss Ane, which did not prevent Rousseau from remaining a member of the friendly trio.

In his “Confession,” he described in the most passionate colors his then love. After Ane's death, he remained alone with Madame de Varan until 1737, when she sent him to Montpellier for treatment. Upon his return, he found his benefactress near the city of Chambery, where she rented a farm in the town of " Les Charmettes"; her new “factotum” was the young Swiss Wincinried. Rousseau called him brother and again took refuge with his “mother.”

Working as a home tutor

Rousseau's happiness was no longer so serene: he was sad, secluded, and the first signs of misanthropy began to appear in him. He sought solace in nature: he got up at dawn, worked in the garden, picked fruits, followed pigeons and bees. So two years passed: Rousseau found himself the odd man out in the new trio and had to worry about making money. He became a home tutor in 1740 in the Mably family (the writer's brother), who lived in Lyon. But he was very unsuited for this role; he did not know how to behave either with students or with adults, he secretly took wine into his room, and made “eyes” at the mistress of the house. As a result, Russo had to leave.

After an unsuccessful attempt to return to Charmette, Rousseau went to Paris to present to the Academy a system he had invented for denoting notes with numbers; it was not accepted, despite " Discourse on modern music", written by Rousseau in her defense.

Working as a home secretary

Rousseau receives the position of home secretary to Count Montagu, the French envoy to Venice. The envoy looked at him as a servant, but Rousseau imagined himself as a diplomat and began to put on airs. Subsequently he wrote that he saved the Kingdom of Naples at that time. However, the envoy kicked him out of the house without paying his salary.

Rousseau returned to Paris and filed a complaint against Montague, which was successful.

He managed to stage the opera he wrote " Les Muses Galantes” in the home theater, but she did not make it to the royal stage.

Wife and kids

Having no means of subsistence, Rousseau entered into a relationship with the maid of the Parisian hotel in which he lived, Therese Levasseur, a young peasant woman, ugly, illiterate, narrow-minded - she could not learn to know what time it was - and very vulgar. He admitted that he never had the slightest love for her, but he married her twenty years later.

Together with her, he had to keep her parents and their relatives. He had 5 children, who were all sent to an orphanage. Rousseau justified himself by saying that he did not have the means to feed them, that they would not allow him to study in peace, and that he would rather make peasants out of them than adventurers, like himself.

Meeting encyclopedists

Having received the position of secretary of the tax farmer Frankel and his mother-in-law, Rousseau became a household member in the circle to which the famous Madame d'Epinay, her friend Grimm and Diderot belonged. Rousseau often visited them, staged comedies, charmed them with his naive, albeit decorated with imagination stories from his life. He was forgiven for his tactlessness (he, for example, began by writing a letter to Frankel’s mother-in-law with a declaration of love). an announcement from the Dijon Academy about a prize on the topic “Has the revival of sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?” A sudden thought struck Rousseau; the impression was so strong that, according to his description, he lay in some kind of intoxication for half an hour when he arrived; himself, his vest was wet with tears. The thought that dawned on Rousseau embodies the whole essence of his worldview: “enlightenment is harmful and culture itself is a lie and a crime.”

Rousseau's answer was awarded a prize; the entire enlightened and sophisticated society applauded its accuser. A decade of most fruitful activity and continuous triumph had begun for him. Two years later his operetta " Village sorcerer (French)"was staged on the court stage. Louis XV hummed his arias; they wanted to present him to the king, but Rousseau avoided the honor, which could have created a secure position for him.

He himself believed in his paradox, or, in any case, became carried away by it and took the appropriate pose. He announced that he wanted to live in accordance with his principle, refused a favorable position with Frankel and became a copyist of music in order to live by the labor of his hands. Rousseau left the dandy suit of the then salons, dressed in rough cloth, blessing the thief who stole his thin shirts; abandoned polite speech, responding with insulting antics to the courtesies of his aristocratic friends. There was a lot of theatricality in all this.

The "savage" became a "fashionable man"

Rousseau was given no rest; from all sides they brought him notes for correspondence, so as to have a reason to look at him; society ladies visited him and showered him with invitations to lunches and dinners. Teresa and her greedy mother took advantage of the opportunity to accept all kinds of gifts from visitors. But this comedy also had a serious side. Rousseau found his calling: he became, as it was aptly said, the “Jeremiah” of his contemporary cultural society.

The Dijon Academy again came to his aid, announcing a competition on the topic “On the origin of inequality between people and whether it is in accordance with natural law.” In 1755, Rousseau’s response “Discourse”, dedicated to the Geneva Republic, appeared in print.

Pondering his answer, Rousseau wandered through the Saint-Germain forest and populated it with the creatures of his imagination. If in the first argument he denounced the sciences and arts for their corrupting influence, then in the new fantastic tale about how people lost their primitive bliss, Rousseau anathematized the entire culture, everything that was created by history, all the foundations of civil life - the division of labor, property, state, laws.

The rulers of the Genevan Republic thanked Rousseau with cold politeness for the honor he had shown them, and secular society again welcomed its condemnation with glee.

Dacha "Hermitage"

Madame d'Epinay, following Rousseau's tastes, built a dacha for him in the garden of her country estate near Saint-Denis - on the edge of the magnificent Montmorency forest. In the spring of 1756, Rousseau moved to his “Hermitage”: nightingales sang under his windows, the forest became his “study”, at the same time giving him the opportunity to wander all day long in lonely thought.

Rousseau was in heaven, but Teresa and her mother were bored at the dacha and were horrified to learn that Rousseau wanted to stay in the Hermitage for the winter. This matter was settled by friends, but 44-year-old Rousseau fell passionately in love with 26-year-old Countess Sophie d'Houdetot, a “friend” of Saint-Lambert, who was friendly with Jean-Jacques. Saint-Lambert was on campaign; In the spring of 1757, the countess settled alone in a neighboring estate. Rousseau visited her often and finally settled with her; he cried at her feet, while at the same time reproaching himself for betraying his “friend.” The Countess felt sorry for him, listened to his eloquent confessions: confident in her love for another, she allowed intimacy, which brought Rousseau’s passion to madness. In a modified and idealized form, this story was used by Rousseau in developing the plot of his novel “Julia, or the New Heloise.”

Madame d'Epinay mocked the love of the already middle-aged Rousseau for Countess d'Houdetot and did not believe in the purity of their relationship. Saint-Lambert was notified by an anonymous letter and returned from the army. Rousseau suspected Madame d'Epinay of the disclosure and wrote her an ignoble and insulting letter. She forgave him, but her friends were not so lenient, especially Grimm, who saw Rousseau as a maniac and found any indulgence in such people dangerous.

Break with the encyclopedists

This first clash was soon followed by a complete break with the “philosophers” and with the “Encyclopedia” circle. Madame d'Epinay, going to Geneva for a meeting with the famous doctor Théodore Tronchin, invited Rousseau to accompany her. Rousseau replied that it would be strange for a sick person to accompany a sick woman; when Diderot began to insist on the trip, reproaching him for ingratitude, Rousseau suspected that a “conspiracy” had formed against him, with the aim of disgracing him by appearing in Geneva in the role of a lackey of a tax-farmer, etc.

Rousseau informed the public about his break with Diderot, declaring in the preface to “Letter on Theatrical Spectacles” (1758) that he no longer wanted to know his Aristarchus (Diderot).

