I am not made like any of those I have seen.

I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those

who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.

LIFE

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born to Isaac Rousseau and Suzanne Bernard in Geneva on June
28, 1712. His mother died only a few days later on July 7, and his only sibling, an older brother, ran
away from home when Rousseau was still a child. Rousseau was therefore brought up mainly by his
father, a clockmaker. His father got into a quarrel with a French captain abandoned him in 1722
(when he was just 10 years old) to avoid imprisonment. Rousseau stayed behind and was cared for
by an uncle who sent him along with his cousin to study in the village of Bosey.

His childhood education consisted solely of reading the Plutarch's "Lives" and Calvinist
sermons in a public garden. His youthful experiences of corporal punishment at the hands of the
pastor's sister developed in later life into a predilection for masochism and exhibitionism. For several
years as a youth, he was apprenticed to a notary and then to an engraver.

In 1728, at the age of 16, Rousseau left Geneva for Annecy in south-eastern France, where he
met Franoise-Louise de Warens, a French Catholic baroness. She later became his lover, but she
also provided him with the education of a nobleman by sending him to a good Catholic school,
where Rousseau became familiar with Latin and the dramatic arts. Mme. de Warens was
instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism, which forced him to forfeit his Genevan citizenship
(in 1754 he would make a return to Geneva and publicly convert back to Calvanism). During this
time he earned money through secretarial, teaching and musical jobs.

In 1742, he moved to Paris with the intention of becoming a musician and composer. He
presented his new system of numbered musical notation to the Acadmie des Sciences but, although
ingenious and compatible with typography, the system was rejected.
He was secretary to the French ambassador in Venice for 11 months from 1743 to 1744,
although he was forced to flee to Paris to avoid prosecution by the Venetian Senate (he often referred
to the republican government of Venice in his later political work). Back in Paris, he befriended and
lived with Thrse Levasseur, a semi-literate seamstress who bore him five children all of whom
were left at the Paris orphanage soon after birth.
Rousseau died on 2 July 1778 of a hemorrhage while taking a morning walk on the estate of
the Marquis de Giradin at Ermenonville.

PHILOSOPHIES&WORKS

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

His 1750 "Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts" ("Discourse on the Arts and Sciences") won
him first prize in an essay competition from the Academy of Dijon which posed the question, Has
the restoration of the Sciences and the Arts Contributed to the Purification of Morals? and gained
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him significant fame. The work is perhaps the greatest example of Rousseau as a counter-
Enlightenment thinker.

Rousseau first argued that civilization had corrupted human beings. This corruption was
largely a moral corruption; everything we regarded as progressurbanization, technology, science,
and so onhas resulted in the moral degradation of humanity. For Rousseau, the natural moral state
of human beings is to be compassionate; civilizations have made us cruel, selfish, and bloodthirsty.

Rousseau argues that the popularization of philosophy by enlightenment thinkers is in fact

its vulgarizationanimated not by the pure love of wisdom but by the desire for social honors and
prestige. Modern society, so far from lifting Europeans from their former servitude in feudal Europe,
in fact fosters new forms of dependence and servitude. The manners of polite society, Rousseau
admonishes, are but a counterfeit of virtue with which one masks ones selfishness for the sake of
ones vanity.

First, he extends beyond the specific question posed by the Dijon Academy, for he holds that
there is a fundamental opposition between science and political virtue as such, not merely in his own
day. Hence his proposition is theoretical. He does not deny that as compared to the medieval period
and its scholasticism (which he calls a state worse than ignorance), the period immediately
following represented a manner of progress. Yet a lesser corruption relative to this earlier extreme
must not be mistaken for the purification of morals.
Second, Rousseau rejects the accusation that he is an enemy of the arts and sciences. They
harm a virtuous political order, but for a society that is already corrupt, it is only the arts and sciences
that can ameliorate the effects of corruption for those few who have not yet become bad.
Finally, Rousseau emphasizes that science as such is not bad. It is the natural calling of those
few sublime geniuses of the human race (such as Bacon, Newton, and Descartes). Rather, science
or philosophy is not suitable for man in general. Rousseau avails himself of the ironic
proclamation that he is an honest man who knows nothing and esteems himself none the less for it.
Rousseau understands his First Discourse to be the work of a philosopher aimed at the
protection of man in general from the dangers of philosophy. At the same time, because the
Enlightenment popularization of philosophy impoverishes it, he aims also at the protection of true
philosophy.

