Jean-Jacques Rousseau sketches a hypothetical educational proposal in his book Emile, or on education. Withthis proposal Rousseau wanted to challenge the established educational methods and describe a strategy that follows ’the course of nature’ and meets the request of the human heart. Rousseau valued freedom highly and he, therefore, struggled with an obvious paradox that we still have not succeeded to deal with successfully, namely how to educate the children for autonomy and at the same time make them appropriate citizens. He solves the problem with Emile by declaring that we have to choose to either create a human being or a citizen, while it is too difficult to combine these two aims. And he thus first embarks on the endeavor to educate Emile to an autonomously thinking and acting individual, and afterward to a citizen. Rousseau’s so called ‘negative’ education is, however, no one-way freedom for the child; it is a freedom that asks for mutual and equal recognition and it is, therefore, no trouble-free approach.

Despite a good intention, it is apparent that Rousseau’s educational theory incorporates not only paradoxes, but also many both normative and unequal elements. Consequently, Rousseau’s vision focuses on equality and justice, but he does not really do away with the authority, but the instruction seems to become an undisclosed control.

My intention with this study is, on the one hand, to discuss if it is possible to educate somebody for freedom, and, secondly, to discuss whether such an education is political or non-political. But, while Emile has been read in so many various ways, I will also discuss what Rousseau might have intended when he wrote Emile.

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