Hanley 2008 Enlightenened Nation Building Science of the Legislator in Smith and Rousseau

Midwest Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Political Science.

http://www.jstor.org

Enlightened Nation Building: The "Science of the Legislator" in Adam Smith and Rousseau Author(s): Ryan Patrick Hanley Source: American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 2008), pp. 219-234Published by: Midwest Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193810Accessed: 30-07-2015 18:11 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 30 Jul 2015 18:11:01 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.orghttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mpsahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/25193810http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Enlightened Nation Building: The "Science

of the Legislator" in Adam Smith and Rousseau

Ryan Patrick Hanley Marquette University

Rousseau is famous as an advocate of the politics of "denaturing" But attention to his conception of the "science of

the legislator, "

as developed in the Geneva Manuscript and his writings on Poland and Corsica, reveals a more moderate

approach to statecraft. Here Rousseau claims that legislative science requires tempering commitment to principles of political

right with sensitivity to actual political conditions?a claim that importantly and unexpectedly parallels the better known account of the science of the legislator developed by Adam Smith. In comparing these conceptions, this article draws three

conclusions: first, Smith's and Rousseau s shared moderation reveals their common commitment to accommodating the

passions and prejudices of modernity; second, their fundamental difference concerns not practical legislative methods but

rather differing conceptions of natural justice and political right; and finally, their prudential approach to legislation helps clarify the specific types of "moderation" and "intelligence" required of contemporary nation builders.

Recent American foreign policy has reawakened, with great urgency, interest in the methods and the

legitimacy of nation building, particularly with re

gard to the proper role of the United States in constructing

self-governing democracies with stable national identities

(see, e.g., Dobbins et al. 2003; Feldman 2004; Fukuyama 2006). Yet debates on these subjects have been hampered

by serious disagreement over the questions of the origins of national identity and of how national integration might best be achieved; where some advocate the recovery of na

tive cultural characteristics, others envision a more artifi

cial fabrication of national identities.1 In light of such dis

agreements, contemporary nation builders might wonder

where best to turn for guidance. The present article argues that this debate would do well to reconsider the contri

butions of two leading thinkers of the Enlightenment era, Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and in particular their concept of "the science of the legislator."

Two questions thus animate this article. The first

is more explicitly political: what insights do Smith and

Rousseau provide to contemporary nation builders? The

second is perhaps more scholarly: namely, how do

Rousseau's and Smith's visions of the science of the legis lator compare given their famously incommensurate po sitions on modernization and commercial liberalism? The

article's answer to the first question itself implies a need

to reconsider a certain conception of the Enlightenment. In contrast to a received vision of the political thought of the Enlightenment as mainly concerned with the jus tification of rational, universal norms, the most valuable

legacy of Smith and Rousseau's approach to nation build

ing lies rather in its skeptical counsels of prudence, and

the necessity of both accommodating the moral and cul

tural "passions and prejudices" of a nation and making institutional provisions for a nation's continued moral

and cultural flourishing. With regard to the second question, comparing their

conceptions of the science of the legislator also affords an opportunity to reconsider the standard contrast of

Rousseau as the champion of either primitivism or classi

cal republicanism and Smith as the herald of commer

cial modernization. On this front, my principal claim

below is that Rousseau's vision of the true legislator's sci ence closely parallels Smith's in one respect and sharply

Ryan Patrick Hanley is assistant professor of political science, Marquette University, PO Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881

([email protected]).

Earlier versions of this article were delivered in 2005 at the University of Wisconsin Political Theory Workshop, and also at the 2005 annual

meetings of the New England Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association. I am very grateful to those audiences?and particularly to Richard Boyd, Eric MacGilvary, Alice Behnegar, Louis Hunt, David Lay Williams, and the three anonymous reviewers?for many helpful suggestions. 1

For a helpful review of contemporary primordial, constructivist, and instrumentalist perspectives on nationalism and nation building, see especially Barrington (2006, 13-14).

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, No. 2, 2008, Pp. 219-234

?2008, Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853

219

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

220 RYAN PATRICK HANLEY

departs from it in a second. The first two sections of the

article demonstrate that Smith and Rousseau each sub

scribe to the classical distinction of the best regime from

the best possible regime and also that each insists that the

fundamental task of a nation builder is to devise mod

erate, prudential mechanisms tailored to the exigencies of particular given circumstances in order to instantiate

universal political norms within existing conditions. The

next section of the article examines how this intention in

forms Rousseau's practical works on Corsica and Poland,

arguing that in these Rousseau practices his commitment

to accommodate exigencies, and particularly to accom

modate the conditions and vices of modernity that he

famously diagnosed in the Discourse on Inequality. The

fourth section of the article turns to the tension between

the moderation characteristic of these practical writings and the immoderation of the legislative science described

in the Social Contract and argues that the divide that sep arates Rousseau from Smith on this front is to be traced

not to their differing attachments to realism or idealism,

but rather to their conceptions of "natural justice" and

"political right," the specific ideals to be instantiated. In

concluding, the article examines two specific implications of these analyses for contemporary nation builders, ar

guing in particular that Smith and Rousseau's greatest

legacy on this front lies in their ability to clarify the spe cific types of "moderation" and "intelligence" required of

nation builders today.