The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and
found people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many
crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors Mankind would have been spared by him
who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had cried out to his kind: Beware of listening to this
impostor; You are lost if you forget that the fruits are everyone's and the Earth no-one's

In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the "Discours sur lorigine et les
fondments de linegalite"("Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men", usually
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known as the "Discourse on Inequality"), it was a response to a question put forth by the academy of
Dijon: What is the origin of inequality among men; and is it authorized by the natural law?

In the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau also argued that civilization has robbed us of our
natural freedom. While semi-civilized humanity looked to itself for its values and happiness,
civilized human beings live outside themselves in the opinions and authority of others. The price of
civilization is human freedom and human individuality.

Part one of the work depicts human beings who are not yet corrupted by entrance into
civilization. This state is not a war of all against all, as Hobbes had claimed. The human being in this
pure state of nature is naturally good, by which Rousseau means that he is self-sufficientnature
supplies him with what he desires, his wants never outstripping his needs. Man in the pure state of
nature is for Rousseau not a noble savage, as is sometimes claimed, but an amoral, even quite
stupid animal. He is solitary, apart from chance meetings occasioning the opportunity for sex and
reproduction; care of children by females is minimal. Rousseau describes natural man as isolated,
timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to worry about what the future will bring.
Rousseaus praise of humans in the state of nature is perhaps one of the most misunderstood ideas in
his philosophy. Although the human being is naturally good and the noble savage is free from the
vices that plague humans in civil society, Rousseau is not simply saying that humans in nature are
good and humans in civil society are bad. Furthermore, he is not advocating a return to the state of
nature. Human beings in the state of nature are amoral creatures, neither virtuous nor vicious. After
humans leave the state of nature, they can enjoy a higher form of goodness, moral goodness, which
Rousseau articulates most explicitly in the Social Contract.

TWO TYPES OF INEQUALITY

Physical Inequality - Also called Natural inequality, physical inequality results from
natural differences in physical and mental abilities and is established by Nature. Differences in age,
health, strength and intelligence are all physical inequalities. Rousseau refuses to enquire into the
origins of this first inequality: it simply "is," and has been ordained by Nature. Nor does he seek to
establish a link between this basic inequality and its descendant, Moral inequality. The purpose of
the Discourse is to chart how unavoidable physical inequality was transformed into moral inequality.
See moral inequality.

Political inequality or moral inequality is based upon unnatural foundations. It is created

not by Nature but by a convention or agreement between consenting men. Differences in wealth,
power, status or class are moral inequalities; they involve one person benefiting at the expense of
another. Whilst many authors have confused it with the natural state of affairs, Rousseau insists that
this type of inequality is a recent creation.

Natural Right
Rousseau founds his idea of natural right on the principles of pity and self-preservation,
which, he claims, existed before reason. One of the aims of the reconstruction of human nature that
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Rousseau offers is to show that an idea of natural right was possible before man became social and
created political institutions, and thus he claims that the state of nature was not the terrible place that
some suggest.

Principles of Natural Right

1. Amour-de-soi, or a natural love-of-self consisting of the desire to preserve oneself. It

directs us first to attend to our most basic biological needs for things like food, shelter and
warmth. The desire to preserve oneself is the only thing that can drive one sentient (pain-
feeling) being to harm another, but only in extreme circumstances. Rousseau is relatively
unusual in coupling it with a deep-rooted desire not to cause pain to others. Since, for
Rousseau, humans, like other creatures, are part of the design of a benevolent creator,
they are individually well-equipped with the means to satisfy their natural needs.

In contrast with amour propre (love of self, often rendered as pride or vanity in
English translations). Amour propre is an acute awareness of, and regard for, oneself in
relation to others. Whilst the savage person cares only for his survival, civilized man also
cares deeply about what others think about him. This is a deeply harmful psychological
deformation, linked to the development of human reason and political societies. At its
root is a difference between being and appearing. Savage man can only "be", and has no
concept of pretence: civil man is forced to compare himself to others, and to lie to
himself. Rousseau traces the development of amour propre back to the first village
festivals, in which competition to dance and sing well increases the villagers' awareness
of each other's talents and abilities. Amour propre is best expressed in a society in which
wealth dominates; there, all are compared on an insubstantial and harmful basis.

