Friday 28 June 2013

"Everywhere he is in chains...": Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau (Geneva, Switzerland, 28th June 1712 -  Ermenonville, France, 2nd July 1778)


Jean Jacques Rousseau by Jean Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753
Jean Jacques Rousseau by Jean Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753

Writer, philosopher, composer and all round thinking man, Rousseau's political philosophy had an enormous impact not only in his time but far beyond. The father of the modern biography, a philosophical architect of the French Revolution and Jacobin Club mainstay, Rousseau's views were not universally popular.  His remains were eventually interred in the Pantheon and even now his theories are hotly debated by modern philosophers. 


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