Natural Justice and Particular Circumstance: Smith on the

Legislator's Science

The Enlightenment offers students of the history of po litical philosophy at least two visions of "the science of

the legislator."2 By far the more well known is that set

forth by Smith and David Hume, the philosophers chiefly

responsible for articulating and subsequently defending the project of commercial modernity. As has been shown,

Hume and Smith aspired to teach potential legislators in

their audiences how to devise political and economic insti

tutions capable of accommodating man's selfish passions and in turn meliorating or transforming them into agents of social stability and growth (see esp. Cohen 1989,51,54,

59, 62; Haakonssen 1981; McNamara 1998; Winch 1996,

117). Given this objective, it may at first seem strange, if

2 For other eighteenth-century variants of the legislator's science,

see

esp. Lieberman (1988), Haakonssen (1996), and the studies cited

in n8 below.

not perverse, to regard Rousseau as a contributor to this

project. Rousseau's advice to nation-building legislators, as presented in his writings on Poland and Corsica and

Geneva, seems to counter Smith in advocating resistance

to commerce and liberal individualism and a recovery of

a commitment to the common good based on classical re

publican ideals. Yet it is Rousseau, in his early draft of the

Social Contract (the Geneva Manuscript), who advances

the second vision of "the science of the legislator" (GM

I.iv, 168; Il.i-vi, 179-94), elsewhere called "the true legis lator's science" (L, 66).3 Our first task is to see how these

two visions compare.

Adam Smith is today famous as the champion of the

"system of natural liberty"?that is, as the champion of

a self-regulating economic system which would seem to

have little need, or even room for, the interventions of

political actors. The associated fame of Smith's advocacy of such devices as the "invisible hand" and the theory of

spontaneous or unplanned order further seem to suggest that Smith's political philosophy defends or engenders a

minimization of the importance of political agency and

consequently leads to a "deflection" of politics towards

economics (see Cropsey 2001 ; Minowitz 1993 ). But if true,

why then does Smith insist on articulating a science for the

legislator? Thus Winch's helpful question: if indeed Smith

means to teach that politics does better when directed

by nature rather than the "active statesman as purposive moulder of events and outcomes," then "what positive

part is there for any legislator to play?" (Winch 1996,94).

Smith's answer rests on his distinction between two

different types of statesmen, one of whom he agrees should be excluded from political action, but the other

of whom he deems vital to the proper functioning of the

system.4 He presents this contrast in one of his central

discussions of the legislator. Here Smith distinguishes one

directed by "the science of a legislator, whose deliberations

ought to be governed by general principles which are al

ways the same," from "that insidious and crafty animal,

vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils

are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs"

3 Rousseau's works are abbreviated as CC = Plan for a Constitution

for Corsica; E = Emile; GM = Geneva Manuscript; GP

= Government

of Poland; L = Letter to d'Alembert; OC = Oeuvres compl?tes; PE

=

Political Economy; SC = Social Contract; SD = Second Discourse

{Discourse on Inequality). Standard translations have been used

whenever possible. Smith's works are abbreviated as LJ = Lectures

on Iurisprudence;TMS =

Theory ofMoral Sentiments; WN = Wealth

of Nations.

4The following account of Smith's understanding of the science of

the legislator largely follows the central claims made in Haakonssen

(1981, esp. 83-98), M?ller (1993, 84-92, 139), and Winch (1996,

90-123); more specific debts and deviations are also acknowledged below.


THE "SCIENCE OF THE LEGISLATOR" IN SMITH AND ROUSSEAU 221

(WN IV.ii.39). The distinguishing feature of legislative

science, on this account, is its commitment to those

"general principles" which prevent a politics so guided from degenerating into vulgar Machiavellianism. Else

where Smith repeats the claim. Even in noting the po

tential for general principles to be abused, he hints that

"some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfec tion of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for

directing the views of the statesman" (TMS VI.ii.2.18).

But what precisely did Smith have in mind in sug

gesting that political deliberation ought to be governed by attention to "general principles"? Charles Griswold notes

that Smith's insistence that the "general principles" which

ought to guide the science of the legislator "unquestion

ably echo" his discussion of those "general principles of

law and government" described in the closing pages of

TMS, in which he anticipates a book-to-come on natural

jurisprudence (Griswold 1999, 36n59). There he distin

guishes systems of positive law designed for particular states in particular historical periods from "the natural

rules of justice independent of all positive institution."

The latter were the intended focus of his project on "what

might properly be called natural jurisprudence, or a the

ory of the general principles which ought to run through and be the foundation of the laws of all nations"?a field

of study he rigorously distinguishes from the study of

"the particular institutions of any one nation" (cf. LJA Li;

LJB 1-3). This in turn led Smith to promise "an account

of the general principles of law and government, and of

the different revolutions they have undergone in the dif

ferent ages and periods of society" (TMS VII.iv.36-37).5 And while this project was not in fact executed, Smith's

essential claim is clear: that appreciation of the principles of natural justice is the "backbone" of the science of a

legislator ( Haakonssen 1981, 151).

By grounding the science of the legislator in the uni

versal norms of justice, Smith intended to provide a mech

anism capable of elevating statesmanship above the pol itics of interest characteristic of his insidious and crafty

"politician." Yet Smith was also acutely aware that a states

manship grounded in the abstract principles of natural

justice is itself susceptible to abuses of another kind. His

own failure to execute a treatise on the idea of natural jus tice itself suggests the difficulty of establishing its princi

ples. But lacking a clear definition of such principles, am

bitious politicians might well substitute their own more

convenient abstractions. This is precisely the problem that

Smith diagnoses in his famous portrait of the "man of sys

5Griswold rightly notes that Smith, in his own words, only "partly executed" this project (TMS, 3). On whether Smith was capable of

executing the project, see Griswold (1999, 31-37); cf. Fleischacker

(2004, esp. 145-48); Ross (2004, 45-46).

tern." The man of system is first and foremost a man driven

by his ideals: "apt to be very wise in his own conceit" he

is "often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his

own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the

smallest deviation from any part of it" (TMS VI.ii.2.17).