Leaving the Hermitage, he found a new shelter with the Duke of Luxembourg, the owner of the Montmorency Castle, who provided him with a pavilion in his park. Here Rousseau spent 4 years and wrote “The New Heloise” and “Emile”, reading them to his kind hosts, whom he at the same time insulted with suspicions that they were not sincerely disposed towards him, and with statements that he hated their title and high social status. position.

Publishing novels

In 1761, “The New Heloise” appeared in print, in the spring of the next year - “Emile”, and a few weeks later - “The Social Contract” (“ Contrat social"). During the printing of Emile, Rousseau was in great fear: he had strong patrons, but suspected that the bookseller would sell the manuscript to the Jesuits and that his enemies would distort its text. "Emil", however, was published; the thunderstorm broke out a little later.

The Paris Parliament, preparing to pronounce judgment on the Jesuits, considered it necessary to condemn the philosophers as well, and sentenced “Emile,” for religious freethinking and indecency, to be burned by the hand of an executioner, and its author to imprisonment. Prince Conti made this known at Montmorency; The Duchess of Luxembourg ordered Rousseau to be woken up and persuaded him to leave immediately. Rousseau, however, procrastinated the whole day and almost became a victim of his slowness; on the road he met the bailiffs sent for him, who politely bowed to him.

Forced link

Rousseau was not detained anywhere: neither in Paris, nor along the way. He, however, imagined torture and a fire; Everywhere he sensed pursuit. When he crossed the Swiss border, he rushed to kiss the soil of the land of justice and freedom. The Geneva government, however, followed the example of the Parisian parliament, burned not only "Emile" but also the "Social Contract", and issued orders for the arrest of the author; The Bernese government, on whose territory (the present canton of Vaud was then subject to it) Rousseau sought refuge, ordered him to leave his possessions.

Rousseau found refuge in the Principality of Neuchâtel, which belonged to the Prussian king, and settled in the town of Motiers. He made new friends here, wandered through the mountains, chatted with the villagers, and sang romances to the village girls. He adapted himself to a suit - a spacious, belted arkhaluk, wide trousers and a fur hat, justifying this choice on hygienic grounds. But his peace of mind was not strong. It seemed to him that the local men were too self-important, that they had evil tongues; he began to call Motier "the most vile place." He lived like this for a little over three years; then new disasters and wanderings came for him.

Back in 1754, having arrived in Geneva and received there with great triumph, he wished to regain the right of Genevan citizenship, lost with the transition to Catholicism, and again joined Calvinism.

In Motiers, he asked the local pastor to admit him to the sacrament, but in a polemic with his opponents in the Letters from the Mountain, he mocked Calvin's authority and accused the Calvinist clergy of apostasy from the spirit of the Reformation.

Relations with Voltaire

Rousseau's misadventures were joined by a quarrel with Voltaire and with the government party in Geneva. Rousseau once called Voltaire “touching,” but in fact there could not be a greater contrast than between these two writers. The antagonism between them appeared in 1755, when Voltaire, on the occasion of the terrible Lisbon earthquake, renounced optimism, and Rousseau stood up for Providence. Sated with glory and living in luxury, Voltaire, according to Rousseau, sees only grief on earth; he, unknown and poor, finds that everything is fine.

Relations became strained when Rousseau, in his “Letter on Spectacles,” strongly rebelled against the introduction of theater in Geneva. Voltaire, who lived near Geneva and, through his home theater in Ferney, developed a taste for dramatic performances among the Genevans, realized that the letter was directed against him and against his influence on Geneva. Knowing no limits in his anger, Voltaire hated Rousseau: he either mocked his ideas and writings, or made him look like a madman.

The controversy between them especially flared up when Rousseau was banned from entering Geneva, which he attributed to the influence of Voltaire. Finally, Voltaire published an anonymous pamphlet, accusing Rousseau of intending to overthrow the Genevan constitution and Christianity and claiming that he had killed Teresa's mother.

The peaceful villagers of Motiers became agitated. Rousseau began to be insulted and threatened, and a local pastor preached a sermon against him. One autumn night a whole hail of stones fell on his house.

In England at the invitation of Hume

Rousseau fled to an island on Lake Biel; the Berne government ordered him to leave there. Then he accepted Hume's invitation and went to see him in England. Rousseau was not able to make observations and learn anything; His only interest was in English mosses and ferns.

His nervous system was greatly shocked, and against this background his distrust, scrupulous pride, suspiciousness and fearful imagination grew to the limits of mania. The hospitable but balanced host was unable to calm Rousseau, who was sobbing and rushing into his arms; a few days later, Hume was already in the eyes of Rousseau a deceiver and a traitor, who insidiously attracted him to England in order to make him the laughing stock of the newspapers.

Hume considered it necessary to appeal to the court of public opinion; justifying himself, he exposed Rousseau's weaknesses to Europe. Voltaire rubbed his hands and declared that the British should imprison Rousseau in Bedlam (madhouse).

Rousseau refused the pension that Hume had obtained for him from the English government. For him, a new four-year wandering began, marked only by the antics of a mentally ill person. Rousseau stayed in England for another year, but his Teresa, not being able to talk to anyone, was bored and annoyed Rousseau, who imagined that the British wanted to forcibly keep him in their country.

Return to Paris

Rousseau went to Paris, where, despite the sentence that weighed on him, no one touched him. He lived for about a year in the castle of the Prince of Conti and in various places in southern France. He fled from everywhere, tormented by his sick imagination: in Castle Three, for example, he imagined that the servants suspected him of being the poisoner of one of the Duke’s deceased servants and demanded an autopsy of the deceased.

From 1770 he settled in Paris, and a more peaceful life began for him; but he still did not know peace of mind, suspecting conspiracies against him or against his writings. He considered the head of the conspiracy to be the Duke de Choiseul, who ordered the conquest of Corsica, allegedly so that Rousseau would not become the legislator of this island.

In Paris he finished his Confession ( Confessions). Alarmed by the pamphlet published in 1765 (“ Le sentiment des citoyens"), which mercilessly revealed his past, Rousseau wished to justify himself through sincere, popular repentance and severe humiliation of pride (l "esprit d" escalier). But selfishness took over: confession turned into passionate self-defense.

Irritated by the quarrel with Hume, Rousseau changed the tone and content of his notes, crossed out passages that were unfavorable for himself, and began to write, along with a confession, an indictment against his enemies. Moreover, imagination took precedence over memory; confession has turned into a novel, into an inextricable fabric Wahrheit und Dichtung.

The novel presents two disparate parts: the first is a poetic idyll, the outpourings of a poet in love with nature, the idealization of his love for Madame de Varan; the second part is imbued with anger and suspicion, which did not spare Rousseau’s best and most sincere friends. Another work of Rousseau written in Paris was also aimed at self-defense, this is a dialogue entitled “ Rousseau - judge of Jean-Jacques", where Rousseau defends himself against his interlocutor, "The Frenchman".

In the Masonic archives of the Grand Orient of France, Rousseau, like the Count of Saint-Germain, is listed as a member of the Masonic lodge of the “Social Concord of St. John of Ecos” from August 18, 1775 until his death.

Death

According to one version, in the summer of 1777, Rousseau's health began to cause fear to his friends. In the spring of 1778, one of them, the Marquis de Girardin, took him to his country residence (in the Chateau de Ermenonville). At the end of June a concert was arranged for him on an island in the park; Rousseau asked to be buried in this place. On July 2, Rousseau died suddenly in Teresa's arms.

