Jean-Jacques Rousseau described this work, published 1762, as his treatise on human nature. His fullest and most mature account of the positive philosophy he elaborated as an answer to the catastrophic situation diagnosed in his first writings, it takes the form of a pedagogical novel in five books, telling of the education of a solitary boy by a wise tutor. The fifth book is devoted to Émile's partner, Sophie, who is brought up to play a traditional wifely role.
Rousseau's programme, partly inspired by Locke, is centred on the notion that the child is a human being in its own right. Émile is not educated to fit into existing society, but to develop his individual potential to the full. This involves a ‘negative’ education, preserving him from harmful social influences and respecting a gradual ‘natural’ development, where the training of the senses precedes book-learning and moral and religious education (the latter being extensively treated in Book 4 in the ‘Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard’). In the last two books the ‘savage’ is reintegrated into society, and learns the lessons of
Émile was condemned by the Sorbonne and the Parlement de Paris for its unorthodox religious doctrine. In the following two centuries it exerted an incalculable influence on innovatory theory and practice in education.
[Peter France]
