To: LindyBill who wrote (10146 ) 3/3/2007 2:21:49 PM From: Maurice Winn Read Replies (2) | Respond to I'm a philistine, so although having heard of Rousseau, had no idea what he was about. He said people are innately good. Looks like innately selfish to me and he an excellent example, including with his own children: <From 1743 to 1744, he was secretary to the French ambassador in Venice, whose republican government Rousseau would refer to often in his later political work. After this, he returned to Paris, where he befriended and lived with Thérèse Levasseur, a semi-literate seamstress who, according to Rousseau, bore him five children, though this number may not be accurate. All the children were deposited at a foundling hospital soon after birth and would most likely have perished soon afterwards, as the mortality rate for such children was very high. Rousseau's abandonment of his children became a source of embarrassment once he became known as a theorist of education and child-rearing, and was used by enemies including Voltaire to attack him. In his defense, Rousseau explained that he would have been a poor father, and, implausibly, that the children would have a better life at the foundling home. >
