How Russeau Predicted Trump:
The Enlightenment philosopher’s attack on cosmopolitan élites now seems prophetic.
Rousseau had little formal education, but he accumulated plenty of experience during a largely unsupervised childhood and adolescence. Born in Geneva in 1712, to a struggling watchmaker and a mother who died shortly after giving birth, he was only ten years old when his father deposited him with indifferent relatives and left town. At the age of fifteen, he ran away and found his way to Savoy, where he quickly became the boy toy of a Swiss-French noblewoman. She turned out to be the great love of his life, introducing him to books and music. Rousseau, always seeking substitutes for his mother, called her Maman.
.. In Rousseau’s view, the newly emergent intellectual and technocratic class did little more than provide literary and moral cover for the powerful and the unjust.
.. Smith argued that the human instinct for emulation of others could be turned into a positive moral and social force.