Indeed his fascination with his Utopian vision inspires his

political zealotry, for when this "spirit of system" mixes

with a certain kind of "public spirit," this "often inflames

it even to the madness of fanaticism," which in turn "in

toxicates" all who fall under the sway of "the imaginary

beauty of this ideal system" (TMS VI.ii.2.15). Caught up in this dazzling beauty, such visionaries seek in practice "to establish it completely and in all its parts, without

any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong

prejudices which may oppose it." This leads to Smith's

well-known condemnation of the systemic political re

former who "seems to imagine that he can arrange the

different members of a great society with as much ease

as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess

board," indifferent to or unaware of the fact that "in the

great chess-board of human society, every single piece has

a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from

that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it"

(TMS VI.ii.2.17). But good government requires that the

statesman's hand not deviate from the path traced by the

invisible hand. Smith repeatedly insists on this lesson in

arguing for his system of natural liberty, claiming that

people should always be given free rein to pursue their in

terests, as they always know these interests better than any

superior might (e.g., WN IV.v.b.16; IV.v.b.43; IV.ix.51).

Legislative science is thus intended as an antidote

to the enthusiasm of systematic reformers. Yet this itself

prompts an obvious question: insofar as the "system of

natural liberty" is itself a "system" in its own right, how

can Smith guarantee that the legislator claiming to act in

the name of this "system" will not himself be overcome

by the "spirit of system"? The problem is made even more

acute by his recognition that the legislator's tremendous

abilities render him capable of effecting "the greatest rev

olutions ... in the situations and opinions of mankind"

(TMS VI.iii.28). Smith describes his remedy for this po tential fanaticism in describing the importance of appre

ciating political circumstances. He nods at this even in

venting his frustration with the man of system: not only does he exhibit "the highest degree of arrogance" and a

predilection to "fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth," but he moreover thinks "his

fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him

and not he to them" (TMS VI.ii.2.18). Yet it is precisely an accommodation of interests and prejudices that Smith

calls for in building actual nations if they are to be free of

the fanaticism to which political idealism is prone.



Smith's claim then is that the legislator must tem

per his commitment to idealism with an appreciation of

the specific contexts in which he serves. Only by so do

ing will he accommodate his project to the people, rather

than force the people to accommodate his project. But this

claim sets the bar high for the legislator, as it compels him

to cultivate a political wisdom or understanding differ

ent from that wisdom or understanding which might en

able him to comprehend the principles of natural justice. Haakonssen nicely captures the distinction between these

two forms of comprehension in distinguishing "system

knowledge" from "contextual knowledge," the knowledge of the connecting principles of a system from the knowl

edge that enables one to understand actual given political conditions (Haakonssen 1981, 79-82, 89; see also McNa

mara 1998, 87-91; Winch 1983, 510-11). This suggests that the science of the legislator requires a "superior pru dence," an appreciation of both the potential and limits of

actual peoples for whom one hopes to make a normative

legislative intervention (TMS VI.i.15).6 Such prudence is

principally valuable as it enables legislators to shape their

ideals to circumstances and thereby better guarantee that

a political community will in fact receive the intended

benefits of the legislation. Smith goes on to explain that an appreciation of such

circumstances will lead not only to a tempering of ideal

ism, but also to an appreciation of the limits of politics, and hence legislation, owing to the imperfectability of po litical phenomena (Griswold 1999, 301-10; Winch 1996,

123). Smith's favorite historical example of a legislator, Solon, is consistently praised for his capacity to legislate

within the horizons of imperfection and his ability to craft a second-best approach for such situations; hence his en

dorsement of a modern policy with the observation that

"with all its imperfections, however, we may perhaps say of it what was said of the laws of Solon, that, though not the

best in itself, it is the best which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit of ( WN IV.v.b.53).7 The Solonic example is itself the example Smith recom

mends to remedy the idealism of men of system (Winch

1996, 96-97, 104-5). Thus the best legislator

6Helpful here is Haakonssen's observation that "the intention be

hind Smith's criticism of excessive rationalism, or utopianism, in

politics is by no means the abdication of reason," but "rather a very rational appreciation of its limits" (1981, 92).

7 In this context see the excellent discussion of Smith's Solonic mod

eration in Brubaker (2006, 201-205) but cf. 191-92, 200, 212

13, where Smith's legislator is explicitly distanced from the seem

ingly immoderate "moralism" of Rousseau's. For Solon's intentions, see Anhalt (1993, 11-14, 135-39). Anhalt's study of Solon's self

conscious presentation of himself as poet-lawgiver is a useful point of reference for the claim that legislators should seek to "persuade without convincing" (SC II.vii.10); see esp. Kelly (1987, 326-31).

will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the

great orders and societies, into which the state

is divided. Though he should consider some of

them as in some measure abusive, he will content

himself with moderating, what he often cannot

annihilate without great violence. When he can

not conquer the rooted prejudices of the people

by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to

subdue them by force; but will religiously observe

what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim

of Plato, never to use violence to his country no

more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the

confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy as well as he can, the inconve

niencies which may flow from the want of those

regulations which the people are averse to submit

to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not

disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the

people can bear. (TMS VI.ii.2.16)

Here Smith teaches that political humility is a prerequi site for the science of a legislator. In contrast to the arro

gance and superiority of the man of system, Smith here

praises the humility of statesmen who work with rather

than against the prejudices and preconditions of a nation.

