Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Pre-reading
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.
èmile,or On Education, Rousseau’s masterpiece,is a kind of half treatise, half novel that tells the life story of a fictional man named èmile. In it, Rousseau traces the course of èmile’s development and the education he receives, an education designed to create in him all the virtues of Rousseau’s idealized “natural man”, uncorrupted by modern society.
The following passage is an excerpt from Book 1 of Rousseau’s èmile, or On Education.
Prompts for Your Reading
1.According to Rousseau, why is Man in need of education?
2.What are the three categories in Rousseau’s notion of education?
3.How does Rousseau describe the dynamics among the three factors in education?
4.What is Rousseau’s definition of nature?
5.What is the major argument in Paragraph 11 concerning habits?
6.What are those prejudices that Rousseau has mentioned in Paragraphs 12 and 13?
7.Which does Rousseau believe to be more essential, to do well in a calling or to be a man?
8.How should a child be taught according to Rousseau?
9.Make a list of the ideas expressed in this passage. Can this list help you figure out the essence in Rousseau’s philosophy of education?
[1] God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another’s fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master’s taste like the trees in his garden.