Jean Jacques Rousseau, the main revolutionary of the illustration

Cultural expressions are the garlands of flowers that adorn the chains of the oppressed

The descriptions of Baron de Lahontan during his visit to the indigenous people of the Huron Nation north of Lake Ontario in Canada around the year 1700 and the multiple plays that were performed during the first half of the 18th century showing the difference between the natural and democratic aboriginal societiesof the American continent and the European authoritarian and slavery governments of Europe in that time, had a lot of influence on Jean Jacques Rousseau who developed his thoughts and literary works as a corollary to the ideas that were spreading in France and other states of the European continent.

At that time, Rousseau wrote his own operetta on the discovery of the "New World." In this work by Rousseau, one of the protagonists was Christopher Columbus himself who, in one of the parliaments, addressing the Native Americans, brandished his sword while shouting at them: "lose your freedom! ".

This contrast between the freedom of the American peoples and the virtual enslavement of Europeans was the central theme of his famous "Speeches". The first of them, one of the most radical documents published in Europe during the 18th century, is the "Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts", written in 1750. In the same Rousseau postulates: "The sciences and arts .. They are like ... garlands of flowers around the iron chains that bind him (to the people), creating for them the feeling of the original freedom for which they seem to have been born, making them love their slavery and transforming them into what are called civilized people ".

The following year in his "Observations" he stated: "The primary source of evil is inequality; inequality has made possible the accumulation of wealth. The words rich and poor are only relative terms; wherever men are equal, there can be neither rich nor poor. Wealth inevitably leads to lust and leisure; lust allows the cultivation of the arts and leisure the cultivation of the sciences. " Some time later in his "Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality between men" he pointed out the negative role of iron and wheat in the emergence of civilization and private property: "They are iron and wheat that have civilized men and ruined the human race ... From the cultivation of the land necessarily followed their division. When the inheritances increased to the point of covering the whole earth and touching each other ... The nascent society gave rise to the state most terrible war ". Later, the French thinker wrote a treatise on education called "Emile: or on education", and finally, his famous work "On the Social Contract". In 1780 he translated Tomas Moro's "Utopia" into French, showing how linked the approaches of the "enlightened" European utopians of the eighteenth century were with the precursors of the sixteenth century. Also from the middle of the eighteenth century dates the production of Montesquieu who, in his book "The Spirit of Laws" (1748), emphasized the concept of freedom and equality among the native American peoples. Since they had no possessions, there was no inequality, no cause for theft, and no abuse of others for money reasons.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712 and died in Ermenoville, France. He was a writer, pedagogue, philosopher, musician, botanist and naturalist who stood out as one of the main protagonists of European "enlightenment".