Such statesmen, Smith further insists, know the limits of

their wisdom; fully conscious that they lack the omni

science of the divine, they instead represent the more lim

ited "perfection of human political wisdom" (Griswold

1999, 308). Unlike Caesar and Alexander, such legislators never fall under the spell of the delusive and "excessive

self-admiration" that might suggest the direct inspiration of divinity (TMS VI.iii.28). A properly scientific legisla tor thus strikes a balance between the ideals of natural

justice and the reality of actual conditions and thereby achieves a salutary moderation in steering

a course be

tween the hubris of scientific management and the fa

naticism of the idealists.8 Smith's emphasis on respecting settled habits and prejudices indeed represents a recov

ery of the ancient conception of the distinction between

the best and the most fitting or best possible regime (see Aristotle 1984, 1269a30, 1337al0; Griswold 1999, 305).

Before turning to Rousseau, a final aspect of Smith's

approach to the science of the legislator demands notice.

8 Such proposals particularly echo the legislative methods of Hume

and Montesquieu; see Hume (1985, 260-63, 280, 512-13) and

Winch (1996, 75; 1983, 506); Montesquieu (1989, XIX.5, 6, 14;

XXVI.23) and Pangle (1973, 273-77).



Smith's reputation for a commitment to limited political interventions in the civil or economic spheres would seem

to commit him to a restricted view of the proper sphere of the legislator within a well-ordered state; there indeed

would seem to be little room for a legislator if in fact "little

else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of

opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes,

and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being

brought about by the natural course of things" (Smith in

Stewart 1982, 322). But elsewhere?and particularly in a

little-noted passage in The Theory of Moral Sentiments?

Smith takes a much stronger stance on the necessity of

moral legislation:

The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the public peace by re

straining injustice, but of promoting the prosper

ity of the commonwealth, by establishing good

discipline, and by discouraging every sort of

vice and impropriety; he may prescribe rules,

therefore, which not only prohibit mutual in

juries among fellow-citizens, but command mu

tual good offices to a certain degree ... Of all the

duties of a law-giver, however, this, perhaps, is

that which it requires the greatest delicacy and re

serve to execute with propriety and judgment. To

neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth

to many gross disorders and shocking enormities, and to push it too far is destructive of all liberty,

security, and justice. (TMS II.ii.1.8)

Smith does not provide precise rules for the conduct of

such judgment, but from his comments above it is evident

that he believes good legislation requires a middle ground be established between libertarianism and totalitarianism.

But even as Smith was silent on this front, the attempt to

define this middle ground was to become the particular intention of Rousseau.

Realism and Idealism and Rousseau's "Science of the Legislator"

The study of Smith was once dominated by the famed

Adam Smith Problem: the question of how to reconcile

Smith's analysis of sympathy in moral life with his analy sis of self-interest in economic life.9 But Rousseau seems

91 do not aspire to treat this problem here. For excellent recent

treatments of the relative significance of this problem, see Otteson

(2002) and Montes (2004).

to suffer from his own Problem.10 Aside from the Prob

lem initially posed by Cassirer?the question of whether

Rousseau is better seen as a classical eudaemonist or

Kantian deontologist?a more political Problem concerns

whether he is better understood as a friend of constitu

tional democracy or as a friend of totalitarianism.11 Res

olution of this question is unlikely to be reached soon

and is not attempted here, but attention to his conception of the science of the legislator and how it compares to

Smith's helps illuminate certain moderate aspects of his

thought, and especially his willingness to accommodate

the characteristic prejudices of modernity. To begin by suggesting that there might be anything

moderate or accommodating in Rousseau's science may

at first seem odd. The most famous account of the legis lator in Rousseau's corpus?the account offered in Book

II, chapter vii of the Social Contract?certainly seems to

read as a direct challenge to, if not rejection of, several fun

damental tenets of the Smithean science. First Rousseau

openly questions whether the divine and the political should be separated, arguing that legislation benefits con

siderably from the popular impression of the legislator's intimate association with the divine. Further, where Smith

cautions against the attempt to "impress" on men prin

ciples foreign to their nature, Rousseau seems to endorse

precisely this in claiming that the nation-building legisla tor's first and most important task is to "transform" the

people:

Anyone who dares to institute a people must feel

capable of, so to speak, changing human nature; of transforming each individual who by himself

is a perfect and solitary whole into part of a larger whole from which that individual would as it were

receive his life and his being; of weakening man's

constitution in order to strengthen it; of substitut

ing a partial and moral existence for the indepen dent and physical existence we have all received

from nature. In a word, he must take from man

his own forces in order to give him forces which are foreign to him and of which he cannot make

use without the help of others. The more these

natural forces are dead and destroyed, the greater and more lasting are the acquired ones, and the

more solid and lasting also is the institution. (SC

II.vii.3; GM Il.ii, 179-80; cf. PE, 12-13)

'I owe this suggestion to Eric MacGilvary. 1 * Cassirer (1954). The classic sources on Rousseau's totalitarianism

remain Berlin (2002) and Talmon (1960). For a recent attempt to

find liberalism in Rousseau, see Williams (2005a).



