Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The once banned and burned treatise on the nature of education from the eighteenth-century philosopher and author of The Social Contract. Considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself to be the "best and most important" of all his writings, Émile set off a firestorm when it was first published in 1762. It was banned in Paris and burned in Geneva, but later served as the inspiration for a new national system of education during the French Revolution. In...

Only a few popular autobiographies existed before philosopher, author, and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his Confessions. Rousseau wrote treatises on education and politics as well as novels and operas, and as one of the most influential and controversial of the Enlightenment thinkers, he inspired the leaders of the French Revolution. His memoir is regarded as the first modern autobiography, in which the writer defined his life mainly in...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thesis that children are naturally good at birth violated the traditional Christian doctrine of origin sin. His argument that education should arise from children's natural instincts and impulses rather than trying to civilize and socialize them challenged traditional schooling. Rousseau's defenders see him as a pioneering thinker whose revolutionary...