Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, “The Confessions” is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his “Confessions” he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy – from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of “Emile”.