Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778) was a Genevan philosophe, writer and composer whose political philosophy was influential during the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In his Discourse on Inequality he argued that private property is the source of social inequality, and in The Social Contract (1762) he set out what makes a political order legitimate, holding that submission to the general will of the people as a whole lets individuals preserve themselves and remain free. His Émile, or On Education (1762) treated the place of the individual in society and has influenced child-centred education, and his novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) contributed to preromanticism. He based his political thought on contract theory and his reading of Thomas Hobbes while reacting to Samuel von Pufendorf and John Locke, and he criticised Hobbes for presuming that humans are naturally wicked.