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Attending to Time and Place in Rousseau's Legislative Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

Denise Schaeffer
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Abstract

In his Plan for a Constitution for Corsica, Rousseau recommends a series of institutional arrangements and psychological incentives designed to generate certain salutary opinions and behaviors on the part of the citizens. However, he also indicates in several ways that it is not only impossible to control such outcomes absolutely or permanently, but also undesirable insofar as a static people tends to be a languorous people. This essay argues that the model of citizenship that emerges in Corsica is more dynamic and less thoroughly choreographed than is often recognized. Rousseau suggests that what it takes to attach citizens to the collective good over the long term requires not only a specific form of socialization, but also that the people are capable, to some degree, of transcending their socialization. The goal of Rousseau's legislative art is not to form a people that can remain on “autopilot,” but rather to cultivate a form of reflection and judgment that is rooted in and animated by healthy attachments and proper conditioning of the passions. The puzzle becomes the relationship between these two sides of the legislative art.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , Summer 2012 , pp. 421 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2012

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References

1 Regarding the circumstances surrounding the composition of Rousseau's Plan for a Constitution for Corsica, as well as the controversies surrounding Corsica during Rousseau's time, see Stelling-Michaud's, Sven introduction in Œuvres complètes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Gagnebin, Bernard et al. , vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), cxcix–ccxiiiGoogle Scholar.

2 See, for example, Putterman, Ethan, “Realism and Reform in Rousseau's Constitutional Projects for Poland and Corsica,” Political Studies 49, no. 3 (2001): 481–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Parenthetical citations of Rousseau's works will be to the following translations, followed by the volume and page number from the Pléiade Œuvres complètes: On the Social Contract (SC), in The Collected Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vol. 4, ed. Kelly, Christopher and Masters, Roger D. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994)Google Scholar; Plan for a Constitution for Corsica (CC) and Considerations on the Government of Poland (GP), both in Collected Writings, vol. 11, ed. Kelly, Christopher and Bush, Judith (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005)Google Scholar; Discourse on Political Economy (PE), in Collected Writings, vol. 3, ed. Masters, Roger D. and Kelly, Christopher (Hanover, NH: Univeristy Press of New England, 1992)Google Scholar; and Emile (E), trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979).

4 Hanley, Ryan Patrick, “Enlightened Nation Building: The ‘Science of the Legislator’ in Smith and Rousseau,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008): 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See, for example, Hanley, “Enlightened Nation Building”; Maloy, J. S., “The Very Order of Things: Rousseau's Tutorial Republicanism,” Polity 37, no. 2 (2005): 235–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, Jeffrey A., “Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice in Rousseau's Political Thought,” The Review of Politics 68, no. 1 (2006): 20–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Dent, Nicholas, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 2005), 177Google Scholar.

7 For example, Ruth Grant states that “in Rousseau's view self-consciousness is simply not a necessary requirement for freedom. … Rather, through manipulation and deception, freedom and virtue together are purchased at the price of a highly developed rational self-consciousness” (Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997], 138Google Scholar). See also Connolly, William, “Rousseau: Docility Through Citizenship,” chap. 3 in Political Theory and Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar.

8 Johnston, Steven, Encountering Tragedy: Rousseau and the Project of Democratic Order (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 118–19Google Scholar.

9 Cullen, Daniel, Freedom in Rousseau's Political Philosophy, (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 132Google Scholar.

10 Simon, Julia, Mass Enlightenment: Critical Studies in Rousseau and Diderot (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 65Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Smith, “Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice,” 40, 41.

12 Crocker, Lester G., “Rousseau's soi-disant liberty,” in Rousseau and Liberty, ed. Wokler, Robert (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 257–58Google Scholar. See also Steven Johnston, Encountering Tragedy, 100–103.

