When1: 1732
When2: 1762
Who: Jean Jacques Rousseau [Rousseau, Jean Jacques]
What: philosopher
Where: Paris, France
works\ Confessions [1732: autobiography]; Discourse on Arts and Sciences [1749]; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1755]; Julie or The New Heloise; Émile [1762: about education]; Social Contract [1762]
Detail: He lived 1712 to 1778.
Education
There should be education for all, to perfect people and let them use their talents. Teachers should not restrain or indoctrinate but arrange child's environment so child can learn. Children should be able to play, learn, and enjoy life. Children should not have to be under society's rules but be free and so good.
Epistemology
Mind's basic quality is feeling or sentiment, not ideas or their combinations.
Ethics
Natural people are without good or evil. Human nature and natural motives are good. Natural states of feeling and self should be the basis for civilization. Society corrupts by envy, competition, and status. Knowledge and culture have removed people from their true nature and living style, separated them from nature, and corrupted them, mainly through property institutions. Property makes self-interest the motive for life, but this is not natural. Emotion and anarchy contain good and allow freedom. Religion should be from the heart, relying on conscience.
Metaphysics
Nature is good and simple.
Mind
Mind is self-directed unified personality, not just mechanical activities.
Politics
State results from contract {social contract, Rousseau} that expresses collective will among people to provide government services for common interest. Contract applies equally to all citizens, who give all their rights to community. Liberty, fraternity, and equality should result. People make social contracts and can change them any time. Government rules by governed's consent {compact theory, Rousseau}, an idea from ancient Greece.
Authoritarian society is bad. Most laws are to maintain superior-subordinate relations between people. "Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains."
All people are equal. Government and education should offset economic and institution inequalities among people.
Majority should rule. Constitution should allow as much personal freedom as possible, so talents can develop. Small city-states with democracy are best. Larger states need elected legislatures. There should be no institutions except state, because their interests will conflict with state's interests. If there must be other institutions, there should be many, so they will neutralize each other.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224