door knocker/handle, oratorio di san Sebastiano dei Bini, Firenze, Italy

 

 

door knocker, Prato, Italy

window latch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau meseum, Les Charmettes, France

 

“Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment...”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Meditations of a Solitary Walker

door jamb, bedroom, Jean-acques Rosseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

 

 

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written."

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

water tank in the garden of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

 

“The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms crossed in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardour the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Confessions”

door latch*, Jean-Jacques Rousseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

“The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract and The Discourses”

 

the famous and influential The Social Contract was Rousseau's piece de resistance when it came to revolutionary thinking and abstract political thought. this work stressed a new concept; that of the "social contract". this contract was a mutual indenture between the people and the government, in which "the governed agree to be ruled only so that their rights, property and happiness [will] be protected by their rulers". the salient point of this entire work, onto which the French revolutionaries clung, was the idea that should this social contract be violated, "the governed are free to chose another set of governors or magistrates". this idea influenced both the formation of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (1789, the French Constitution) and the Declaration of Independence (1775, the American Constitution). its influence is also seen in the fact that both the French and American revolutions ended with "contracts", outlining the rights and liberties of the governed. these contracts specified that government should protect the rights of every citizen, not just the wealthy and powerful members of society. this idea, however, was sometimes taken too far: Rousseau was not, as some have believed, encouraging anarchist thought. rather than just a simple disagreement between a people and its leaders, it was only when political authority broke the basic premise of the social contract and individual liberty was replaced by inequality that Rousseau believed that government should be torn down. so, although he supported the dismantlement of a government IF the government was in breach of their 'social contract', Rousseau still believed in order and civil obedience

 

* think the philips screws aren't original 17th century

window bars, outbuilding, Jean-Jacques Roussau museum, Les Charmettes, France

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are."

― Jean Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract and The Discourses
 

 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced the French revolution by altering the idea of the effects of civilization upon natural freedoms. Rousseau was a composer, music theorist and novelist, as well as a political thinker of the Enlightenment. Rousseau mainly effected the French perception of civilization's consequences upon liberty and most of his works deal with the mechanisms through which humans are forced to give up liberty.  his main idea can be summed up in the first line of his most renowned work, The Social Contract (1762): "Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains". Rousseau argued that civilization affected liberty in a negative way, as opposed to the original perception in which civilization enhanced human liberty. Rousseau's idea of a perfect government was a republic. he believed that "a people could only be free if it ruled itself". he also believed that freedom was, in effect, "ruling oneself, living under a law which one has oneself enacted” or a system approved and made by the people. his ideas influenced many revolutionary figures - both negatively and positively - including Maximillien Robespierre (1758 - 1794), who twisted Rousseau's ideas, such as the idea that citizens have the right to rebel against their civilization, to fit his own purposes during the "Reign of Terror".

back door with ring attachment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

 “The greatest enemies of freedom are the extremely rich and the extremely poor, because one is willing to buy it while the other is willing to sell it.”

― Jean Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract and The Discourses”

front door handle and escutcheon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

i have just returned from two weeks in Italy and France

on the drive back i stopped overnight in Les Charmettes a picturesque hamlet near the town of Chambéry in the Savoie region of France; it is famed as a favourite retreat of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).

in 1728, Jean-Jacques Rousseau fled a watch-matching apprenticeship in Geneva and took refuge with Françoise-Louise de Warens, or Madame de Warens, who became his mistress and mentor whom Rousseau affectionately referred to as maman (mother) – she was 13 years Rousseau's senior.

in the summer of 1736, Rousseau and maman moved into a country house called Les Charmettes  which figures prominently in Rousseau's Confessions (Books V and VI) -according to him, his sojourn at Les Charmettes constituted "the short period of my life's happiness" and was instrumental in the development of his love of nature and the simple country life

during the revolutionary and subsequent romantic periods, Les Charmettes became a symbol of Rousseau's revolutionary thought as well as a shrine attracting such literary and political celebrities as George Sand and Alphonse de Lamartine

in 1905 Les Charmettes was classified an historical monument by the French government, the house and its grounds are now a museum open to the public

 

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract and The Discourses”

objet trouvé 14: intimate metamorphosis

 

objet trouvé 13: confirmed bachelor number 2 (rouge et rouille)

objets trouvés 12: compilation of sensitive innocence

objet trouvé 11: kinetic purity

objet trouvé 10: reincarnated impression of intuitive perception