Kingston Philosophy Café

Rousseau: Multi-faceted revolutionary

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‘Man was born free, and is everywhere in chains.’ The famous first line from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s best-known work 'The Social Contract' has inspired revolutionaries across the spectrum. His ideas on individual freedom and social organisation were the intellectual firepower of the French Revolution as well as the stimulus for Thomas Jefferson in drafting the American Declaration of Independence. Equally, Karl Marx found much that he admired in Rousseau to support his own views on exploitation, alienation and the iniquities of private property.

But Rousseau’s influence doesn’t stop at politics. As a composer before becoming a philosopher, he had a lot say about musical style, the musical origins of language, the early development of societies, religion and education. In tackling these, his underlying approach was always that humans were naturally good but society had made them wicked. He made the case that they had once lived free, compassionately and cooperatively, in small family groups and only became egotistical and selfish when the first societies were formed. This meant that nations could be improved by changing their institutions, a highly radical view at a time when Absolute Monarchy was the dominant order and the anti-democratic views of Thomas Hobbes still held considerable sway. 

Predictably, Rousseau’s views did not go down well with those in power in the 18th century and both 'The Social Contract' and his book on education 'Emile' were banned in Paris and burned in Rousseau’s native Geneva. Interestingly, it was his comments on religion in these works that got him into more trouble than his political prescriptions.  
Rousseau was unusual for an Enlightenment thinker as he placed emphasis on feeling and emotion as a behavioural guide rather than reason, a stance that led to him being called the father of Romanticism.

Given the breadth of his works and the many important ideas that have developed out of them, an understanding of Rousseau would seem to be an essential part of everyone’s philosophical repertoire. 
 
Brian Caplen is a retired financial journalist who worked as a magazine editor with the FT Group for 20 years. He has travelled extensively and lived and worked in both Hong Kong and the Middle East. He studied economics and sociology at university and since retiring has spent much of his time studying philosophy and music history and the connections between the two.