Rousseau & the Fall

I found it interesting to read more about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s life. As he stated “Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains” – I believe that this was largely based off of his experiences in life. As his mother died soon after giving birth to him, his father never forgave him and later abandoned him. He suffered from poor health, moved around to different relatives, going from job to job. As a young adult, he was filled with sexual desire, not knowing what to do about it. He stated, “My heated blood incessantly filled my brain with girls and women; but, ignorant of the relations of sex, I made use of them in my imagination in accordance with my distorted notion (1781/1996, p. 94). Because of these thoughts, he sought sexual satisfaction through exhibitionism – and one time when caught, he told the man who caught him that he was of good birth but suffered a brain affliction for which his family was about to confine him.

            It is because of these accounts that I believe Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s beliefs can be seen through the perspective of the fall. As a man who began life with unfortunate things happening to him – his father blaming him for the death of his mother, for example – he saw man as inherently good. Because of society, and the evil that occur in our world, Rousseau’s world was drastically changed. I believe that we see this through the fall. It’s the same question that so many people are asking, ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ As we live in an evil world, where bad things do happen, it is because of the fall, man’s original choice to sin, that we are so deeply affected by other people (society’s) actions.