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The House of Jean-jacques Rousseau in Geneva (Switzerland)

“The right of slavery is null, not only because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and does not mean anything. These words, slavery and right, are contradictory. ” “The right of conquest, not being a right, could not found any other. »
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Du Contrat Social - 1762

The Espace Rousseau Geneva

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in 1712 in Geneva and died in 1778 in Ermenonville, condemned slavery in its essence and the very principle of servitude, which makes a man an object, deprived of any right and any legal personality.

Such a condemnation of the very principle of slavery is a major innovation in the history of humanity. Indeed, none since antiquity had ever pronounced such condemnation, limiting himself to requiring masters a human treatment, soft and moderate, of their slaves, whose legitimacy of their servitude was long justified by these authors. After his death, his body was transferred on the Pantheon of Paris in 1794.