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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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From: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Date: 20070301
Author:

(born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switz.—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France) Swiss-French philosopher. At age 16 he fled Geneva to Savoy, where he became the steward and later the lover of the baronne de Warens. At age 30, having furthered his education and social position under her influence, he moved to Paris, where he joined Denis Diderot at the centre of the philosophe s; he wrote on music and economics for Diderot's Encyclopédie . His first major work, the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), argued that man is good by nature but has been corrupted by society and ...

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