emile or on education by jean jacques rousseau

Book IV outlines the challenges of the teenage world and finally, in book V, covering the early '20s, Rousseau introduces Sophie. Book III sees Rousseau placing high on the agenda the learning of a trade, especially a manual skill, and notes the crucial effect played by role models. He argues that this is the time to encounter nature directly in all its varying delights. Rousseau outlines his educational philosophy: ‘Plants are fashioned by cultivation, man by education.’ In book II, Rousseau focusses on the growing child, the child and its place in the world. In book I, Rousseau discusses the challenges of man as a self-centred being, who nevertheless has to learn to live in the world.

This device personalises what would otherwise be a more formal philosophical presentation.Įmile or On Education is divided into five parts.

This was partly fuelled by the format - for Rousseau presents before us the boy Emile, taking him through the various stages of life, and as Emile becomes a young man, introducing a female counterpart, Sophie. Published in 1762, it had a profound impact on the approach to the education and upbringing of a child, through infancy, childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality may be the two principal philosophical works for which Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is remembered today, but his educational treatise-novel, Emile or On Education, can claim to be an equally important and, for its time, radical work.

Emile or on education by jean jacques rousseau