Letters Written from the Mountain

essay by Rousseau

Also known as: “Lettres écrites de la montagne”

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June 30, 2026

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Letters Written from the Mountain (1764) is a polemical work by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written in response to the suppression of his influential treatise The Social Contract in Geneva. In this work, Rousseau criticizes the Genevan authorities, whom he accuses of tyranny and of deviating from the principles of their republic.1

Rousseau argues that true liberty is found in obedience to self-imposed laws, guided by the "general will" of the people. He contrasts this ideal with the corrupt state of contemporary society, which he believed had led to inequality and alienation from natural goodness. His writings, including Letters Written from the Mountain, profoundly influenced the French Revolution and the Romantic movement by emphasizing emotion, nature, and individual sincerity.234

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Years of seclusion and exile of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
…écrites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). No longer, as in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, was Geneva depicted as a model republic but as one that had been taken over by “twenty-five despots”; the subjects of the king of England were said to be…
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…écrites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). No longer, as in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, was Geneva depicted as a model republic but as one that had been taken over by “twenty-five despots”; the subjects of the king of England were said to be…
Read More