Who wrote "Emile: or, On Education", and what was it about?

Zbeckabee

Emile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile:_or,_On_Education As its title implies, Emile is a treatise on the nature of education but also on the nature of man. It tackles fundamental political and philosophical questions about the relationship between the individual and society— how, in particular, the individual might retain what Rousseau saw as innate human goodness while remaining part of a corrupting collectivity. Its opening sentence: “Everything is good in leaving the hands of the Creator of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” Oct 26 09, 10:22 PM