Jean Jacques Rousseau

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Swiss philosopher, the most influential of the 18th century in political and social theory and in literature. Rousseau dreamed of the small, simple equalitarian state and that man and God are inherently good. He was essentially the founder of progressive education. Rousseau's novel Emile, or On Education is a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was of importance to the development of pre-romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker—exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's domestic partner Thérèse Levasseur, a seamstress, bore him a son and as many as four other children, all of whom he abandoned. Rousseau died of cerebral bleeding resulting in an apoplectic stroke at around 11:30 a.m. on 2 July 1778 in Ermenonville, France. Link to Wikipedia biography