Jean-Jacques Rousseau (he called himself J.J.) was a famous writer and thinker of the eighteenth century. His specialty was to pugnaciously disagree with political and religious philosophers. One of his ideas was the social contract. He said that humans were basically good—not passionately good, but inclined to enjoy being good to one another. They did not need political systems (kings, knights, dictators, etc.) or religions (the threat of excommunication and hell) to be good, but just to be given the chance to form a contract of goodness with one another. I realize the full idea is more complex than this, and you are welcome to read more about it.
Rousseau was a great and almost daily walker. It is easy to assume that he used his daily walks to think of new and inspiring ideas about which to write. He stopped in a wooded area after visiting Diderot in prison in 1749. The hike was only three miles, but it is where he had his revelation about the social contract. This was not a wilderness area, but within metropolitan Paris. Still, it was not in a house or library or church, at least. Many writers, including myself, get a lot of ideas while walking. Is this why Rousseau walked?
For the most part the answer is no. His personal views can be kindly described as utter despair, and were most likely paranoia. His daily walks were to forget his past and to be the good man that Nature intended him to be. He described ten walks in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker. None of them were actual walks that he had taken, but were mostly unsorted piles of gripes and complaints. In his First Walk, Rousseau said that nobody could force you to be miserable. He was calm, because, he said, there is nothing more his enemies could do to him. He continued his self-pity in Walk Three, where he said he hoped for little, and received less. But he kept walking, saying that “I need to endure the miseries of my life.” He almost gave up trying to figure out his tribulations; I found myself wishing he had, in fact, given up. He said Solon, the Roman thinker, learned something new every day. But Rousseau said his old brain was worn out and he could not learn anything new. I just hope that as I get older I will never believe this about myself. He believed himself to be the most miserable of humans because literally everyone hated him, except his wife. And so on, with Walks 8, 9, and 10. He had to be a solitary walker, he said, because to understand society he had to stand outside of it. Also, I’m not sure he would have been such a good traveling companion for anyone.
He had some reason to be paranoid. When he lived in Môtiers, France, his house was stoned, breaking his window. The hostility of the local people was probably because he questioned the goodness of religion. During Rousseau’s life, many pamphlets were published against him. Some were apparently written by Voltaire. As Will and Ariel Durant describe it,
In Voltaire and Rousseau we see again the old clash between intellect and instinct. Voltaire believed in reason always; but Rousseau had little faith in reason; he desired action. In spite of his disagreement, Voltaire respected Rousseau’s right to speak what he believed in… Voltaire didn’t agree with Rousseau’s denunciation of civilization. He informs Rousseau that man is by nature a beast of prey, and that civilized society means a chaining of this beast…
But I have not seen evidence (not being an historian, this is not surprising) that people were preparing false and defamatory documents to be inserted into his works to be “discovered” upon his death. Rousseau was not an easy man to like; he could like you and then, as with David Hume and Dénis Diderot, change his mind about you completely.
For most of his life, Rousseau’s walks were nearly blind, as he thought only about himself. He looked at his path only enough to keep from tripping over sticks and stones. But for a brief time, this was not the case. See the next essay.
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