Bao Huo Lao Biographies Library · Giants 100 Biographies Series -- Rousseau

Author: Li Wei (Compiler)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-10-01
Features: We are delighted to recommend the "Giant Biographies Series" to young friends. At the turn of the century, having such a fine series accompany you is a joy in wisdom. We believe that from the footsteps of these giants and masters, you can learn how to properly handle success and failure, comfort and hardship, joy and pain, smoothness and tribulation, understand how to face life, how to be a person, how to seek knowledge, how to shape oneself, and how to shape the future.
Principal of Peking University, Secretary Zhao Yulin
Principal of Tsinghua University, Secretary Zhao Qinggang
Giants are the elite of humanity. They have made outstanding contributions to the progress and civilization of human society. Their spirit of struggle and extraordinary achievements are deeply admired by people, becoming models for others to learn from. Giants are human, not gods; they come from ordinary people yet surpass them. Their lofty ideals and belief in seeking happiness for the motherland and humanity are the driving forces behind their relentless efforts and fearlessness of difficulties.
Principal of Tianjin Nankai Middle School, Kang Xiuyan
To carefully read this series of books is like seeing their appearance, speech, and actions, feeling their ideals, beliefs, aspirations, and moral character. This will help you learn how to be a person, how to pursue knowledge, and how to build a career.
Principal of Fudan University, Cao Tianren
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a great 18th-century French Enlightenment thinker. His writings on political democracy became the theoretical guide for the radical Jacobin party during the French Revolution. However, his achievements extended far beyond this. The artistic principles he expressed in some of his literary works continued to evolve in later generations. Rousseau's great-grandfather was a French Protestant who came to Switzerland in the mid-16th century to escape religious persecution. Rousseau was born into a family of clockmakers in Geneva. He lost his mother at birth but, encouraged by his father, read many biographies of famous figures from ancient Greek and Roman literature. At the age of 10, he was sent to the pastor of La Mole, where he learned Latin within two years. From 13 to 15, he worked as an apprentice for a cruel engraver, enduring many hardships. Two years later, he finally quit his job and left his hometown, arriving in France and embarking on a long life of wandering. Here, Madame de Warren was both a refuge during his nomadic life and a woman he deeply loved in his overly rich and somewhat unhealthy romantic life; here, he spent nearly a decade of romantic and stable life. In 1749, Rousseau's essay "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" won him fame. Although this brought him immediate recognition, it also gradually revealed his ideological differences with other Enlightenment thinkers. He gradually broke away from the Encyclopedists. The years he spent near the Montmorency Forest in France were a fruitful period in his literary career, during which three of his four major works—"Julie, or the New Eloise," "The Social Contract," "Emile," and "Confessions"—were published. Because "Emile" angered both the authorities and the Encyclopedists, Rousseau fled into exile in Switzerland and other places, returning to France later but still finding no peace. In his later years, he lived in isolation in Paris, completing "Confessions" during this time. Rousseau died in 1778 on the estate of a marquis. After the French bourgeoisie revolution, his remains were moved to the Pantheon in Paris in a solemn ceremony in 1794.