A Third Birth: Rousseau’s Education to Moral Judgment in Julie, or the New Heloise

Rousseau is well-known for his work on education, entitled Emile, or On Education, and equally vilified for the gendered education presented in its concluding chapter. This is not his only educational offering, however. He proposes an alternative moral education in his preceding novel, Julie, or the New Heloise, and this education avoids the problems inherent in Emile’s and Sophie’s educations, as well as offering us contemporary readers something more palatable. In Emile, the characters receive gendered educations that make them dependent moral halves, necessitated by the “second birth” of humans as sexual beings, whereas in Julie, the characters receive an education that cultivates both masculine and feminine judgment in each to make them independent moral agents, constituting a possible “third birth” for humans. While this education is perhaps only suitable in certain contexts, it reveals a complexity to Rousseau’s thought on women and education that has not been previously acknowledged.