Born in 1712 in the republic of Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the son of Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard, who died nine days after giving birth to him. As one of a minority of Genevans who were citizens and therefore able to participate politically, Isaac instilled a love of republicanism in his son, which would express itself strongly in later writings including The Social Contract. When Rousseau was ten, his father was forced into exile to avoid imprisonment after a quarrel. According to his memoirs, Rousseau only saw his father four more times in his life after that.

Throughout his teenage and young adult life, Rousseau volleyed between a series of vocations including engraver’s apprentice, domestic servant, and itinerant musician; he also trained briefly to become a Catholic priest. His career as a writer and public intellectual began in 1749 when, while walking on the outskirts of Paris, he saw an advertisement for an essay contest held by the Academy of Dijon. Rousseau’s submission, titled Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, argued in contrarian fashion that an immersion in the arts and sciences corrodes moral character and civic virtue. The thesis that society corrupts humankind emerges across his work, including in The Social Contract in which he ponders what type of political association is least likely to erode humanity’s natural rights and virtues.