Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78) A controversial social philosopher and educationalist of the French Enlightenment, whose writings centred around the development of social contract theory, a theory of human nature as essentially open but subsequently enchained, and a democratic theory of government. Rousseau's status as an early social theorist depends upon the reader's attitude to the many contradictions in his work. In different places he argued both that scientific inquiry should be shunned, since it corrupted public virtue, yet himself offered systematic studies of social inequality; and insisted that nature and society were in irreconcilable contradiction, yet offered a theory of the state which presupposes the ability of individuals to reconcile their own interests with those of others, and to identify with the general will as expressed in the sovereign body. His major text is probably The Social Contract (1762)—although the conception of a legitimate polity proffered therein has been much more influential in political philosophy than sociology.