His wish was granted; his grave on the island of "Ives" began to attract hundreds of admirers who saw in him a victim of public tyranny and a martyr of humanity - a view expressed by the young man Schiller in famous poems comparing him with Socrates, who allegedly died from the Sophists, Rousseau, who suffered from the Christians whom he tried to make people. During the Convention, Rousseau's body, along with Voltaire's remains, was transferred to the Pantheon, but 20 years later, during the restoration, two fanatics secretly stole Rousseau's ashes at night and threw them into a pit with lime.

There is another version of Rousseau's death. In the Swiss city of Biel/Bienne, near Neuchâtel, in the center of the old town, at 12 Untergasse, there is a sign: “In this house J.-J. Rousseau met his death in October 1765."

Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's main philosophical works, which set out his social and political ideals: “The New Heloise”, “Emile” and “The Social Contract”.

For the first time in political philosophy, Rousseau tried to explain the causes of social inequality and its types, and to otherwise comprehend the contractual method of origin of the state. He believed that the state arises as a result of a social contract. According to the social contract, the supreme power in the state belongs to all the people.

The sovereignty of the people is inalienable, indivisible, infallible and absolute.

The law, as an expression of the general will, acts as a guarantee of individuals against arbitrariness on the part of the government, which cannot act in violation of the requirements of the law. Thanks to the law as an expression of the general will, relative property equality can be achieved.

Rousseau solved the problem of the effectiveness of means of control over government activities, substantiated the reasonableness of the adoption of laws by the people themselves, examined the problem of social inequality and recognized the possibility of its legislative solution.

Not without the influence of Rousseau's ideas, new democratic institutions arose such as a referendum, popular legislative initiative and such political demands as a possible reduction in the term of parliamentary powers, a mandatory mandate, and the recall of deputies by voters.

"The New Eloise"

In his “Letter to d'Alembert,” Rousseau calls Clarisse Garlot the best of novels. His “New Heloise” was written under the obvious influence of Richardson. Rousseau not only took a similar plot - the tragic fate of the heroine who dies in the struggle of chastity with love or temptation, but and adopted the actual style of the sensitive novel.

The New Heloise was an incredible success; People read it everywhere, shed tears over it, and idolized its author.

The form of the novel is epistolary; it consists of 163 letters and an epilogue. Nowadays this form detracts greatly from the interest of reading, but the readers of the 18th century liked it, since letters provided the best occasion for endless speculation and effusions on the taste of the time. The same could be said about the works of Samuel Richardson.

Voltaire on Rousseau's philosophy

J. J. Rousseau became the father of romanticism in philosophy. Its representatives relied not so much on abstract thinking as they had “a penchant for feeling, and more specifically, for sympathy.” The Romantic could sincerely “shed tears at the sight of a poor peasant family, but he remained cold to a well-thought-out plan for improving the lot of the peasantry as a class.” The Romantics were excellent writers and knew how to evoke the sympathy of readers and popularize their ideas. Rousseau “for long periods of his life was a poor vagabond,” often lived at the expense of rich women, served as a lackey, knew how to evoke the sympathy of people and responded to them with “black ingratitude.” For example, he once stole an expensive ribbon from his mistress, the theft was discovered , but he blamed it on the young maid, whom, moreover, he loved very much, and her name first of all came to his mind.. In his work “Confession” he stated: “Yes, I am a thief, but I have good heart!". Rousseau criticized inequality and private property, agriculture and metallurgy, he proposed a return to the “state of nature.” Voltaire criticized Rousseau’s views. Voltaire noted that, contrary to Rousseau's recommendations, he did not want to “walk on all fours” and preferred to use the services of a surgeon. After the earthquake in Lisbon, Voltaire expressed doubt that Providence rules the world. Rousseau expressed the opinion that the earthquake victims themselves were to blame for their deaths, because they lived in seven-story buildings, and not in caves, like savages. Voltaire considered Rousseau an evil madman, and Rousseau called Voltaire “the troubadour of dishonor.”

Rousseau's personality

Rousseau's fate, which largely depended on his personal qualities, in turn throws light on his personality, temperament and tastes, reflected in his writings. The biographer has, first of all, to note the complete absence of correct teaching, which was late and somehow compensated for by reading.

Hume refused even this to Rousseau, finding that he read little, saw little and was deprived of any desire to see and observe. Rousseau did not escape the reproach of “amateurism” even in those subjects that he specially studied - botany and music.

In everything that Rousseau touched, he is undoubtedly a brilliant stylist, but not a student of truth. Nervous mobility, which in old age turned into painful wandering, was a consequence of Rousseau’s love for nature. He felt cramped in the city; he longed for solitude in order to give free rein to the dreams of his imagination and to heal the wounds of easily offended pride. This child of nature did not get along with people and was especially alienated from “cultured” society.

Timid by nature and clumsy due to lack of upbringing, with a past because of which he had to blush in the “salon” or declare the customs and concepts of his contemporaries “prejudices,” Rousseau at the same time knew his worth, longed for the glory of a writer and philosopher, and therefore at the same time he suffered in society and cursed him for this suffering.

A break with society was all the more inevitable for him because, under the influence of deep, innate suspicion and hot-tempered pride, he easily broke with the people closest to him. The gap turned out to be irreparable due to the amazing “ungratefulness” of Rousseau, who was very vindictive, but inclined to forget the benefits shown to him.

Rousseau's last two shortcomings largely found their nourishment in his outstanding quality as a person and writer: his imagination. Thanks to his imagination, he is not burdened by loneliness, for he is always surrounded by the cute creatures of his dreams: passing by an unfamiliar house, he senses a friend among its inhabitants; Walking through the park, he expects a pleasant meeting.

The imagination especially flares up when the very situation in which Rousseau finds himself is unfavorable. “If I need to paint spring,” wrote Rousseau, “it is necessary that there be winter around me; If I want to paint a good landscape, then I need to have walls around me. If they put me in the Bastille, I will paint a great picture of freedom.” Fantasy reconciles Rousseau with reality, consoles him; it gives him stronger pleasures than the real world. With her help, this man who thirsted for love, who fell in love with every woman he knew, could live to the end with Teresa, despite constant quarrels with her.

But the same fairy torments him, worries him with fears of future or possible troubles, exaggerates all minor clashes and makes him see evil intent and insidious intentions in them. She presents reality to him in the light that corresponds to his momentary mood; today he praises the portrait painted from him in England, and after a quarrel with Hume he finds the portrait terrible, suspecting that Hume prompted the artist to present him as a disgusting Cyclops. Instead of the hated reality, the imagination draws before him the illusory world of the natural state and the image of a blissful man in the lap of nature.

An outlandish egoist, Rousseau was distinguished by his extraordinary vanity and pride. His reviews of his own talent, the dignity of his writings, and his worldwide fame pale before his ability to admire his personality. “I was created differently,” he says, “than all the people I have seen, and not at all in their likeness.” Having created it, nature “destroyed the mold in which it was cast.”

The age of rationalism, that is, the dominance of reason, which replaced the age of theology, begins with Descartes' formula: cogito-ergo sum; in reflection, in consciousness of himself through thought, the philosopher saw the basis of life, the proof of its reality, its meaning. The age of feeling begins with Rousseau: exister, pour nous - c’est sentir, he exclaims: the essence and meaning of life lies in feeling. " I felt before I thought; such is the common destiny of mankind; I experienced it more than others».

Feeling not only precedes reason, it also prevails over it: “ If reason is the main property of a person, feeling guides him...»

