Emile

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism of French expression. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological, and educational thought.

Emile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Rousseau in 1762, who considered it to be the best and most important of all his writings. Because of the section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762. During the French Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education.