Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first of the modern intellectuals. He was born in 1712 and died in 1778. He was born in Switzerland and raised as a Calvinist. Rousseau had an older brother and no younger siblings since his mother died soon after his birth. His brother ran away when he was young and he himself ran away at the age of fifteen and converted to Catholicism. He lived with Madame Francoise-Louis de Warens in Annecy for almost fourteen years. He tried a variety of occupations and failed at all of them. He even worked for eleven months as the secretary to the French Ambassador to Venice and fled rather than be arrested by the Ventian State. He lived off of women until he was in his thirties and even tried his luck as a seminary student.

Rousseau viewed himself as a natural writer, although he did not always...