LOST was filled with vague references and illusions to philosophers.
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" said philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was born in Geneva in 1712.
Rousseau left home at 16 and wandered around Europe for the next 14 years. He moved to Paris when he was 30, and took up with a group of philosophers. He also took up with Thérèse Le Vasseur, a semi-literate laundry maid at his hostel; the two began a lifelong relationship that produced five children, according to Rousseau. He placed all of them into orphanages.
Rousseau was well versed in music, and wrote ballets and operas; he could easily have been successful as a composer, but the stage made his Swiss Calvinist sensibilities uneasy.
One day he was walking to visit his friend and fellow philosopher Denis Diderot, who was in jail, and he had an epiphany:
modern progress had corrupted rather than improved mankind.
He became famous overnight upon publication of his essay "A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts" (1750). The essay informed nearly everything else he wrote, and eventually he would turn away completely from music and the theater to focus on literature. In "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" (1755) he continued to explore the theme that civilization had led to most of what was wrong with people:
living in a society led to envy and covetousness; owning property led to social inequality; possessions led to poverty.
Society exists to provide peace and protect those who owned property, and therefore government is unfairly weighted in favor of the rich.
In it, he wrote: "
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
His work would prove inspirational to the leaders of the French Revolution, and they adopted the slogan from The Social Contract: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
He grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, convinced that his friends were plotting against him. He spent some time in England with David Hume, but his persecution complex eventually alienated him from most of his associates.
Rousseau's character in LOST has some vague patterns to the 18th Century philosopher.
Rousseau came to the island as part of an exploration crew. She was pregnant. Her husband was an intellectual, a scientist. Their ship crashed on the island, which could only mean that Jacob brought them to it as candidates in his game with MIB. She is the second known candidate brought to the island as a pregnant woman. Jacob's own mother shipwrecked on the island centuries earlier, but she was killed by the guardian.
On the island, LOST's Rousseau lost her child to Ben's Others. In a sense, Alex was "an orphan" because Rousseau did not come back to get her bad (until it was too late). Instead, Rousseau abandoned society and lived on the island on her own. As a result, she grew increasingly paranoid in her plots to attack and counterattack against the Others. It was only after she failed to kill Sayid after capturing him did she begin to change her attitude toward her plight.
She began to work with the 815 survivors. Rousseau led the group up to the radio tower, and on the way met her
daughter, Alex. She communicated with her for the first time, and Alex
herself seemed curious about her. The two tied Ben up together, and
headed on to the radio tower. Danielle stated earlier to Jack that she
would help them find rescue, but would not be leaving herself. She said the
Island is the only place she knows, and is her home.
At the native's darkest hour, when Widmore's soldiers were laying siege to the Dharma compound, did Rousseau come to terms with her motherhood. Ben was worried about Alex's safety so he begged Rousseau to take her to the safety of the Temple. On December 27, 2004, while she, Alex, and Karl were traveling from the Barracks to the Temple, they were ambushed by Keamy's mercenaries. Both Rousseau and Karl were shot dead. Alex was taken back as a hostage to be killed when Ben refused to surrender.
Rousseau was betrayed by the imposter, Ben, the faux father of Alex. She let her guard down in order to serve Ben's plan of survival. But in the end, it cost her and her daughter's lives. It was the battle of territory, the island, which philosopher Rousseau condemned as being the source of mankind's evil came to pass as Danielle and Alex's demise.
