Jean-Jacques Rousseau Section From Confessions
The primary confession that Jean Jacques Rousseau makes in this excerpt from his work of literature entitled Confessions is the fact that he was inadvertently responsible for the death of his mother. Evidently, his mother died during or shortly thereafter giving birth to him, because the author writes, "I was born, a poor and sickly child, and cost my mother her life. So my birth was the first of my misfortunes" (Rousseau 167). This confession is extremely deserving of the reader's sympathy, and the author certainly inspires sympathy in me after making this revelation. It is extremely difficult for children to lose their mother; I believe that it is even worse for children to grow up without ever having a mother. This difficulty is inherently exacerbated by seeing other children's mothers, and seeing how valuable they are to the lives of their children, and realizing that some twist of fortune has made it so that a particular child cannot have such a valuable presence in his or her life.
Moreover, in the case of Rousseau, it appears as though his mother was quite a woman in her own right, so that his loss must have been doubly arduous to endure. The author spends the duration of this excerpt detailing the relationship between his parents. After beginning by informing the reader that everything heretofore will be true, he begins by detailing the intimacies of his parent's relationship, which began when they were in childhood. The author informs the reader of the depths of the love that they had for one another, which spanned travel on at least two occasions, and tells the reader the parallel circumstances of their marriage with that of their forebears. The author also writes about how devastating the loss of his mother was to his father, and alludes to the fact that as a sickly child, he only lived due to the nursing of an aunt who he...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Personal Background Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28th 1712, in Geneva, a French-speaking city-state within Switzerland. He received little formal education and, in 1728, left Geneva to live an unsettled existence, travelling throughout Europe. Although mainly self-taught, Rousseau became a respected novelist, composer, musicologist, and botanist, in addition to his most commonly recognized contribution, as a moral, political and educational philosopher. He first came to prominence as a writer
" Rousseau on Political Representation, Democracy, Law, and the Need for Legislators: In Book II, Chapter 3, Rousseau expresses the position that a representative form of democratic government undermines a true democracy where each individual maintains his own point-of-view without aligning himself with any sub-group or political party, because: when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the European theorists who has been cited as an inspiration for the Founding Fathers as they wrote the U.S. Constitution and created the American form of government. In some ways, however, they were using what Rousseau wrote as a beginning point and then finding a governmental form to refute some of Rousseau's concerns for what representative government might become if not controlled. The authors of
Martin Luther King can also allude to Rousseau in the formation of the concept of civil disobedience. As Scott notes, "Rousseau argues that civil society is based on a contractual arrangement of rights and duties which applies equally to all people, whereby natural liberty is exchanged for civil liberty, and whereby natural rights are exchanged for legal rights." Legal rights are a natural extension of natural human rights. If
For Smith, however, the development of a commercial and economic society leads to the existence of a social structure. This social structure is furthermore divided into three classes - the landowners, the capitalists and the laborers. This is considered by Smith to be the three great constituent that exist in every single civilized society. For him, the introduction of social structures like government and economic classes are the major causes
jean-Jacques rousseau Confessions and others and Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life Upon first impression, few similarities appear between Confessions, the autobiography of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The former is written by a Caucasian European in the 18th century; the latter by an African-American who lived in the 19th century. However, upon examining these works of literature more acutely, a number of
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now