Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Born
1712
Died
1778
Nationality
Genevan

Events involving Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17)

1712 ID: 476
June 28, 1712
Jean-Jacques Rousseau born in Geneva; mother dies in childbirth, father abandons him at age 10
ID: 476
📍 Geneva
Geneva
1728 ID: 491
Rousseau's wandering years begin - converts to Catholicism in Turin, becomes lover of Madame de Warens
ID: 491
📍 Turin
Turin
1735 ID: 504
La Condamine's Amazon expedition returns with accounts of indigenous life - Rousseau reads avidly
ID: 504
1742 ID: 516
Rousseau arrives in Paris with musical notation system, enters salons through Diderot and d'Alembert
ID: 516
Venice
Paris
1744 ID: 521
Rousseau reads Lafitau's comparison of Native Americans to ancient Greeks, notes: 'See here the childhood of the world'
ID: 521
1745 ID: 522
Rousseau begins affair with illiterate laundress Thérèse Levasseur; will abandon five children to foundling hospital
ID: 522
1749 ID: 533
Rousseau's 'illumination' on road to Vincennes visiting imprisoned Diderot - vision that civilization corrupts
ID: 533
Vincennes
1754 ID: 549
Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality: 'first person who fenced plot and said mine was founder of civil society'
ID: 549
1761 ID: 561
Rousseau's 'Julie, or the New Heloise' creates cult of sentiment prefiguring Romanticism
ID: 561
1762 ID: 565
Rousseau's paranoid flight across Europe begins - arrest warrant, develops persecution mania
ID: 565
1762 ID: 563
April 1762
Rousseau's Social Contract: 'Man is born free, everywhere in chains' - 'forced to be free'
ID: 563
1762 ID: 564
May 1762
Rousseau's Emile - revolutionary educational treatise, child isolated from society, manipulated by tutor
ID: 564
1770 ID: 579
Rousseau returns to Paris, writes Confessions justifying child abandonment as 'member of Plato's Republic'
ID: 579
📍 Paris
Paris
1777 ID: 597
Condorcet writes Americans 'are what Rousseau wished us to become' - free from old prejudices
ID: 597
1778 ID: 601
Young Robespierre visits aging Rousseau - later implements Social Contract ideas in Revolutionary Terror
ID: 601
1792 ID: 647
Mary Wollstonecraft Vindication of Rights of Woman - applies but critiques Rousseau on women
ID: 647
1793 ID: 649
The Terror begins - Robespierre implements Rousseau ideas through Committee of Public Safety
ID: 649