Rousseau and Revolution

Reverse Revolution 91
In a footnote however, after insisting on the non-religious character of the
worship, the author adds, ‘Jean-Jacques will indisputably be the fi rst god
among men’ (ibid., 24).
The comparison the author makes to Numa, Muhammad, Lycurgus and
at a later point to Moses are not fortuitous. 7 These names are taken from
Rousseau’s Social Contract. This list of mythical legislators which Rousseau
sought as examples for his republic, and among which he was elevated during
the revolution, lends us to ask questions on the role Rousseau played
to bring about the events of 1789. The idea of attributing to Rousseau the
authorship of an event that came after him might seem illogical. However,
if we consider Rousseau’s own notion of authorship, especially in the political
realm, we realize to what extent it conforms to the type of fi liation
some would have wanted to establish between him and the revolution. The
model of Lycurgus which Rousseau uses to describe the perfect legislator
in the Social Contract is here signifi cant.
Rousseau’s Pauline Covenant
Before his death, the mythical legislator of Sparta destroyed all rhetras, all
written laws, since he deemed instead that the virtues and principles of his
city had to be embedded in the citizens’ character.
The legislator is thus capable of persuading and molding hearts and
minds without having recourse to written laws. Only through this education
of the heart can the habits of man transform into and conform to
the morals, customs and opinion required of the citizen. In this sense,
the objective of the legislator is thus to author the invisible. This is what
Rousseau means when in the Social Contract he insists on the importance
of that fourth and most important of laws, ‘To these three types of laws is
added a fourth, the most important of all; which is not engraved on marble
or bronze, but in the hearts of the citizens; which is the genuine constitution
of the State’ (Rousseau, 1994d, 164). Likewise, when Rousseau talks about
the extraordinary function of the legislator, he distinguishes it from that of
common rulers, who, to impose their whims, need to engrave their laws in
stone, ‘Any man can engrave stone tablets, buy an oracle, pretend to have a
secret relationship with some divinity, train a bird to talk in his ear, or fi nd
other crude ways to impress the people’ (ibid., 157). While anyone can write
laws, the miraculous nature of Rousseau’s legislator dispenses him from
such a debased task. We are here in the presence of a political and also religious
critique of the act of writing. The notion that the written law kills the