Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. One Sunday evening in March 1728, when he was not yet sixteen, Rousseau found himself shut out of Geneva after a walk in the country. He had forgotten the time, and the city gates were closed when he reached them. This had happened to him twice before, and his master had beaten him for staying out all night. This time he decided he would not go back at all. So his life of wandering began. Rousseau was never able to adjust to life in any country. How much of his trouble was of social or psychological origin, and how much of it was due to his physical malady, a urological disorder that caused him discomfort and embarrasement throughout his life, cannot be known.

He had tried to do what a young man making his way in the world was supposed to do. He had various love affairs. He had given up his ancestral Protestantism and entered the catholic Church. He had enjjoyed the patrinage of the high born. He hah used influence to be appointed secretary ti the French embassy at Venice. He had written operas that were well received,and he had also been accepted by Diderot and other enlightenment thinkers, and was affected by their view

To apply the ideas of Social Contract, and attempt to impose a general willwher no general will existed, to create a nation in a country where influential persons prefered to remain an estate, to force people intoi a kind of community that they did not want, could lead only to dictatorial rule. Something of this kind happened in France during the Revolution. Revolution by its nature is a time when the general will has collapsed, the bonds of association have been broken, and change by legal methods has become impossible. The necessity to create a general will in France during the war with Europe in 1792 was often justified by citations of the Social Contract, and did in fact contribute to the quasi-totalitarianism of the Terror. However, Rousseau was not writing as a tactician of revolution. He did not pretend to tell how a people should go about becoming democratic. In fact, he confused this whole issue by identifying legislative with sovereign power, and by his negative attitude toward representative institutions. Primarily, he was writing a critique of the world as he knew it, of what later became to be known as the Old Regime.

Rpusseau became the great revoulutionary of a revoutionary age. He revoutionized the nature of aauthority itself. He denied the existence of authority apart from the individual over whom it is exercised. For him there were by rights no goveernors nd go0verned, no rulers and no ruled. There was no law except law wille dy living men. This was his greearest heresy from many points of view, including Christianity. It was also his greates affimation in politcal theory. He was the most important revolutionary because it was a moral revolution that he called for. A revolution in the personlity and the inclination of the will. Man, according to Rousseau, shoul act not from custom nor rule nor command, divine or human. Nor from laboriously learned princioples of proper behavior. He shoul act freely and spontaneously according to his own better self, the divine spark within him, the virtue which might be suffocated by a bad form of society,bu

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1414
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)