It is difficult to imagine a position more repugnant to

Smith's. Not only does Rousseau's legislator annihilate

the prejudices that Smith's is concerned to respect, but he

also seeks the alteration of human nature itself. Rousseau

elaborates on his intentions in this regard in Emile. Such

denaturing is necessary, he explains, because of the vi

olence already done to human nature by the civilizing institutions that Smith defends. It is the corruptions of

civilized man, or the bourgeois, which make it necessary "to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him

in order to give him a relative one and transport the I

into the common unity" (E, 40). Yet modern legislators are not alone in seeking to "transform" human nature; the

greatest ancient legislators, Rousseau suggests, had similar

ambitions. Thus we are told that when Lycurgus legislated for Spartans he "transformed them into beings more than

merely human," that Moses "made bold to transform this

herd of servile emigrants into a political society, a free

people," and that Numa gave Rome strength by "trans

forming the robbers into citizens.. .by mildly restrictive

institutions that bound each of them to the rest and all of

them to the soil" (GP, 6-7). Such legislators cannot help but seem immoderate when compared to Smith's.

But Rousseau's call for "transformation" hardly ex

hausts his conception of the legislator, for alongside this

grandiose vision lies another more moderate vision. In

the published version of Social Contract, this moderate

vision takes the form of an attempt to mitigate what the

work's subtitle calls the "principles of political right" with

the "maxims of politics" (SC III.xviii.3). As Arthur Melzer

and Roger Masters have demonstrated, the Social Contract

at its heart seeks to establish a balance between these two

principles?a balance between, on the one hand, a com

mitment to the abstract principles of "universal justice"

(SC II.vi.2), and on the other, the practical maxims of

politics necessary to bring a project to fruition (see es

pecially Kelly 1987, 322; Masters 1968, 290-93, 301-13;

Masters 1972, 412-18; Melzer 1990, 114-19). Rousseau's

study of the aims of legislation in the chapter prior to his

description of the legislator in SC Il.vii makes clear that

such a balance is necessary, as a commitment to univer

sal justice in the absence of positive law cannot guarantee the establishment of actual justice; hence Rousseau's re

minder that while "all justice comes from God, he alone

is its source," it remains true that to be realized, justice

requires a set of positive institutions; hence "conventions

and laws are therefore necessary to combine rights with

duties and to bring justice back to its object" (SC II.vi.2).

Such a conception will remind us of Smith's commitment

to balancing natural justice and positive law at the end of

TMS. But more crucially, the commitment to establish

ing a balance between the best and the best possible also

serves to mitigate the seeming extremism of Rousseau's

most rhetorically charged comments on the legislator and

his transformative duties. In this way Rousseau's concep tion of the legislator leads back to Smith's, for the at

tempt to establish a balance between "universal justice" and the "maxims of politics" parallels Smith's commit

ment to describing a balance between the universal prin

ciples of "natural justice" and "contextual knowledge." This parallel is extended when we turn to Rousseau's

explicit comments on the science of the legislator. Rousseau's first and most complete account comes in

the first draft of the Social Contract, or the Geneva

Manuscript. As Masters details, Rousseau comprehen

sively revised this section of the work, with SC II.vii vir

tually all that remains of the sustained investigation of the

science of the legislator that occupied most of Book II of

GM; the "science of the legislator" is never mentioned in

the final published version (Masters 1968, 293 and 1972,

413, 417). Yet Rousseau does explicitly mention the "true

legislator's science" in the Letter to dAlembert. Here he

explains that the mere task of crafting and writing legisla tion is not a difficult one: "On the whole, the institution

of laws is not such a marvelous thing that any man of

sense and equity could not easily find those which, well

observed, would be the most beneficial for society." The

challenge of legislating lies not simply in writing good laws, but in writing laws well suited to a people: "the force

of the laws has its measure, and the force of the vices that

they repress has one too. It is only after one has compared these two quantities and found that the former surpasses the latter that the execution of the laws can be depended

upon. The knowledge of these relations constitutes the

true legislator's science" (L, 66). The central claim here

is that legislation cannot be judged good in the abstract,

but only by the degree of its fittingness for the people and

problems for which it is established.

By insisting that wise legislators should strive to fit

their laws to the nature of the people and the needs of

the state, Rousseau takes an important step back from the

Utopian insistence on "transforming" and "denaturing" that he elsewhere seems to advocate. This continues when

he offers us a historical example of a practitioner of the

"true legislator's science." In the Letter to dAlembert, his

example is Solon. Solon did more than simply author a

legal code, Rousseau explains: "The problem is to adapt this code to the people for which it is made and to the

things about which it decrees to such an extent that its

execution follows from the very conjunction of these re

lations; it is to impose on the people, after the fashion

of Solon, less the best laws in themselves than the best of

which it admits in the given situation" (L, 66). In echo

ing (or anticipating) the endorsement of Solon by Smith,



Rousseau makes plain that legislative science is a science

of the second-best.12 Indeed throughout the Letter one

finds less idealism than a realist insistence on the need

to accommodate proposals to circumstances: "let us not

seek for the chimaera of perfection but for the best pos sible according to the nature of man and the constitution

of society" (L, 110). In GM Rousseau would further explore this aspect

of the Solonic or second-best approach to legislation. His

constant lesson throughout GM is that "these general ob

jects of all good institutions should be modified in each

country according to the relationships that arise as much

from the local situation as from the character of the in

habitants; and it is on the basis of these relationships that

each people must be assigned a particular system of leg islation that is the best, not perhaps in itself, but for the