2. Piti or a spontaneous form of compassion occasioned by witnessing the suffering of

others of the same species. It directs us to attend to and relieve the suffering of others
(including animals) where we can do so without danger to our own self-preservation. All
humans feel a strong distaste on seeing the suffering of another sentient (pain-feeling)
creature. Rousseau argues that because humans feel this impulse of pity towards others
they will not willingly mistreat other creatures unless their own self-preservation is at
stake. Savage man does not actively attempt to do good towards others, but is rather
restrained by the principle of pity from harming them.

Although both traits remain in some form in civil society, each is transformed by the
emergence in man of a third trait or power of the soulamour-propre, or self-concern that
originates in mens ability to compare themselves with one another and the corresponding desire for
social esteem.

Amour de soi, amour propre and piti are not the full complement of passions in Rousseaus
thinking. Once people have achieved consciousness of themselves as social beings, morality also
becomes possible and this relies on the further faculty of conscience.
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Genuine morality consists in the application of reason to human affairs and conduct. This
requires the mental faculty that is the source of genuinely moral motivation, namely conscience.
Conscience impels us to the love of justice and morality in a quasi-aesthetic manner. As the
appreciation of justice and the desire to act to further it, conscience is based on a rational
appreciation of the well-orderedness of a benign Gods plan for the world.

Rousseau says that unlike all other creatures, humans are free agents. They have reason,
although in the state of nature it is not yet developed. But it is this faculty that makes the long
transition from the state of nature to the state of civilized society possible. He claims that if one
examines any other species over the course of a thousand years, they will not have advanced
significantly. Humans can develop when circumstances arise that trigger the use of reason. Human
beings are distinguished from the other creatures with which they share the primeval world only by
two characteristics:

1. Freedom is simply the ability not to be governed solely by appetite. The quality of
freedom that Rousseau attributes to human beings in the state of nature does not sound
like freedom worth having. More importantly, it does not seem to offer a basis for the
radical reconfiguration of the world affected by entrance into this contract with other
consenting human beings. Other than the impulsive aversion to suffering, it is hard to see
just what freedom a human being is supposed to possess.
Rousseau ultimately suggests that true freedom is only a result of the binding together
of individuals into society, but freedom is also a necessary precondition of the founding
of society. True human freedom would have to be self-legitimating, self-authorizing, in
order to offer sufficient ground for the developmental account that Rousseau wants to
offer: the liberty that Rousseau describes as obedience to the law one has prescribed for
oneself.

2. Perfectibility is the capacity to learn and thereby to find new and better means to satisfy
needs. Man is more malleable than the other animals, possessing the ability to learn and
devise better means to satisfy his needs. Man's inexhaustible ability to improve himself,
to shape and to be shaped by his environment. It is the chief characteristic that
distinguishes him from other animals. The development of reason and language are both
functions of perfectibility. For man to "perfect himself" is not necessarily for him to
become perfect, but rather for his physical and mental capacities to be remolded, time and
time again. Perfectibility draws man out of his original condition, and is responsible for
his extraordinary adaptability, but it is also the source of all his miseries. It creates
enlightenment and man's virtues, but also all of his vices.

Together, these characteristics give humans the potential to achieve self-consciousness,

rationality, and morality. Nevertheless, it will turn out that such characteristics are more likely to
condemn them to a social world of deception, dissimulation, dependence, oppression, and
domination.
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In unfolding his conjectural history Rousseau goes on to describe the genesis of agriculture,
family life, and the idea of private property. The fundamental basis of conventional inequality arises
from the unequal distribution of property. The political community that protects private ownership
originates in an act of fraud by the few rich, who wish to dominate the many poor, an act Rousseau
memorably describes as the most well-conceived project ever to enter the human mind by which a
few ambitious men henceforth subjugated the whole of mankind to labor, servitude and misery.

Ultimately, the work is based on the idea that by nature, humans are essentially peaceful,
content, and equal. It is the socialization process that has produced inequality, competition, and the
egoistic mentality.

