Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 10 Buckingham
Street WC2. Rousseau (1712-1778) had a fundamental dislike of England and
the English - but he was prevailed upon to live to England following reaction to
the publication of The Social Contract
and Émile in late 1765 (he arrived in January 1766 accompanied by his
little dog Sultan and spent some 18 months in the country). He was invited and
accompanied to England by David Hume. Initially he lived in rooms found by Hume
at 10 Buckingham Street, London in 1766. However, Rousseau hated
London as it was full of 'black vapours' (Edmonds and Eidinow 2006). He soon
moved out to Chiswick, and then to Wootton Hall in Staffordshire.
Rousseau's great work on education, Émile, drew on thinkers that had preceded him - for example, John Locke on teaching - but he was able to pull together strands into a coherent and comprehensive system - and by using the medium of the novel he was able to dramatize his ideas and reach a very wide audience. He made, it can be argued, the first comprehensive attempt to describe a system of education according to what he saw as ‘nature’. His thinking certainly stresses wholeness and harmony, and a concern for the person of the learner. Central to this was the idea that it was possible to preserve the 'original perfect nature' of the child by controlling their education and environment (based on an analysis of the different physical and psychological stages through which they pass from birth to maturity). This was a fundamental point. Rousseau argued that the momentum for learning was provided by the growth of the person (nature) - and that what the educator needed to do was to facilitate opportunities for learning. He explored a comprehensive scheme of education (a fuller account of which is given on Jean-Jacques Rousseau). The scale of his contribution is indicated by Darling (1994) when he argued that the history of child-centred educational theory is a series of footnotes to Rousseau.
While
in England, Rousseau was, in Robert Wokler's (1995: 14) words, 'overwelmed by
suspicions of an international conspiracy to discredit his character, managing
to bring great misery upon himself, and much discomfort for Hume. Real
persecution compounded the paranoia with which he was undoubtedly afflicted...
for the rest of his life. While in England he started work on (and probably
completed Part One) The Confessions which is 'an important reference
point in the history of literature' (Matravers 1996: viii-ix) - Rousseau took
autobiography beyond the introspection of St. Augustine by 'tracing the casual
aspects of his character back to incidents in his childhood' (op cit).
David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish philospher (perhaps best known for his
Treatise of Human Nature - first published in 1740) had spent a considerable
amount of time in France including being secretary to the British ambassador
(1763-1765).
For a fuller appreciation and links see:
Jean-Jaques Rousseau
Edmonds, D. and Eidinow, J. (2006) Rousseau's Dog. Two great thinkers at war in the age of enlightenment, London: Faber and Faber.
Matravers, D. (1996) 'Introduction' to Rousseau. The Confessions, London: Wordsworth.
Wokler, R. (1996) Rousseau, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
© Mark K. Smith 2000, 2006.
