The groundbreaking thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau changed history and undermined the three pillars of eighteenth-century French society: the monarchy, the Catholic church and the propertied classes. He pointed out that the interests of the overwhelming majority of the French population were completely ignored by the government: “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” He proposed a republic founded on the sovereignty of the people where each man had one vote and religious tolerance was the norm. To these proposals made by the very greatest political philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, the authorities reacted with outrage with calls for his arrest. Rousseau’s words reflect the way we live today but would also inspire some of the worst episodes of the French Revolution. What was the legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau? He was a champion of universal human rights, a great critic of inequality, and one of the most remarkable writers on civic education―as well as the author of paradoxes, resulting in some of his contemporaries considering him as a charlatan. He was an extraordinarily versatile poet, composer, playwright, novelist, botanist, educationist and political philosopher, who deserved his place among the leading thinkers of his century. He is often considered as an heir to Plato, Saint Augustine, Montaigne and Thomas Hobbes and a predecessor of Emmanuel Kant and Karl Marx. The book falls into two parts: an account of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s life; and an attempt to explain the content of his major publications. It is one of the few recent books to address the life and work of this profound thinker.