Emile or On Education: Book Review

• Title: Emile or On Education
• Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Introduction, Translation, and Notes: Allan Bloom
• Published: New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1979 (Originally published in 1762)

About the Author[1]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher and music theorist, was born June 28, 1712 and died July 2, 1778.  His father was a watchmaker and his mother was the niece of a Calvinist minister who died a few days after giving birth.  In 1728 he converted to Catholicism and the next year joined a seminary.  He dropped out of the seminary and taught music to girls of wealthy families.  In 1745 he commenced a relationship with Thérèse Levasseur who was the chambermaid of the hotel where he was staying.  They had five children together and all of them were sent immediately to the local foundling home.  He married Thérèse in a civil ceremony in 1768.  He worked with the Encyclopedists, Diderot and d’Alembert, writing all the articles pertaining to music for the Encyclopédie.  In 1754 he reverted to Calvinism and again became a citizen of Geneva.  His more famous literary works are Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), Emile, or On Education (1762), The Social Contract (1762), and The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782).

My Perspective

Emile is the name of the fictional young man that Rousseau raises from an infant to a married man as his governor.  Over the course of five books (chapters) he step by step manipulates and controls every stage of growth for this average specimen of a man.  One has to ask what type of man, government, or society would be required to implement this educational plan.  It is a recipe for a new utopia, an exploration of how to create the model citizen of the new world.  Rousseau himself is a paradox.  He hates books and says they are not needed as they corrupt the youth and then he gives his charge a copy of Robinson Crusoe and has his charge’s bride to be an avid reader of Telemachus.  Not to mention the fact that Rousseau himself wrote several books.  He declaims the arts and sciences and yet was himself a music teacher and theorist.  He writes a book on how to raise children and yet sent his own children away to the orphanage. 

Even with all this, Rousseau pulls off an intriguing book filled with psychological, philosophical, and anthropological observations and his own conclusions or solutions to the society’s problems.  One of my favorite books is Plato’s Republic.  Even though there is much I disagree with in this work, there is also much that I find interesting and worth pondering over.  He is an excellent artist, as in his book is like a portrait, where he paints a picture of his view of society and his solution to correct it.  He likens society to being ill and needs to get well.

His assumptions appear to be that man is a blank slate when he is born.  Man is not a social creature by nature but is forced to become a part of society and this is actually where the evil comes in.  He is attempting to create a situation where the individual has been groomed and strengthened by a particular regimen of physical, mental, and moral exercises that will give him the strength to stand up to societies inherent evils and be a true man.

One reading of this book is just enough to scratch the surface.  It is the type that many readings, discussions, classes and perhaps years could be devoted to it without it being declared a waste of time.  That person is not me.  Although I would read it again if I was given a good incentive, such as a friend reading it and they want to discuss it.  There is one section that particularly stood out and that was the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” in Book IV.  This part got Rousseau in quite a bit of trouble with the religious authorities when it came out.  It is worth reading by itself and I do believe is available as a standalone excerpt.

I have already read his Social Contract and Julie, or the New Heloise, perhaps someday soon I will read The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and this will give me a better idea of the man behind the book.

[1] Launay, Michel C., “Rousseau, Jean-Jacques”, in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Ed. Macropaedia Bk. 15, (1983) 1170-1173