« If the first glimpse of reason blinds us and distorts the objects before our eyes, then later, in the light of reason, they appear to us as nature showed them to us from the very beginning; so let's be satisfied with the first feelings...“As the meaning of life changes, the assessment of the world and man changes. The rationalist sees in the world and nature only the action of reasonable laws, a great mechanism worthy of study; feeling teaches you to admire nature, admire it, and worship it.

The rationalist places the power of reason in a person above all else and gives an advantage to the one who possesses this power; Rousseau proclaims that he is “the best man who feels better and stronger than others.”

The rationalist derives virtue from reason; Rousseau exclaims that he has achieved moral perfection, who has been possessed by rapturous wonder at virtue.

Rationalism sees the main goal of society in the development of reason, in its enlightenment; the feeling seeks happiness, but soon becomes convinced that happiness is scarce and that it is difficult to find.

The rationalist, reverent of the reasonable laws discovered by him, recognizes the world as the best of worlds; Rousseau discovers suffering in the world. Suffering again, as in the Middle Ages, becomes the main note of human life. Suffering is the first lesson in life that a child learns; suffering is the content of the entire history of mankind. Such sensitivity to suffering, such painful responsiveness to it is compassion. This word contains the key to Rousseau's power and its historical significance.

As the new Buddha, he made suffering and compassion a world issue and became a turning point in the movement of culture. Here even the abnormalities and weaknesses of his nature, the vicissitudes of his fate caused by him, receive historical significance; by suffering, he learned to have compassion. Compassion, in the eyes of Rousseau, is a natural feeling inherent in human nature; it is so natural that even animals feel it.

In Rousseau, it, moreover, develops under the influence of another predominant property in him - imagination; “The pity that the suffering of others inspires in us is proportioned not by the amount of this suffering, but by the feeling that we attribute to the sufferers.” Compassion becomes for Rousseau the source of all noble impulses and all social virtues. “What is generosity, mercy, humanity, if not compassion applied to the guilty or to the human race in general?

Even the location ( bienveillance) and friendship, strictly speaking, is the result of constant compassion focused on a certain subject; Isn’t wanting someone not to suffer the same as wanting them to be happy?” Rousseau spoke from experience: his affection for Teresa began with the pity that was inspired in him by the jokes and ridicule of her by his cohabitants. By moderating self-love, pity protects against bad deeds: “as long as a person does not resist the inner voice of pity, he will not harm anyone.”

In accordance with his general view, Rousseau puts pity in antagonism with reason. Compassion not only “precedes reason” and all reflection, but the development of reason weakens compassion and can destroy it. “Compassion is based on a person’s ability to identify with the person suffering; but this ability, extremely strong in the natural state, narrows as the ability to think develops in a person and humanity enters a period of rational development ( etat de raisonnement). Reason generates selfishness, reflection strengthens it; it separates a person from everything that worries and upsets him. Philosophy isolates man; under her influence, he whispers, at the sight of a suffering person: die as you know - I’m safe.” Feeling, elevated to the highest rule of life, detached from reflection, becomes in Rousseau an object of self-worship, tenderness for oneself and degenerates into sensitivity - sentimentality. A person full of tender feelings, or a person with a “beautiful soul” ( belle âme - schöne Seele) is elevated to the highest ethical and social type. Everything is forgiven to him, nothing is exacted from him, he is better and higher than others, for “actions are nothing, it’s all about feelings, and in feelings he is great.”

That is why Rousseau’s personality and behavior are so full of contradictions: the best characterization of him, made by Chuquet, consists of nothing but antitheses. " Timid and arrogant, timid and cynical, not easy to rise to and difficult to restrain, capable of impulses and quickly falling into apathy, challenging his age to fight and flattering it, cursing his literary glory and at the same time only thinking about defending it and enlarge, seeking solitude and craving world-wide fame, fleeing from the attention given to him and annoyed at its absence, dishonoring the nobles and living in their society, glorifying the charm of an independent existence and never ceasing to enjoy hospitality, for which he has to pay for witty conversation, dreaming only of huts and who lives in castles, who gets involved with a maid and falls in love only with high-society ladies, who preaches the joys of family life and renounces fulfilling his father's duty, who caresses other people's children and sends his own to an orphanage, who warmly praises the heavenly feeling of friendship and does not feel it for anyone, easily giving himself and immediately retreating, at first expansive and warm-hearted, then suspicious and angry - such is Rousseau.».

There are no less contradictions in opinions and in Rousseau's public preaching. Recognizing the harmful influence of the sciences and arts, he sought in them spiritual rest and a source of glory. Having acted as an exposer of the theater, he wrote for it. Having glorified the “state of nature” and denounced society and the state as founded on deceit and violence, he proclaimed “public order a sacred right, serving as the basis for all others.” Constantly fighting against reason and reflection, he sought the basis for a “lawful” state in the most abstract rationalism. While advocating for freedom, he recognized the only free country of his time as unfree. By handing over unconditional supreme power to the people, he declared pure democracy an impossible dream. Avoiding all violence and trembling at the thought of persecution, he hoisted the banner of the revolution in France. All this is partly explained by the fact that Rousseau was a great “stylist,” that is, an artist of the pen. Raguing against the prejudices and vices of cultural society, glorifying primitive “simplicity,” Rousseau remained the son of his artificial age.

To move “beautiful souls”, beautiful speech was needed, that is, pathos and declamation in the taste of the century. This is also where Rousseau’s favorite technique came from: paradox. The source of Rousseau's paradoxes was a deeply disturbed feeling; but, at the same time, this is also a well-calculated literary device for him.

Bork cites, from Hume's words, the following interesting confession of Rousseau: in order to amaze and interest the public, an element of the miraculous is necessary; but mythology has long lost its effectiveness; giants, magicians, fairies and heroes of novels, who appeared after the pagan gods, also no longer find faith; Under such circumstances, the modern writer, in order to achieve impression, can only resort to paradox. According to one of Rousseau's critics, he began with a paradox to attract the crowd, using it as a signal to proclaim the truth. Rousseau's calculation was not wrong.

Thanks to the combination of passion and art, none of the writers of the 18th century. did not have the same influence on France and Europe as Rousseau. He transformed the minds and hearts of the people of his age by what he was, and even more by what he seemed.

For Germany, from his first words he became a brave sage (“ Weltweiser"), as Lessing called him: all the luminaries of the then flourishing literature and philosophy of Germany - Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Fichte - were under his direct influence. The tradition that arose there is still preserved there, and the phrase about “ Rousseau's boundless love for humanity” even moved into encyclopedic dictionaries. Rousseau's biographer is obliged to expose the whole truth - but for a cultural historian, the legend that has received creative power is also important.

Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Leaving aside special treatises on botany, music, languages, as well as Rousseau's literary works - poems, comedies and letters, we can divide the rest of Rousseau's works into three groups (chronologically they follow one another in this order):
1. denouncing the age,
2. instructions,
3. self-defense (this group was discussed above).

The revelation of the century

The first group includes both " Reasoning"Rousseau and his" Letter to d'Alembert about theatrical performances“The “discourse on the influence of the sciences and arts” aims to prove their harm. Although the theme itself is purely historical, Rousseau's references to history are minor: rude Sparta defeated educated Athens; The stern Romans, after they began to engage in science under Augustus, were defeated by the German barbarians.

