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Rousseau's early youth, spent in one of Geneva's upper class families, was disrupted by his mother's death and his father's exile. Although a part of the brilliant literary and cultural society of Paris in the mid-1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau never felt quite at home.

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Transcript

Lead: Although a part of the brilliant literary and cultural society of Paris in the mid-1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau never felt quite at home.

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Rousseau's early youth, spent in one of Geneva's upper class families, was disrupted by his mother's death and his father's exile. The resulting social comedown gave him a life-long sense of insecurity and hunger for approval from the wealthy and well connected. After his 1742 arrival in Paris, Rousseau gravitated to the leading Enlightenment figures of the city, cultivating a friendship with many such as the Encyclopedist, Denis Diderot. He soon, however, broke with them over the question of progress. In A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, begun in late 1753, Rousseau describes primitive man in his idyllic state: basically good in the moral sense and free of the cumbersome burdens of modern society (culture, religion, government, education, even family); here truly was uncorrupted man, the noble savage.

Later, in 1762 in an elegant and reasoned explanation of political theory, The Social Contract, Rousseau describes the means of returning to that uncorrupt state of freedom. John Locke and following him Thomas Jefferson, believed that all men have certain natural rights that are independent from society. This is the heart of liberal democracy. Rousseau rejected this. In his ideal society people give up their individual rights to the group which then governs according to the general will. Policy is reached by consensus. If anyone resists this general will he or she must be compelled to yield.

Rousseau said, "This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free." It is not surprising that some contemporary followers of Rousseau found in his writings justification for the brutal excesses of the French Revolution. Some critics have found, perhaps unfairly, the philosophy underlying the single-party predator states of the 20th century, especially the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. After all, several years in Siberia usually lessens one's resistance to the general will. Fair or not, ideas often have unintended consequences.

The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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