Rousseau (Katharine Yan)

My name is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and I was born on June 28th, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland. When I was 30 years old, I left for Paris to become a composer. I worked for the French embassy, while composing a few operas. My first philosophical work was entitled A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, which praised rationalism and discussed how art and science corrupted morality and that civilization was in a downward spiral. Unlike my first work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, proposed that reason was the cause of all problems and that the people of our society lived based on other people's opinions of them. I then published several influential bestselling books, such as Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right and Èmile, or on Education.  I argued that society was what corrupted the innocence of naturally good people. Only freely elected governments should be able to place limited controls on people. I also believed that the good of the community is more important than the interests of one individual. Because my writing caused major scandals, I was banned from France for a while, but returned to Paris in 1770. I published one of the first autobiographies, Confessions, before I died on July 2nd, 1778 in Ermenonville, France. Although I am a philosophe of the Enlightenment, my ideas have impacted other thinkers long after my time.