Rousseau's argumentation is predominantly rhetorical and consists of exclamations and questions. History and legal sciences corrupt a person, unfolding before him a spectacle of human disasters, violence and crimes. Turning to enlightened minds that have revealed to man the secrets of world laws, Rousseau asks them whether life would be worse for humanity without them? Harmful in themselves, sciences are also harmful due to the motives that encourage people to indulge in them, for the main one of these motives is vanity. The arts, moreover, require for their prosperity the development of luxury, which corrupts man. This is the main idea of ​​the Discourse.

However, in " Reasoning“a technique is very noticeably manifested, which can be traced in other works of Rousseau and compared, due to its musicality, with a change of mood in a musical play, where allegro follows unchanged andante.

Instructions

In the second part " Reasoning"Rousseau goes from being a detractor of the sciences to becoming their advocate. The most enlightened of the Romans, Cicero, saved Rome; Francis Bacon was Chancellor of England. Too rarely do sovereigns resort to the advice of scientists. As long as power is in some hands, and enlightenment in others, scientists will not be distinguished by lofty thoughts, sovereigns will not be distinguished by great deeds, and peoples will remain in corruption and poverty. But this is not the only moral " Reasoning».

Rousseau's thought about the opposition of virtue and enlightenment and that not enlightenment, but virtue is the source of human bliss, was even more deeply etched into the minds of his contemporaries. This thought is clothed in a prayer that Rousseau puts into the mouths of his descendants: “ O almighty Lord, deliver us from the enlightenment of our fathers and lead us back to simplicity, innocence and poverty, the only blessings that determine our happiness and are pleasing to You" The same thought is heard in the second part, through the apology of the sciences: without envying the geniuses who have become famous in science, Rousseau contrasts them with those who, without being able to speak eloquently, know how to do good.

Rousseau is even bolder in the next “ Reasoning about the origin of inequality between people" If the first Discourse, directed against the sciences and arts, which no one hated, was an academic idyll, then in the second Rousseau passionately touched upon the topic of the day and in his speeches the revolutionary chord of the century sounded for the first time.

Nowhere was there so much inequality sanctified by custom and law as in the then system of France, based on privileges; nowhere was there such displeasure against inequality as among the privileged themselves against other privileged people. The third estate, having equaled the nobility in education and wealth, envied the nobles in general, the provincial nobility envied the courtiers, the judicial nobility envied the military nobility, and so on. Rousseau not only united individual voices into a common chorus: he gave the desire for equality a philosophical basis and a poetically attractive appearance.

State law theorists have long toyed with the idea of ​​a state of nature in order to use it to explain the origin of the state; Rousseau made this idea public and popular. The British have long been interested in savages: Daniel Defoe, in his “Robinson”, created an eternally youthful, charming image of a cultured man brought face to face with virgin nature, and Mrs. Behn in her novel “Urunoko” exposed the savages of South America as the best of people. Already in 1721, Delisle brought into the comedy the savage Harlequin, who arrived from somewhere in France and, in his naivety, evilly mocked its civilization.

Rousseau introduced the savage into the Parisian salons as an object of affection; but at the same time he stirred in the depths of the human heart the inherent sorrow for a lost paradise and a vanished golden age, supported in every person by the sweet memories of the days of childhood and youth.

In Rousseau's first Discourse, historical data is very meager; the second is not so much a reasoning as a historical tale. The initial scene of this tale is a picture of the life of primitive man. The colors for this painting were borrowed not from travels in Australia or South America, but from fantasies.

Voltaire’s famous wit that the description of savages in Rousseau’s work makes one want to walk on all fours, however, gives an incorrect idea of ​​the primitive man as Rousseau portrayed him. His task required him to prove that equality had existed from time immemorial - and the image corresponded to the task. His savages are hefty and self-sufficient males who live alone, “without care or labor”; women, children, old people are not taken into account. Everything that savages need is given to them by kind Mother Nature; their equality is based on the denial of everything that could serve as a reason for inequality. Rousseau's primitive people are happy because, not knowing artificial needs, they lack nothing. They are blameless because they do not experience passions or desires, do not need each other and do not interfere with each other. So virtue and happiness are inseparably connected with equality and disappear with its disappearance.

This picture of primitive bliss is contrasted with modern society, full of senseless prejudices, vices and disasters. How did one come from the other?

From this question developed Rousseau's philosophy of history, which is an inside-out history of human progress.

Philosophy of history according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The philosophy of history, that is, a meaningful synthesis of historical facts, became possible only with the help of people of progress and progressive development. Rousseau sees this progressive development and even considers it inevitable; he indicates its reason, which lies in man’s innate ability to improve ( perfectibilité); but, since Rousseau mourns the result of this improvement, he mourns the very reason for it. And he not only mourns her, but strongly condemns her, in the notorious expression that “ thinking is an unnatural state, a meditating person is a depraved animal» ( animal deprave).

In accordance with this, the history of mankind in Rousseau represents a series of stages of successive deviation from the natural blissful and immaculate state. Rousseau completely forgets that, objecting to Voltaire, he attacked pessimism and defended Providence and its manifestation in the world; there is no Providence for him in the destinies of humanity, and his philosophy of history boils down to the most desolate pessimism. The initial happy state of people only further highlights the sorrowful history experienced by humanity. In this state, people lived independently of each other; everyone worked only for himself and did everything he needed; if they connected, it was only temporarily, like a flock of ravens attracted by some common interest, such as a freshly plowed field.

The first trouble came when people deviated from the wise rule of living and working separately, when they entered into common life and the division of labor began. The hostel leads to inequality and serves as an excuse for the latter; and, since Rousseau votes for equality, he condemns the common life.

Another fatal step of man was to establish land ownership. " The first person to fence a piece of land, saying that this land is mine", in the eyes of Rousseau - a deceiver who brought countless troubles to humanity; the benefactor of the people would be the one who, at that fateful moment, would pull out the stakes and exclaim: “you will perish if you forget that the fruits belong to everyone, and the land belongs to no one.” The emergence of land ownership led, according to Rousseau, to inequality between rich and poor (as if such inequality did not exist between nomads); the rich, interested in preserving their property, began to persuade the poor to establish public order and laws.

Laws created by deceit have turned accidental violence into an inviolable right, become fetters for the poor, a means of new enrichment for the rich, and, in the interests of a few selfish people, have condemned the human race to eternal labor, servility and disaster. Since someone needed to monitor the implementation of the laws, people placed the government over themselves; a new inequality has appeared - the strong and the weak. Government was intended to be the enforcer of freedom; but in fact, the rulers began to be guided by arbitrariness and appropriated hereditary power to themselves. Then the final degree of inequality appeared - the difference between masters and slaves. " By discovering and tracing the forgotten roads that led man from the natural state to the social state", Rousseau, in his opinion, showed, " how, among all kinds of philosophy, humanity, politeness and sublimity of rules, we have only a deceptive and vain appearance, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom and pleasure without happiness" This is rhetorical allegro second "Discourse"; andante this time it was not followed directly by it, but in an article on “Political Economy” and other works.

In the article about " Political economy"we read that " the right of property is the most sacred of all rights of a citizen", What " property is the true basis of civil society“, and in a letter to Bonnet, Rousseau says that he only wanted to point out to people the danger posed by too rapid movement towards progress and the disastrous aspects of the state that is identified with the improvement of mankind.

Rousseau became one of the founders of the “Contractual” theory of the origin of the state.

About theatrical performances

Both “manners” of Rousseau - stormy and prudent - follow one another in “ Messages about theatrical performances" Rousseau was outraged by d'Alembert's advice to the Genevans to start a theater: the old Huguenot spirit, hostile to spectacle, awakened in Rousseau, and he wanted to protect his fatherland from imitating corrupt Paris and from the unpleasant influence of Voltaire.