State for which it is intended" (GM Il.vi, 193; SC II.xi.4; cf. E, 34-35). In developing this claim, Rousseau makes

clear that legislators must tailor specific policies to the

exigencies of particular customs and circumstances. In

GM this contrast takes the form of a distinction between

"right" on the one hand and "those matters of expedi

ency which are indispensable to every good institution"

on the other (GM Il.iii, 183). The published version drops the explicit distinction between right and expedience, but

repeats the fundamental claim that this distinction in

troduces, namely, that "just as a skillful architect, before

putting up a building, observes and tests the ground to see

whether it can bear the weight, so the wise founder does

not start by drafting laws at random, but first examines

whether the people for whom he intends them is suited

to bear them" (GM Il.iii, 183; cf. SC Il.viii.l). The lesson

in each case is that legislators must begin their efforts to

improve men by taking them as they are (Masters 1972,

429). This leads Rousseau to insist that one should strive

always to work within the context of the material one has

been given: "he should not try to change the institution

of a people that is already subject to laws, let alone try to restore an institution that has been abolished or to re

vive worn out mechanisms" (GM Il.iii, 188). Further, it

is the task of a wise legislator to take not just people but

also conditions as they are, and hence the call for the law

giver to attend to "the location, the climate, the soil, the

morals, the neighbors, and all the particular relations of

the people that it was his task to institute" (PE, 12). Seen

thusly, the science of the legislator tempers the idealism

12Excellent analyses of Rousseau's account of "Solonic" legislation and its influence on his "contextualism" are provided in Forman

Barzilai (2003, 445-50) and now in Williams (2007, 17-18, 25-27,

29-31).

that a sole emphasis on transforming or denaturing might otherwise encourage.13

One final aspect of Rousseau's science of the legisla tor requires review before turning to the practical polit ical writings. It has been argued above that common to

both Rousseau's and Smith's science is an insistence on

the import of tailoring legislation to the ills of the times.

But this suggestion was to have a particularly important effect, and take on a unique cast, in the practical polit ical writings that we are about to examine. To see how,

we turn to Rousseau's final argument for the import of

accommodating context. Such accommodation is neces

sary, he insists, because the particular ills of a given society themselves contain the key to their reconciliation. This is

suggested explicitly in GM:

But although there is no natural and general soci

ety among men, although men become unhappy and wicked in becoming sociable, although the

laws of justice and equality mean nothing to those

who live both in the freedom of the state of na

ture and subject to the needs of the social state,

far from thinking that there is neither virtue nor

happiness for us and that heaven has abandoned

us without resources to the depravation of the

species, let us attempt to draw from the ill itself

the remedy that should cure it. Let us use new as

sociations to correct, if possible, the defect of the

general association. Let our violent speaker him

self judge its success. Let us show him in perfected art the reparation of the ills that the beginnings of art caused to nature. (GM I.ii, 162)

Herein lies what Starobinski has called "the fundamental

insight" of Rousseau's political philosophy: the idea that the most effective political remedies are homeopathic, or

internal to the disease being treated (Starobinski 1993,

118-31, quote at 127; Forman-Barzilai 2003, 462-63). But what precise form should this homeopathic remedy take? And put more directly: what are the "ills that the

beginnings of art caused to nature?" Rousseau's most di rect treatment of this question comes in the Discourse on Inequality. In describing the transition between the

pure state of nature and the corruptions of the civil state, Rousseau identifies a middle position characterized by

precisely the incipient ills that separate art from nature.

This he describes as the "period in the development of

13 Masters notes that such a commitment also distinguishes

Rousseau's prescriptions from those of "value-free" social science; see Masters ( 1972,419). Smith's critique of positivistic social science is a principal theme of Fleischacker (2004).



human faculties, occupying a just mean between the in

dolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our amour propre"?the state in which the "idea of

consideration" had been awakened in its nascent form,

and "public esteem acquired a price" (SD 11.16-18). In

what follows I argue that it is Rousseau's identification

of the civilizing potential of incipient love of consider

ation properly directed that characterizes his moderate

advice to Corsica and Poland. The remedy for their ills,

Rousseau argues, lies not in the violent uprooting of the

passions and prejudices that constitute the evidence of

their corruption, but rather the redirection of such pas sions and prejudices towards more useful ends. For if in

deed it is true that today "everybody wants to be admired,"

it is then necessary "to excite the desire and to facilitate

the means of attracting by virtue the same admiration

that one today attracts only by wealth" (OC III, 502-3;

cf. GP, 17).

The Legislator's Science in Practice: Corsica and Poland

The previous section of the article sought to demonstrate

that beneath Rousseau's extreme depiction of the legisla tor in his theoretical writings lies a more moderate claim:

that so far from denaturing or transforming citizens, wise

legislators instead meet them where they stand. This same

tension is to be found in Rousseau's practical writings on

Corsica and Poland.14 In each of these works, Rousseau's

extreme republican rhetoric is striking. But when exam

ined closely, so far from revealing Rousseau

as an advo

cate of political denaturing or the recovery of supposed ancient disinterestedness, these writings instead suggest a more prudential approach to legislation. In each es

say, Rousseau crafts solutions to the problems of existing

regimes by appealing to and encouraging passions and

prejudices endemic to these regimes. As such, they stand

as examples of Rousseau's efforts to practice the funda

mental task of legislative science: namely, "to draw from

the ill itself the remedy that should cure it." Yet it is not

only this general formulation that binds Rousseau's ap

proach to Smith's. The principal ill that Rousseau diag noses in each of the nations he examines is precisely a

form of the incipient selfishness characteristic of moder

nity diagnosed in the Second Discourse (see especially SD

11.27, 52, 57). Further, in each of these writings, the rem

14See also Hanley (2006), which argues that Rousseau applied to

Geneva the same strategies described below with regard to the po

litical ordering of Poland and Corsica.