Having described the pure state of nature in the first part of the Second Discourse,
Rousseaus task in the second part is to explain the complex series of historical events that moved
humans from this state to the state of present day civil society. Although they are not stated
explicitly, Rousseau sees this development as occurring in a series of stages. From the pure state of
nature, humans begin to organize into temporary groups for the purposes of specific tasks like
hunting an animal. Very basic language in the form of grunts and gestures comes to be used in these
groups. However, the groups last only as long as the task takes to be completed, and then they
dissolve as quickly as they came together. The next stage involves more permanent social
relationships including the traditional family, from which arises conjugal and paternal love. Basic
conceptions of property and feelings of pride and competition develop in this stage as well.
However, at this stage they are not developed to the point that they cause the pain and inequality that
they do in present day society. If humans could have remained in this state, they would have been
happy for the most part, primarily because the various tasks that they engaged in could all be done by
each individual. The next stage in the historical development occurs when the arts of agriculture and
metallurgy are discovered. Because these tasks required a division of labor, some people were better
suited to certain types of physical labor, others to making tools, and still others to governing and
organizing workers. Soon, there become distinct social classes and strict notions of property, creating
conflict and ultimately a state of war not unlike the one that Hobbes describes. Those who have the
most to lose call on the others to come together under a social contract for the protection of all. But
Rousseau claims that the contract is specious, and that it was no more than a way for those in power
to keep their power by convincing those with less that it was in their interest to accept the situation.
And so, Rousseau says, All ran to meet their chains thinking they secured their freedom, for
although they had enough reason to feel the advantages of political establishment, they did not have
enough experience to foresee its dangers.

Discourse on Political Economy

The Discourse on Political Economy explains what he takes to be a legitimate political

regime.

The work is perhaps most significant because it is here that Rousseau introduces the concept
of the general will, a major aspect of his political thought which is further developed in the Social
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Contract. There is debate among scholars about how exactly one ought to interpret this concept, but
essentially, one can understand the general will in terms of an analogy. A political society is like a
human body. A body is a unified entity though it has various parts that have particular functions.
And just as the body has a will that looks after the well-being of the whole, a political state also has a
will which looks to its general well-being. The major conflict in political philosophy occurs when the
general will is at odds with one or more of the individual wills of its citizens.

With the conflict between the general and individual wills in mind, Rousseau articulates three
maxims which supply the basis for a politically virtuous state: (1) Follow the general will in every
action; (2) Ensure that every particular will is in accordance with the general will; and (3) Public
needs must be satisfied. Citizens follow these maxims when there is a sense of equality among them,
and when they develop a genuine respect for law. This again is in contrast to Hobbes, who says that
laws are only followed when people fear punishment. That is, the state must make the penalty for
breaking the law so severe that people do not see breaking the law to be of any advantage to them.
Rousseau claims, instead, that when laws are in accordance with the general will, good citizens will
respect and love both the state and their fellow citizens. Therefore, citizens will see the intrinsic
value in the law, even in cases in which it may conflict with their individual wills.

Julie or the New Heloise

In 1761, Rousseau published the successful romantic novel "Julie, ou la nouvelle

Hlose" ("Julie, or The New Heloise"). It is considered one of the best-selling books of the century.
The book greatly influenced the late 18th-century Romantic Naturalism movement.

Rousseau reconceptualized the relationship of the individual to the collective and articulated
a new moral paradigm. The story follows the fates and smoldering passions of Julie d'Etange and St.
Preux, a one-time lover who re-enters Julie's life at the invitation of her unsuspecting husband, M. de
Wolmar.

