The relevance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 300 years after his birth

The life and work of the son of French refugees remain highly relevant to the work of UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations based in his birthplace.

GENEVA, June 28 (UNHCR) - “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” This quote made the Geneva-born political philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, world famous. But today, as we commemorate the 300th anniversary of his birth, is his thinking still relevant? And what can it teach us about the work of the UN refugee agency, which has its headquarters in Geneva.

Rousseau was born to a family of French Protestant refugees on June 28, 1712. Geneva, which offered shelter to thousands of persecuted Huguenots from the 16th Century onwards, left a deep impression on him. Not only did he dedicate his second “Discourse” to the Swiss lakeside city, but he also took every opportunity to sign his works “Citizen of Geneva.”

Even so, his relationship with his birthplace was not straightforward. Orphaned at an early age, Rousseau spent many years as an itinerant, living in the homes of different employers, patrons and lovers, working variously as a clerk, an engraver and a private tutor.

Rousseau was propelled from obscurity in 1749 when he won an essay writing competition, arguing that the progress of knowledge and culture lead to the corruption of human behaviour. He published his first major political work, the “Discourse on Inequality,” in 1755. Building on this he wrote “The Social Contract” and “Émile.”

Both works were scorned by officials and intellectuals alike, and were publicly burned in Paris and Geneva. Convinced of conspiracies against him he travelled around Europe, finally settling outside Paris where he died in isolation at the age of 66.

Although a product of his time, Rousseau made many key contributions to the theory and practice of modern politics. One question occupied his thoughts more than any other - How can humans live freely within society?

Rousseau’s thought stemmed from his notion of human nature. In contrast to some of his forerunners and contemporaries (such as Montesquieu and Thomas Hobbes), he believed that humans possessed a natural goodness and that caring properly for oneself did not exclude concern for the welfare of others.

The philosopher also believed that all men were socially equal. Inequalities, he argued, were the artificial creations of social systems based on private property and organized labour - systems that allowed the domination and exploitation of some people by others.

Although Rousseau has been seen by some as the father of modern democracy - and was undoubtedly influential in the evolution of democratic thought - he had very specific ideas on the form that government should take.

He endorsed direct democracy, in which every citizen had an equal responsibility to agree on the laws that governed them. He held Geneva up as the prime example of a small city state where this form of governance could be established.

Rousseau’s thought played an important role in promoting the notion of human rights, which is central to UNHCR’s work. Many previous philosophers, from Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius to the Englishman Hobbes, had conceived of rights in terms of the possession of power or of legal constructs within society.

In contrast, Rousseau’s insistence on the fundamental freedom of human beings in their “natural state” contributed to the modern notion that people have inalienable rights, regardless of their place in society. This notion is clearly reflected in 20th century documents such as the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rousseau did not set out a theory of international relations, but many of his underlying principles have helped shape modern thought in this area. At first glance, it looks as though Rousseau would have preferred states to remain as independent of each other as possible, because he believed that dependence was the source of all conflict. In situations of war, he was distrustful of rulers’ motivations and would certainly have been a critic of great power intervention.

The world has changed significantly since Rousseau’s time, and his ideals of internal unity and the independence of states feel outdated in a globalized world that is characterized by mass migration, diaspora populations and transnational social movements. It is therefore open to interpretation whether Rousseau would have embraced the notion of global governance or the establishment of organizations such as the United Nations.

Rousseau did not anticipate the concept of humanitarian intervention. However, he strongly believed in the intrinsically compassionate nature of humankind and the willingness of people to help alleviate the suffering of others. In that respect, Rousseau’s life and work remain highly relevant to the work of UNHCR and the many other humanitarian organizations that are based in the city where he was born.