Hardly any of the preachers of the first centuries of Christianity scourged with such force as Rousseau the corrupting influence of theatrical spectacles. “The theater brings vice and temptation into life by showing them off; he is completely powerless when, with a satire of vice or a depiction of the tragic fate of a villain, he wants to come to the aid of virtue offended by him” - in this part of the message, Rousseau’s pathos is full of content and breathes sincerity. Following this, however, he recognizes the theater as necessary to entertain the people and distract them from disasters; embodying vice in immortal types, theater has educational value; it is inconsistent to glorify writers and despise those who perform their works. Rousseau was the first to think about the need for popular festivals and entertainment; under his influence, the first, unsuccessful and artificial attempts were made in this direction during the era of the revolution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau as composer

Rousseau owns several musical works, including operas.

Rousseau's most significant and famous musical work is the opera “The Village Sorcerer” (French Le Devin du Village), written under the influence of the Italian opera school on his own French libretto. The first performance of the opera took place on October 10, 1752 in Fontainebleau in the presence of the king. In 1803, the opera was resumed in Paris with the active participation of F. Lefebvre, who added a number of insert dance numbers to it. It is interesting that the libretto of Rousseau's opera, freely translated into German, formed the basis of W. A. ​​Mozart's opera Bastien and Bastienne.

Memory

• Most French communes have a street named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• At least one ship Marine Nationale called "Jean-Jacques Rousseau".

French literature

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Biography

Jean Jacques Rousseau - French writer and philosopher, representative of sentimentalism. From the standpoint of deism, he condemned the official church and religious intolerance in his essays “Discourse on the Beginning and Foundations of Inequality...” (1755), “On the Social Contract” (1762).

J. J. Rousseau spoke out against social inequality and the despotism of royal power. He idealized the natural state of universal equality and freedom of people, destroyed by the introduction of private property. The state, according to Rousseau, can arise only as a result of an agreement between free people. Rousseau's aesthetic and pedagogical views are expressed in the novel-treatise “Emile, or On Education” (1762). The novel in letters “Julia, or the New Heloise” (1761), as well as “Confession” (published 1782−1789), placing “private” spiritual life at the center of the narrative, contributed to the formation of psychologism in European literature. Pygmalion (published 1771) is an early example of melodrama.

Rousseau's ideas (the cult of nature and naturalness, criticism of urban culture and civilization that distort the originally immaculate person, preference for the heart over the mind) influenced the social thought and literature of many countries.

Childhood

Jean Rousseau's mother, née Suzanne Bernard, the granddaughter of a Genevan pastor, died a few days after the birth of Jean-Jacques, and her father, watchmaker Izac Rousseau, was forced to leave Geneva in 1722. Rousseau spent 1723−24 at the Protestant boarding house Lambercier in the town of Beausset near the French border. Upon returning to Geneva, he spent some time preparing to become a court clerk, and from 1725 he studied the craft of an engraver. Unable to endure the tyranny of his master, young Rousseau left his hometown in 1728.

Madame de Warens

In Savoy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau met Louise-Eleanor de Warens, who had a significant influence on his entire subsequent life. An attractive 28-year-old widow from an old noble family, a converted Catholic, she enjoyed the patronage of the church and Duke Victor Amedee of Savoy, who became king of Sardinia in 1720. Succumbing to the influence of this lady, Rousseau went to Turin to the monastery of the Holy Spirit. Here he converted to Catholicism, thereby losing his Genevan citizenship.

In 1729, Rousseau settled in Annecy with Madame de Warens, who decided to continue his education. She encouraged him to enter the seminary and then the choir school. In 1730, Jean-Jacques Rousseau resumed his wanderings, but in 1732 he returned to Madame de Warens, this time in Chambery, and became one of her lovers. Their relationship, which lasted until 1739, opened the way for Rousseau to a new, previously inaccessible world. Relations with Madame de Warens and the people who visited her house improved his manners and instilled a taste for intellectual communication. Thanks to his patroness, in 1740 he received the position of tutor in the house of the Lyon judge Jean Bonnot de Mably, the elder brother of the famous enlightenment philosophers Mably and Condillac. Although Rousseau did not become the teacher of Mably's children, the connections he acquired helped him upon his arrival in Paris.

Rousseau in Paris

In 1742 Jean Jacques Rousseau moved to the capital of France. Here he intended to succeed thanks to his proposed reform of musical notation, which consisted in the abolition of transposition and clefs. Rousseau made a report at a meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and then appealed to the public by publishing his “Dissertation on Modern Music” (1743). His meeting with Denis Diderot dates back to this time, in whom he immediately recognized a bright mind, alien to pettiness, prone to serious and independent philosophical reflection.

In 1743, Rousseau was appointed to the post of secretary of the French ambassador in Venice, Comte de Montagu, however, not getting along with him, he soon returned to Paris (1744). In 1745 he met Therese Levasseur, a simple and long-suffering woman who became his life partner. Considering that he was unable to raise his children (there were five of them), Rousseau sent them to an orphanage.

"Encyclopedia"

At the end of 1749, Denis Diderot recruited Rousseau to work on the Encyclopedia, for which he wrote 390 articles, primarily on music theory. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's reputation as a musician increased after his comic opera The Rural Sorcerer, staged at court in 1752 and at the Paris Opera in 1753.

In 1749, Rousseau took part in a competition on the topic “Has the revival of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?”, organized by the Dijon Academy. In Discourses on the Sciences and Arts (1750), Rousseau first formulated the main theme of his social philosophy - the conflict between modern society and human nature. He argued that good manners do not exclude calculating egoism, and sciences and arts satisfy not the basic needs of people, but their pride and vanity.

Jean Jacques Rousseau raised the question of the heavy price of progress, believing that the latter leads to the dehumanization of human relations. The work brought him victory at the competition, as well as wide fame. In 1754, at the second competition of the Dijon Academy, Rousseau presented “Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality between people” (1755). In it, he contrasted the so-called original natural equality with artificial (social) inequality.

Conflict with encyclopedists

In the 1750s J. J. Rousseau moved increasingly away from the Parisian literary salons. In 1754 he visited Geneva, where he again became a Calvinist and regained his civil rights. Upon returning to France, Rousseau chose a secluded lifestyle. He spent 1756−62 in the countryside near Montmorency (near Paris), first in the pavilion assigned to him by Madame d'Epinay (a friend of Friedrich Melchior Grimm, author of the famous “Literary Correspondence,” with whom Rousseau became close friends back in 1749), then in the country house of Marshal de Luxembourg.

However, Rousseau's relations with Diderot and Grimm gradually cooled. In the play The Side Son (1757), Diderot ridiculed hermits, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau took it as a personal insult. Then Rousseau fell in love with Madame d'Epinay's daughter-in-law, Countess Sophie d'Houdeteau, who was the mistress of Jean-François de Saint-Lambert, an encyclopedist and close friend of Diderot and Grimm. Friends considered Rousseau's behavior unworthy, and he himself did not consider himself guilty.

His admiration for Madame d'Houdetot inspired him to write La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), a masterpiece of sentimentalism, a novel about tragic love that celebrated sincerity in human relationships and the happiness of simple rural life. The growing divergence between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the encyclopedists was explained not only by the circumstances of his personal life, but also by differences in their philosophical views. In his Letter to D'Alembert on Performances (1758), Rousseau argued that atheism and virtue are incompatible. Arousing the indignation of many, including Diderot and Voltaire, he supported critics of the article “Geneva”, published by D’Alembert the year before in volume 7 of the Encyclopedia.

