The article is devoted to the review of the biography and the main works of the philosopher J.-J. Rousseau. Special attention is paid to the study of his views on the problems of power, inequality, war, religion and death. It is shown that the motives of Stoicism, Christianity and Enlightenment are “intertwined” in the thinker's reasoning. The author considers that in the works of the “lonely dreamer” from Geneva, an ethical approach to the analysis of the phenomenon of death dominates, but at the same time Rousseau took into account the circumstances and the socio-political “background” of its commission.