edy proposed is not simply eradication of amour-propre, but its redirection to the promotion of the common good

(Dent 1988, 225; cf. Masters 1968, 380-82). Smith's and

Rousseau's sciences of a legislator thus share a common

aim: namely, demonstrating how vanity can be steered

to become an agent of social stability and the promotion of common well-being. The difference in their sciences

lies in the forms of selfishness to which their respective

legislators train their attention; Smith's legislator seems

to have in mind the prudent regulation of economic self

interest (see, e.g., M?ller 1993; Rosenberg 1960), whereas

Rousseau seems more interested in the proper regulation of the love of honor and glory. But both are keenly sensitive

to the empire of opinion that dominates modernity, and

both recognize that the central task of modern legislators is to cultivate and thereby redirect the vices modernity

encourages. This strategy is suggested in the discussion of

censors in the Social Contract:

It is useless to draw a distinction between a

nation's morals and the objects of its esteem;

for all this follows from the same principle and

necessarily converges. Among all peoples of the

world, not nature but opinion determines the

choice of their pleasures. Reform men's opin ions and their morals will be purified of them

selves. One always loves what is fine or what

one finds to be so, but it is in this judgment that one is mistaken; hence it is this judgment that has to be regulated. Whoever judges morals

judges honor, and whoever judges honor takes

opinion as his law. (SC IV.vii.3; cf. Masters 1968,

385)

Rousseau applies precisely this strategy in his own advice

to actual states. It is perhaps most evident in his advice

to Geneva in the Letter to dAlembert. The seeming story of the Letter is that Geneva, in its uncorrupted purity, should ban the theater and thereby preserve its republican

simplicity. But the true story, always present just beneath

the surface, is that corruption has already made significant

headway in Geneva, and that its efforts might be better

spent attempting to meliorate that which it is already too

late to cure. Thus directly after introducing us to the "true

legislator's science," Rousseau asks,

By what means can the government get a hold on

morals? I answer that it is by public opinion. If

our habits in retirement are born of our own sen

timents, in society they are born of others' opin ions. When we do not live in ourselves but in oth

ers, it is their judgments which guide everything.


THE "SCIENCE OF THE LEGISLATOR" IN SMITH AND ROUSSEAU 22J

Nothing appears good or desirable to individuals

which the public has not judged to be such, and

the only happiness which most men know is to be

esteemed happy. (L, 67)

So far from a hopeful call of the idealist for transforma

tion, Rousseau's most forthright advice for the ennobling of his fatherland demands a concession to precisely the

worst of all corruptions, the empire of amour-propre. Put

differently: the best state he knows is incapable of receiv

ing the best absolutely, and Rousseau must rest content

with focusing on the transformation of a nation whose

tastes are already corrupted. Such advice is in fact con

sistent across Rousseau's works. He knows that he "may be told that anyone who has to govern men should not

look for a perfection beyond their nature of which they are not capable," yet he remains optimistic that "it is not

impossible to teach them to love one object rather than

another, and to love what is genuinely fine rather than

what is malformed," and "thus to transform into a sub

lime virtue the dangerous disposition that gives rise to all

of our vices" (PE, 36). This advice would form the foun

dation of his practical legislative advice to Corsica and

Poland.15

Rousseau's Plan for a Constitution of Corsica presents itself on its face as a rejection of accommodation and an

endorsement of the politics of transformation. Its intro

duction reads as an explicit rejection of accommodation

to exigencies. Noting that the separation of the govern ment from the people is the source of Corsica's difficulties, Rousseau explains that in such

a case, wise men, "observ

ing relations of suitability, form the government for the

nation. Nevertheless, there is something much better to

do, that is to form the nation for the government" (CC,

123). And he is clear on how Corsica should best pursue this course. Throughout his piece Rousseau is unstinting in his admonitions for the Corsicans not to encourage commerce. So far from advocating

an accommodation

of Corsica within wider European trade networks, he in

stead calls the Corsicans to take all possible means to en

sure their economic self-sufficiency. Not only must they

discourage dependence on money, but they must also dis

courage the growth of large urban centers and encourage

agriculture that will promote the self-sufficiency of both

the nation and its citizens, and in so doing eradicate the

indolence, selfishness, and "stupid pride of bourgeois" (CC, 131).

15On the difficulties associated with regarding Rousseau as a full

fledged legislator rather than one who merely provides legislative advice, see especially Kelly (2003, 78-81).

In recommending this course of moral simplicity and economic self-sufficiency, Rousseau of course seems

far from Smith's own practical recommendations for

Britain.16 Yet as the essay develops, Rousseau moderates

the extremism of his opening republican sallies, qualify

ing his initial statements with the disclaimers that his hope was "not to destroy private property absolutely, because

that is impossible, but to restrict it within the narrowest

limits" (CC, 148), and his hope that even if money can

not practically be done away with altogether, "at least it

can be reduced to so small a thing that it will be difficult

for abuses to arise" (CC, 147). As he continues he also

suggests that he has not forgotten his earlier lessons on

tailoring proposals to specific conditions, reminding us

that there are qualities "in the nature and the soil of each

country" that render a particular type or form of govern ment particularly well suited to it (CC, 127), and that wise

legislators must begin by taking the principle of "national

character" into account (CC, 133). In so doing Rousseau

reminds us that he remains aware that he is not legislat

ing for a new people, but one with cultural traditions and

institutions and habits.