The complex tones of this work made it a commercial success and a continental sensation
when it first appeared in 1761, and its embodiment of Rousseau's system of thought, in which
feelings and intellect are intertwined, redefined the function and form of fiction for decades. As the
characters negotiate a complex maze of passion and virtue, their purity of soul and honest morality
reveal, as Rousseau writes in his preface, "the subtleties of heart of which this work is full." The
theme of The New Eloise provides a striking contrast to that of The Social Contract. It is about
people finding happiness in domestic as distinct from public life, in the family as opposed to the
state. The central character, Saint-Preux, is a middle-class preceptor who falls in love with his upper-
class pupil, Julie. She returns his love and yields to his advances, but the difference between their
classes makes marriage between them impossible. Baron dtange, Julies father, has indeed
promised her to a fellow nobleman named Wolmar. As a dutiful daughter, Julie marries Wolmar and
Saint-Preux goes off on a voyage around the world with an English aristocrat, Bomston, from whom
he acquires certain stoicism. Julie succeeds in forgetting her feelings for Saint-Preux and finds
happiness as wife, mother, and chatelaine. Some six years later Saint-Preux returns from his travels
and is engaged as tutor to the Wolmar children. All live together in harmony, and there are only faint
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echoes of the old affair between Saint-Preux and Julie. The little community, dominated by Julie,
illustrates one of Rousseaus political principles: that while men should rule the world in public life,
women should rule men in private life. At the end of The New Eloise, when Julie has made herself ill
in an attempt to rescue one of her children from drowning, she comes face-to-face with a truth about
herself: that her love for Saint-Preux has never died.

The novel was clearly inspired by Rousseaus own curious relationshipat once passionate
and platonicwith Sophie dHoudetot, a noblewoman who lived near him at Montmorency. He
himself asserted in the Confessions that he was led to write the book by a desire for loving, which I
had never been able to satisfy and by which I felt myself devoured. Saint-Preuxs experience of
love forbidden by the laws of class reflects Rousseaus own experience; and yet it cannot be said
that The New Eloise is an attack on those laws, which seem, on the contrary, to be given the status
almost of laws of nature. The members of the Wolmar household are depicted as finding happiness
in living according to an aristocratic ideal. They appreciate the routines of country life and enjoy the
beauties of the Swiss and Savoyard Alps. But despite such an endorsement of the social order, the
novel was revolutionary; its very free expression of emotions and its extreme sensibility deeply
moved its large readership and profoundly influenced literary developments.

The Social Contract

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is
nonetheless a greater slave than they.

In 1762, he published two major books, "Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit
politique" ("The Social Contract, Principles of Political Right") in April. Social contract is an
implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by
sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection.

Social Contract by Rousseau was immediately banned by Paris authorities.

These chains result from the obligations that each person has to the community. From this
provocative opening, Rousseau goes on to describe the myriad ways in which the chains of civil
society suppress the natural birthright of man to physical freedom.

For Rousseau, by entering to social contract people leave an anarchic state of nature by voluntarily
transferring their personal rights to the community in return for security of life and property. People
should form a society to which they would completely surrender themselves by giving up their
rights; they actually create a new entity in the form of a public person that would be directed by a
general will. When people join the community, they are voluntarily agreeing to comply with the
general will of the community.

In Rousseaus social contract, sovereign as all the citizens are acting collectively. Together, they
voice the general will and the laws of the state. The sovereign cannot be represented, divided, or
broken up in any way: only all the people speaking collectively can be sovereign.)
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State of Nature is the hypothetical, prehistoric place and time where human beings live uncorrupted
by society. Man becomes corrupt only through a gradual process of moving into society.

Civil society is the opposite of the state of nature: it is what we enter into when we agree to live in a
community. With civil society comes civil freedom and the social contract. By agreeing to live
together and look out for one another, we learn to be rational and moral, and to temper our brute
instincts.
Sovereign is the ultimate authority with regard to a certain group of people. It is the voice of the law,
and all people under its authority must obey it. It is also independent of any outside influences.
General Will is the will of the sovereign that aims at the common good. The general will expresses
what is best for the state as a whole.

Will of all is the sum total of each individual's particular will. It is where people value their personal
interests over the interests of the state.

Emile
mile, ou de lducation (or "mile, or On Education") is published in May 1762. A novel
that tells the life story of a fictional man named mile an education designed to create in him all the
virtues of Rousseaus idealized natural man, uncorrupted by modern society. According to
Rousseau, the natural goodness of a man can be nurtured and maintained only according to this
highly prescriptive model of education, and Rousseau states that his aim in mile is to outline that
model.
As the Social Contract, Emile was immediately banned by the authorities because it
criticizes Rousseaus rejection of traditional conceptions of religion. This book describes the
dialogue between the tutor and Emile, from birth to adulthood.