Theory of moral sentiments

In the pedagogical novel “Emile or on Education” (1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau attacked the modern system of education, reproaching it for the lack of attention to the inner world of man and neglect of his natural needs. In the form of a philosophical novel, Rousseau outlined the theory of innate moral feelings, the main of which he considered the inner consciousness of good. He declared the task of education to be the protection of moral feelings from the corrupting influence of society.

"Social Contract"

Meanwhile, it was society that became the focus of Rousseau’s most famous work, “On the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Law” (1762). By concluding a social contract, people give up part of their sovereign natural rights in favor of state power, which protects their freedom, equality, social justice and thereby expresses their general will. The latter is not identical to the will of the majority, which may contradict the true interests of society. If a state ceases to follow the general will and fulfill its moral obligations, it loses the moral basis of its existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau entrusted the provision of this moral support to power to the so-called. a civil religion designed to unite citizens on the basis of faith in God, in the immortality of the soul, in the inevitability of the punishment of vice and the triumph of virtue. Thus, Rousseau's philosophy was quite far from the deism and materialism of many of his former friends.

Last years

Rousseau's preaching was met with equal hostility in a variety of circles. "Emile" was condemned by the Paris Parliament (1762), the author was forced to flee France. Both Emile and The Social Contract were burned in Geneva, and Rousseau was outlawed.

In 1762−67, Jean-Jacques Rousseau first wandered around Switzerland, then ended up in England. In 1770, having achieved European fame, Rousseau returned to Paris, where nothing threatened him. There he completed work on the Confession (1782−1789). Overwhelmed by persecution mania, Rousseau retired to Ermenonville near Senlis, where he spent the last months of his life in the care of the Marquis de Girardin, who buried him on an island in his own park.

In 1794, during the Jacobin dictatorship, the remains of Jean Jacques Rousseau were transferred to the Pantheon. With the help of his ideas, the Jacobins substantiated not only the cult of the Supreme Being, but also terror.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1794) - French philosopher, writer, musicologist, composer. Born June 28, 1712 in Geneva. Having lost his mother early, Jean-Jacques in 1723-1724. was brought up in the boarding house Lambercier. He studied for some time with a notary and an engraver. In 1728, at the age of 16, he left his hometown. At this time, he met the widow de Varan, who helped him with his studies at the Turin monastery. The relationship with the aristocrat was personal in nature and lasted until 1739; between his travels, Rousseau periodically stayed with his patroness.

In the 1740s. works as a tutor for a judge from Lyon, and then as a secretary for the French ambassador in Venice. In 1745, he married a hotel maid, Therese Levasseur, who bore him 5 children. Rousseau sent his descendants to an orphanage because he believed that he did not have the means to support them.

In 1749, he accidentally learned about the competition “Did the revival of the sciences and arts contribute to the purification of morals” at the Dijon Academy and took part in it, as a result of which he became the winner of the prize. Rousseau was invited, together with other authors, to compile the Encyclopedia, in which he wrote 390 articles, mostly musicological.

In 1762, the resonant works “Emile” and “On the Social Contract” were published, for which he was forced to flee from Paris, and then from Geneva. Rousseau was able to escape persecution in the Principality of Neuchâtel. He was able to return to France only in 1770.

RUSSO, JEAN-JACQUES(Rousseau, Jean-Jacques) (1712–1778), French philosopher, writer, composer. Born June 28, 1712 in Geneva. The men in the Rousseau family were watchmakers; the family belonged to wealthy citizens. His mother died in childbirth, his father left Jean-Jacques when he was ten years old, and through the efforts of his uncle Bernard, the boy was placed under the care of Pastor Bossy. In 1725, after a probationary period in a notary's office, he became an apprentice engraver. In 1728 he fled from the master and, under the patronage of a young Catholic convert, Madame de Warens, entered the seminary in Turin, was converted and a few weeks later became a servant in the house of Madame de Verselis. After her death, when an inventory of the property was being taken, Rousseau stole a small ribbon and, when caught, stated that he had received the ribbon as a gift from the maid. There was no punishment, but later he admitted that the offense was the first motivating reason to take up the crime. Confession (Confessions). Having been a footman in another aristocratic house and not tempted by the opportunity to achieve promotion, Jean-Jacques returned to Madame de Warens, who placed him in the seminary to prepare for the clergy, but he was more interested in music and was expelled from the seminary after two months. The cathedral organist took him on as a student. Six months later, Rousseau ran away from him, changed his name and traveled around, posing as a French musician. In Lausanne, he staged a concert of his own compositions and was ridiculed, after which he lived in Neuchâtel, where he acquired several students. In 1742 he left for Paris with luggage consisting of a musical system he had invented, a play, several poems and a letter of recommendation from the rector of the cathedral in Lyon.

His musical system did not arouse interest. No theater wanted to stage the play. The money was already running out when a certain compassionate Jesuit introduced him to the houses of influential ladies, who listened with compassion to poems about the disasters he had suffered and invited him to come to dinner whenever he pleased. He made acquaintance with many prominent figures, writers, scientists, musicians, including the brilliant young D. Diderot, the future head of Encyclopedias, who soon became his close friend. In 1743, Rousseau became secretary to the French envoy in Venice, who fired him the very next year. Returning to Paris, he burned with indignation against the aristocrats who did not want to stand up for him. Scenes from his opera Lovers muses (Les Muses galantes) were successfully staged in the salon of Madame de Lapoupliniere, the wife of a tax collector. Around this time, he had a mistress - the maid Therese Levasseur, who, according to his confession, gave birth to five children (1746-1754), who were sent to an orphanage.

In 1750 Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Discours sur les arts et les sciences) brought him the Dijon Academy Prize and unexpected fame. The treatise argued that everywhere civilization had led to the moral and physical degeneration of people, and only peoples who had retained their pristine simplicity (Rousseau gave no examples) remained virtuous and strong; it was further said that the fruits of progress always turn out to be moral corruption and military weakness. This radical condemnation of progress, for all its paradox, was not something new, but what was new was Jean-Jacques’s style and tone, which, according to a contemporary, caused “almost universal horror.”

In order to live in accordance with his principles, he developed a program of “independence and poverty,” refused the position of cashier in the financial department offered to him and copied notes at ten centimes per page. Crowds of visitors flocked to him. He refused all (or almost all) offerings. His comic opera Village sorcerer (Le Devin du village) was performed at Fontainebleau in the presence of the king, and the next day he was to appear at court. Although this meant that he would be given maintenance, he did not go to the audience. The play was presented in 1752 Narcissus (Narcisse), failed miserably. When the Dijon Academy proposed “the origin of inequality” as a competition topic, he wrote Reasoning about inequality (Discours sur l'inégalité, 1753), where primitive times were called the happiest period in the entire history of mankind up to modern social forms. Everything that happened after the tribal stage was condemned because private property took root and the majority of the inhabitants of the Earth became its slaves. Often expressing fantastic judgments about the past, Jean-Jacques knew well what the conditions of the present were. He revealed the innermost essence of the degrading social system, which lies in the contradiction between “the life of the majority, living in lawlessness and poverty, while a handful of those in power are at the pinnacle of fame and wealth.” Replies from those who disagreed followed, and in the ensuing discussion, Jean-Jacques demonstrated the qualities of an excellent polemicist.

