Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His father was a watchmaker. Rousseau's early education was at the Collège de Clermont (which he left after one year because of its Calvinistic teachings), and then at the Lycée de la Trinité in Lyon. He took part in the French Revolution as a republican and was sent to Paris as an envoy to the court of Louis XVI
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He played no active part, but his house was searched by the Committee of Public Safety because he had not made any anti-revolutionary remarks. Unable to support himself during the Reign of Terror, he took to writing, having already produced some political pamphlets. His first work, Émile or On Education, appeared anonymously during 1762; his second work, Discourse on Inequality, appeared under his own name in 1773.
The Discourse on Inequality became one of the most famous statements of his philosophy of life. It contains arguments for the inequality of men and women, for autocracy over democracy, for slavery over freedom. The Discourse on Inequality is an eloquent defense of inequality and autocracy as appropriate institutions for human society.