Books I and II: The Age of Nature up to age twelve

Young children in the Age of Nature must emphasize the physical side of their education.
Like small animals, they must be freed of constrictive swaddling clothes, breast-fed by their mothers,
and allowed to play outside, thereby developing the physical senses that will be the most important
tools in their acquisition of knowledge.
However, the education Rousseau proposes involves working only with a private tutor and studying
and reading only what he is curious about, only that which is useful or pleasing that in this
manner mile will essentially educate himself and be excited about learning.

Emile initially received the most attention for the Creed of the Savoyard Priest. Rousseaus
insistence that God and religion should be discovered freely, not preached to small children.

Books III and IV -Transitional stages of adolescence

At this stage, mile is also ready for religious education, and in a subsection of book IV
called the Creed of the Savoyard Priest, He describes mile receiving a lesson from the Savoyard
Priest, who outlines the proper relationship a virtuous natural man such as mile should hold with
God, the scripture, and the church. The main thrust of the priests instruction is that mile should
approach religion as a skeptic and a freethinker and that he should discover the greatness and truth of
God through his own discovery of it, not through the forced ingestion of the churchs dogma.

Book V: The Age of Wisdom

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It corresponds roughly to the ages of twenty through twenty-five. Rousseau claims that this
stage is followed by the Age of Happiness, the final stage of development, which he does not address
in mile, he immediately encounters woman, in the form of Sophie. Rousseau devotes a large part of
the concluding section to their love story as well as to a discussion of female education.
The character of Sophie allows Rousseau to present how the boys should be educated. Their
education should be paid to the theoretical ideas and their physical development.
But while Rousseau is often credited with a view of human equality, the reality is that he did not
include women fully in that sense of equality. Women were, for Rousseau, weaker and less
rational than men, and must depend on men. Men, for Rousseau, desire women but do not
need them; women, he wrote, both desire men and need them. His main work that deals with
women and makes clear that his statements about man and men in other works likely are not
meant to apply to women is Emile, where he writes about the difference between what he believes
women and men need in education.
The character of Sophie allows Rousseau to present how the boys should be educated. Their
education should be paid to the theoretical ideas and their physical development.
But while Rousseau is often credited with a view of human equality, the reality is that he did
not include women fully in that sense of equality. Women were, for Rousseau, weaker and less
rational than men, and must depend on men. Men, for Rousseau, desire women but do not need
them; women, he wrote, both desire men and need them. His main work that deals with women
and makes clear that his statements about man and men in other works likely are not meant to
apply to women .
An extract describing how Rousseaus would educate Emile is to be found in Chapter 7. Rousseau
argues that women should receive a different kind of education than men. Sophy should be as truly a
woman as Emile is a man., i.e., she must posses all those characters of her sex which are required to
enable her to play her part in the physical and moral order. the teaching of nature, who has given
woman such a pleasant, easy wit nature means them to think, to will, to love, to cultivate their
minds as well as their persons; [nature] puts these weapons in their hands to make up for their lack of
strength and to enable them to direct the strength of men. They should learn many things, but only
such things as are suitable.
The childrens health depends in the first place on the mothers and the early education of
man is also in a womans hands; his morals, his passions, his tastes, his pleasures his happiness itself,
depend on her. A womans education must therefore be planned in relation to man Do not be
afraid to educate your women as women; teach them a womans business, that they be modest, that
they may know how to manage their house and look after their family.
Many of the ideas that Rousseau forwarded in mile concerning human development and the
wonders of childhood presage the work of many of the most highly regarded psychologists and
educators of the present day.

Les Confessions (The Confessions)

Rousseaus own account of his life is given in great detail in his Confessions. It tells his
entire life detailing all his imperfections, virtues, individual neuroses, and formative childhood
experiences as a means of explaining and justifying the views and personality of his adult self.
Rousseau begins his Confessions by claiming that he is about to embark on an enterprise never
before attempted: to present a self-portrait that is in every way true to nature and that hides
nothing. Rousseau is at the same time trying both to justify his actions to the public so that he might
gain its approval, but also to affirm his own uniqueness as a critic of that same public. Rousseau
concludes the Confessions in 1765, when he is fifty-three. His Confessions were published several
years was only partially published in 1782, four years after his death.
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