Having visited Geneva and again become a Protestant, Rousseau accepted as a gift from Madame d'Epinay, whom he had met several years earlier, a house in the Montmorency valley - the Hermitage. Unrequited love for her sister-in-law Madame d'Houdetot, as well as quarrels between Madame d'Epinay and Diderot forced Rousseau to abandon his dream of solitude; in December 1757 he moved to the nearby dilapidated farm of Montlouis. Letter to d'Alembert about theatrical performances (Lettre à d"Alembert sur les spectacles, 1758), which condemned Voltaire’s attempts to organize a theater in Geneva, and called the performances a school of immorality, both personal and public, caused Voltaire’s persistent hostility towards Rousseau. It was published in 1761 Julia, or New Heloise (Julie,ou la Nouvelle Héloïse), in 1762 – Social contract (Le Contrat social) And Emil, or About education (Émile, ou de l"Education).

Developed in Emile the deistic doctrine brought the wrath of the Catholic Church upon Rousseau, and the government ordered (June 11, 1762) the arrest of the author. Rousseau fled to Yverdun (Bern), then to Motiers (under Prussian rule). Geneva deprived him of the rights of its citizen. Appeared in 1764 Letters from the Mountain (Lettres de la montagne) hardened liberal-minded Protestants. Rousseau left for England, returned to France in May 1767 and, after wandering around many cities, showed up in Paris in 1770 with a completed manuscript Confessions, which was supposed to tell descendants the truth about himself and his enemies. They were completed in 1776 Dialogues: Rousseau Jean-Jacques judges (Dialogues: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jaques) and his most exciting book began Walks of a Lonely Dreamer (Rêveries du promeneur solitaire). In May 1778, Rousseau retired to Ermenonville, in a cottage offered to him by the Marquis de Girardin, and died there of apoplexy on July 2, 1778.

Rousseau's legacy is extraordinary in its diversity and in the degree of influence it exerted, although its influence was largely determined by misperception or the fact that the ideas characteristic of one work were considered to represent his teaching as a whole. Both enlighteners and German authors belonging to the Sturm und Drang movement mistook its rebellion against conventions and superficial judgments for rejection of civilization and legality as such. The “noble savage,” not mentioned anywhere in Rousseau (and, of course, not extolled), has long been mistakenly considered the embodiment of his ideal. On the other hand, his Public agreement was usually interpreted as an anticipation of the ideology of totalitarian regimes. But Rousseau as an apologist for totalitarianism is the same myth as Rousseau as a promoter of simplification. He himself invariably emphasized the unity of his doctrine: a person who is good by nature must know this nature and trust it. This is impossible in a society where rationality and mental calculations are given supreme importance. Rousseau's early treatises, with all their extremes and conspicuous one-sidedness, pave the way for his mature works. Some inequalities are inevitable because they are natural, but there are also unnatural inequalities, such as sharp differences in wealth, and these must disappear. A person is forced to exist in a hierarchical society, where virtues are recognized as what are actually vices: courtesy based on lies, despicable concern for one’s position, an uncontrollable thirst for enrichment, the desire to increase property. IN Emile Rousseau outlines a whole program, which he calls "negative education", which, he is convinced, will put an end to the worship of false gods. The mentor (it is clear that this is an ideal portrait of Rousseau himself) raises Emil in solitude so that harmful concepts are not instilled in him, and teaches him according to a method that ensures the development of the abilities inherent in him. There is not a trace of neglect of mental growth, but since the intellect is the last of all human talents to be formed, it should become the subject of the teacher’s attention and concern later than everything else. It is foolish, when teaching a child, to even touch upon moral or religious issues, because this would mean treating the student as an adult. Thus, far from being a supporter of irrationality, Rousseau insists that due attention must be given to the development of intelligence, but only at the stage when it can make sense. While the child is growing, he should not be allowed to mechanically solidify incomprehensible things; he must comprehend from experience what he is capable of understanding. Rousseau insistently says that the child has a great thirst for self-expression. Religious education must begin at a late stage, when the child has already discovered the wonders of the universe. Such education should not become a memorization of dogmas and rituals, but is intended to instill in the child a natural religiosity that a self-respecting adult could recognize. One of the most famous places in Emile- a passionate deist treatise known as Confession of a Savoy vicar; Voltaire liked it more than other works of Rousseau, and Robespierre subsequently based his “religion of virtue” on this treatise.

Emil does not concern politics, but this book is indispensable for understanding Rousseau’s political theory: Emile is a man called to exist in a properly structured society, described by Rousseau in Social contract. There is neither glorification of individualism nor apotheosis of collectivism in this treatise. His main idea is that a person must have independence, establishing laws that correspond to his aspirations. Rousseau argued that a social contract is concluded by mature citizens who are ready to assume the burden of civic responsibilities. This agreement embodies Rousseau's famous paradox: by entering society, a person loses all his rights, but in reality he loses nothing. The solution proposed by Rousseau is that man must act both as a subject and as a creator of laws. Thus, in fact, he obeys only himself.

Rousseau invariably acts as a democrat: only such a society is reasonable and correct, all members of which participate in the creation of laws, i.e. have the most important rights. Rousseau preferred direct forms of democracy to the principle of representative government like the English, but his writings on Poland and Corsica show that he was aware of the need for different political institutions for different types of society. It is clear that society, as Rousseau imagined it, can function only if citizens, who are also legislators, understand and accept their civic responsibilities. A society of true citizens expresses true public interests by expressing the “general will” of those citizens. Contrary to popular belief, Rousseau did not want an omnipotent state, seeing in the state only an instrument for achieving the goals of a collective of people. Thus, according to Rousseau, the contradiction between freedom and power could be finally resolved.

While Rousseau did not preach simplification and extolled laws as the great power of education, some of his most widely read works do celebrate simple virtues, life among nature, and picturesque natural landscapes. New Eloise- a love story where sin is atoned for by the self-denial of the heroes, and this story, stretching over many pages, is replete with captivating descriptions of walks in nature, rural holidays, simple food and drink. In his novel, as in some of his smaller works, Rousseau extols the moral beauty of simple life and unfeigned virtue. A society committed to etiquette and artificiality, although tired of them, perceived Rousseau's books as a revelation.

Rousseau's famous autobiographical works invite man to know his own nature. Confession contains a deep analysis of Rousseau's spiritual motives and a description, not entirely reliable, of his misadventures. Rousseau's sensitivity, his vanity under the guise of self-abasement, his masochism, which was the cause of a whole series of traumatic love episodes - all this is revealed to the reader with almost unprecedented confidence, spontaneity and painful insight. Admiration for the subtle spiritual organization of Rousseau, who in this sense turns out to be the forerunner of the romantic age, is quite trivial, but it is indisputable that the German and English romantics were his fanatical admirers. At the same time, it was a spiritual organization quite characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment, represented, among others, by Diderot, and it evoked an admiring response from such people alien to romanticism as Kant, as well as from such champions of everything classical as Goethe.

The romantic experience of the world is part of Rousseau's philosophy, but his thought is more comprehensive. He reminds us everywhere that man is good by nature, but corrupted by the institutions of society, and that he always seeks a higher self-consciousness, which he will gain only in the circle of free people and through reasonable religiosity. The total complex of ideas expressed in the works of Rousseau, the so-called. "Rousseauism" influenced the development of European thought and literature in the second half of the 18th - first third of the 19th century. (respectively sentimentalism, pre-romanticism, romanticism).