Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer who was one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the Enlightenment. He argued that human beings are naturally good and that it is society that corrupts them. His Social Contract opened with the declaration that "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains", and proposed that legitimate political authority requires a general will that all citizens share in forming.

Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution, Romanticism, and progressive educational theory was enormous. His Confessions pioneered the modern autobiography, and his Emile revolutionised thinking about childhood and education by treating the child as naturally curious and rational rather than as a vessel for adult instruction.