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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the author of several major works in political philosophy, including the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts; The Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality; On the Social Contract, and Émile, or On Education. His gifts, however, were many, and his achievements were not limited to philosophy: Rousseau's opera, The Village Soothsayer, delighted the royal court and the public; his romantic novel, Julie, or the New Héloise, became an instant and enduring bestseller; and his autobiographical works, particularly the Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker, pioneered an entirely new approach to self-revelatory writing. Rousseau's contemporaries regarded him as a man of paradoxes, as he was: a son of the Enlightenment who denied the possibility of moral progress and celebrated the ...
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