GREAT THINKERS Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No other philosopher’s biography is perhaps so well-known as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who made his own life the subject of a number of his writings, including his great autobiographical work, the Confessions. He was born in 1712 in Geneva. His mother died a few days after his birth, and he was raised by his father, a clockmaker, who cared for learning and had Rousseau read classical Greek and Roman literature. His father was forced to leave Geneva while Rousseau was still young. Apprenticed to an engraver, Rousseau eventually left Geneva in 1728, fleeing to Annecy. There at the age of sixteen he met Françoise-Louise de Warens, a woman who would become his benefactor and mistress. Over the next ten years, he earned money as a lackey, engraver, and music teacher. Mme. de Warens sent him during this period to Turin, where he renounced his Calvinism and converted to Roman Catholicism.

Rousseau moved to Paris in 1742 to pursue a career as a musician and composer. In Paris, he soon befriended Diderot, who would go on to fame as an editor of the Encyclopédie. Diderot commissioned Rousseau to write most of the articles for the Encyclopédie on musical subjects, as well as an article on political economy. Rousseau’s time in Paris was interrupted from 1743 to 1744, when he served as Secretary to the French ambassador in Venice.

Rousseau’s rise to fame came with the appearance of his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, named the winning entry in an essay competition by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. In a famous letter, he describes how, on a journey to Vincennes to visit Diderot, he had an extraordinary vision upon reading the notice of the essay competition: “All at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my head with a force and confusion that threw me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication.” He claimed that this vision marked a fundamental turning point in his life, and foreshadowed to him the basic principles he would unfold in his First and Second Discourse and his Emile, which he called his three “principal writings.”

In 1752 his short opera Le Devin du Village (“The Village Soothsayer”) was performed at the French court, and his comedy Narcisse was performed at the Théâtre Français. The following year, Rousseau wrote his Letter on French Music (1753), which contrasted Italian opera favorably with that of France. The work sparked a public controversy and even resulted in Rousseau’s being hanged in effigy, as it was viewed as politically seditious.

In 1754, he completed his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. He returned to Geneva and to the Protestantism of his youth, which allowed him to regain the right to citizenship he had lost with his conversion to Catholicism. In 1755, both the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and his work Political Economy appeared (the latter in the fifth volume of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie).

In 1756 Rousseau settled in a cottage, the Hermitage, on the estate of Mme. d’Epinay, a friend of many of the philosophes. There he began work on his novel Julie, or the New Heloise. After quarrels with Mme. d’Epinay and with Diderot, Rousseau moved to the country home of the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency. In 1758 his Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theatre was published. It offered a critique of d’Alembert’s article on Geneva in the Encyclopédie. This work made final Rousseau’s public break with most of the philosophes. Julie was published in 1761 and soon becomes one of the best-selling works of the century. Rousseau received thousands of letters from admiring readers, many of whom refused to believe that the characters of the love story were mere literary inventions. This period was to become Rousseau’s most productive. In 1762 both On the Social Contract and Emile were published. Owing especially to each work’s heterodox discussion of Christianity, both were condemned by the authorities and publicly burned in Geneva and Paris. The French government ordered Rousseau’s arrest. As a result, Rousseau fled to Neuchâtel, then governed by Prussia.

At Neuchâtel from 1763 to 1765, Rousseau, among other writing, drafted his Constitutional Project for Corsica. At this time he also began work on his autobiography, the Confessions. In the period following, Rousseau endured increasingly hostile attacks from various leading writers, and eventually decided to leave for England, accepting an offer from the philosopher David Hume to join him there. After two years in England, Rousseau, having quarreled with Hume, whom he (falsely) suspected of drafting an anonymous pamphlet attacking him, returned to France in 1767.

During his final ten years of life, Rousseau completed a number of other works. He composed the Considerations on the Government of Poland and Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques in 1772, although both were published only posthumously. He composed his final work, The Reveries of a Solitary Walker, in 1777.

Who İs Jean-Jacques Rousseau? | What is Jean Jacques Rousseau best known for?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most powerful masterminds during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe. His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the triumphant reaction to an article challenge directed by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. Right now, contends that the movement of technical disciplines and expressions has caused the debasement of prudence and profound quality.