13 Crocker, “Rousseau's soi-disant liberty,” 259.

14 Christopher Bertram, for example, notes that although affective identification among citizens (strengthened by public festivals and spectacles) is an important foundation for Rousseau's model of citizenship, it does not exhaust “all that Rousseau values … there is a time for dancing and a time for individuals to reason together in common as citizens” (Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and the “Social Contract” [London: Routledge, 2004], 146)Google Scholar. Christopher Kelly similarly emphasizes the need for active (if limited) public deliberation in Rousseau's ideal regime, arguing that unanimity for Rousseau “is not simply desirable at any cost” (Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to Truth [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003], 122Google Scholar). See also Putterman, Ethan, who argues that for Rousseau citizenship is more “active and robust” than commonly recognized (Rousseau, Law, and the Sovereignty of the People [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010], 173)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 This view is consistent with Jeffrey A. Smith's argument that Considerations on the Government of Poland shows that in order to remain free a people should retain some sense that their freedom is in peril (“Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland,” Review of Politics 65, no. 3 [2003]: 409–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

16 Kelly, George Armstrong, “A General Overview,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, ed. Riley, Patrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 33Google Scholar.

17 Marks, Jonathan, Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 77–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 In Considerations on the Government of Poland Rousseau similarly addresses the possibility that his proposed reforms could have the opposite effect to what he intended—in the case of Poland, that his proposed graduated system of public advancement (which appeals to ambition and self-interest in order to redirect these toward the public good) might inadvertently further entrench corruption by rewarding those who feign public-spiritedness. Rousseau takes seriously the possibility of fraud (GP, 225, 233–34; 3:1022, 1033), and although his proposed system contains some institutional safeguards, the risk nevertheless remains that those who only seem to be public-spirited could play the system. Ultimately, the only check on the advancement of corrupt individuals is the public's correct evaluation of them. In other words, the only real means of reviving Poland's republican virtue is to cultivate the people's capacity for judgment. There is no institutional mechanism that can substitute for this exercise of judgment or operate correctly in its absence. What Poland needs, Rousseau argues, is “an entire order of citizens who could not be easily fooled or corrupted” (GP, 235; 3:1035). For a more detailed discussion of this point and the broader theme of citizenship and judgment in Poland, see my “Realism, Rhetoric and the Possibility of Reform in Rousseau's Considerations on the Government of Poland,” Polity 42, no. 3 (2010): 377–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Smith, “Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice,” 24n10.

20 Parallels between Emile and the people, and also between the tutor and the political legislator, are frequently drawn. See, for example, Melzer, Arthur M., The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 241–52Google Scholar.

21 Patrick Riley, “Rousseau's general will: Freedom of a particular kind,” in Rousseau and Liberty, ed. Wokler, 8.

22 I have argued elsewhere that Sophie may exemplify this standard (and the tensions that inhere in it) even more than Emile does. See my “Reconsidering the Role of Sophie in Rousseau's Emile,” Polity 40, no. 3 (1998): 607–26Google Scholar.

23 See Ruth Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, 126.

24 The necessity of incorporating, to some degree, the legislator's perspective into the people's perspective is alluded to by Affeldt in his analysis of Rousseau's notion of forcing to be free. Affeldt argues that because the general will cannot be static but must be continuously reconstituted, the people cannot be a passive unreflective herd. Affeldt adds, “To anticipate a line of thought that moves beyond the scope of this article, the function that this engagement places on each citizen aligns the work of citizenship with the work of Rousseau's legislator” (Affeldt, Steven G., “The Force of Freedom: Rousseau on Forcing to Be Free,” Political Theory 27, no. 3 [1999]: 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar). I pursue this line of thought in my reading of Corsica.

25 For a reading that emphasizes this side of Rousseau, see Garsten, Bryan, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Similarly, in Emile, when embarking on the final stage of Emile's education Rousseau states, “I shall begin by moving his imagination” (E, 323; 4:648, emphasis added).

27 I trace a similar pattern in Considerations on the Government of Poland in “Realism, Rhetoric, and the Possibility of Reform.”