Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva; his mother died a week later. In his early youth, he wandered around Europe, almost destitute. In 1742, he moved to Paris, where he became friends with the young Diderot. In 1749, his essay, the Discourse on the Arts and Science, an attack on the corrupting effects of civilization, won a literary prize. Rousseau composed music, and one of his operettas won acclaim. Tired of Paris, in 1754, he returned to Geneva and to the Protestant Church, having briefly been a Catholic. In his Discourse on the Inequality Among Men (1755), he argues that humans are naturally good, and that injustice is caused by civil society. In 1755, Rousseau and his common-law wife, Thérèse, moved to a cottage on the edge of the forest of Montmorency, where he wrote his popular and romantic novel La Nouvelle Héloïs (1761). In 1762, he published two of his best-known books, The Social Contract and Emile, his work on education. These works made Rousseau an outcast; his revolutionary works were banned, and he faced imprisonment for heresy. Furthermore, his Romantic naturalism and sensitive temperament brought him into conflict with the philosophers of the time, most notably Voltaire and his old friend, Diderot. Whereas Voltaire argued in favor of reason and progress, Rousseau praised spontaneous feeling and nature. For a while, the naturalist philosopher David Hume befriended Rousseau. However, they quarreled and, in 1767, after a 16-month stay in England, Rousseau and Thérèse returned illicitly to France, from which he was officially banned. His frank autobiography, the Confessions, was published posthumously in 1782.
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