Furthermore, Rousseau also explicitly recognizes that

Corsica is the product of a series of specific historical cir

cumstances. In the Social Contract, he praised Corsica as

the only country in Europe still capable of receiving leg islation, owing to "the valor and steadfastness with which

this brave people was able to recover and defend its free

dom" (SC II.x.6). Back then Corsica seemed the perfect model of a state "fit for legislation" on account of its self

sufficiency, independence, moderate wealth, and civic af

fection (SC II.x.5). But what does Rousseau find when he

reexamines Corsica from the point of view of a poten tial legislator? Now he explains that the fundamental fact

that shaped the Corsicans was their occupation by the Ge

noese who succeeded in "crushing" Corsica and reducing it to abject poverty and dependence. This leads him to

observe that even though Corsica has retained some of its

original virtues, in its servitude it contracted tremendous

vices that cannot be removed without recourse to extreme

measures (CC, 137). How then does Rousseau respond to such incipient

corruption? His actual remedy is in fact far more accom

modating than his opening rhetoric might have led one to

expect. In particular he strives to accommodate his poli cies to the main passion that has already been encouraged in the Corsicans, presumably the consequence of their

16At the same time, Rousseau's distinction between money and

wealth (CC, 140; cf. GP, 73) and his claim that national wealth

consists in available labor (CC, 125-26) are also central themes of

Smith's antimercantilist argument in WN IV.



occupation at the hands of the commercial Genoese; in

terestingly, it is precisely the same passion on which his

famous diagnosis of corruption in the SD rests:

Thus in order to awaken a nation's activity it is

necessary to give it great desires, great hopes, great

positive motives for acting. When well examined, the great motive powers that make men act are

reduced to two, sensual pleasure and vanity, still if

you remove from the first everything that belongs to the second, in the final analysis, you will find

that everything is reduced almost to vanity alone.

(CC, 153)

This is a remarkable claim in light of what has come before.

For not only does Rousseau here concede that his legisla tive project for Corsica is conceived within the horizon

of the second best rather than the best absolutely, but he

also suggests that the key to its success lies in the prudent

directing of the chief passion of modernity. He goes on to

explain that the vanity of which he here speaks "is only one of the two branches of amour-propre," the modern

moral failing on which SD focused. But rather than up root amour-propre, he here suggests that the legislator's task lies in redirecting it from vanity, its base form, to

pride, its less base form (CC, 153-54).17 What is striking then is the fact that even though Rousseau is clearly an

advocate of ennobling the moral conditions of the mod

ern Corsicans, the ascent that he envisions is the limited

or moderate ascent from one form of amour-propre to

another.

Rousseau's advice to Poland follows a trajectory simi

lar to his advice to Corsica. By far the most striking feature

of GP is its fervor for a recovery of republican simplicity. Yet read closely it appears that rather than simply ad

vocating the rejection of corruption, Rousseau means to

encourage the Poles to discover a solution to their vices

that emerges from their incipient corruption. Rousseau's

advice in this respect constitutes a practical application of the vanity-directing project described in CC. Yet again this may seem an odd place to start. GP frequently seems

as adamant as CC in calling for an institution of ideals

and rejection of contextual accommodation, particularly

17 Rousseau's methods of educating amour-propre from its base

to its nobler form are nicely treated in Cooper (1999); I compare Smith's methods to Rousseau's on this front in Hanley (2008). Put

terman (2001, 485-89) offers a very helpful account of how both

GP and CC appeal to the desire for opinion prompted by amour

propre (though without connecting these intentions to Rousseau's

science of the legislator). For a quite different account of Rousseau's

intentions in GP see Jeffrey Smith, which claims that far from ac

commodating the conditions of modernity, Rousseau forthrightly

aspires to "the cultivation of ancient virtue" (2003, 412).

with regard to modernity. This stridency is particularly evident in the choice Rousseau compels the Poles to make

between agriculture and commerce. "If what you wish is

merely to make a great splash," he counsels, "cultivate the

sciences, the arts, commerce, industry." "But if perchance

you wish to be a free nation, a peaceful nation, a wise

nation," you must both recover older customs and tastes, and "cause money to become an object of contempt and, if possible, useless besides."18 Yet either way, one must

choose: "Since the two plans of action I speak of are for

the most part mutually exclusive, you must, above all, not

try to combine them" (GP, 67-68). Thus not only does a

moderate accommodation seem unlikely, Rousseau also

here states his preference for ancient virtue over modern

virtue?a predilection in keeping with his call to the Poles

to "seize the opportunity afforded by the events of the

present moment, and raise souls to the pitch of the souls

of the ancients" (GP, 12). And one must not be gentle in so

doing. Sumptuary laws are not enough to ennoble men's

souls and "stamp out luxury": "You must reach deep into

men's hearts and uproot it by implanting there healthier

and nobler tastes" (GP, 18). Here again the plan seems clear: not moderation but

dire measures are necessary if corruption is to be defeated

and expelled. Yet elsewhere Rousseau reminds us that he

has not forgotten the prudence of the legislator's science.

In the opening of the book he reminds us of the im

portance of sensitivity to context. "One must know thor

oughly the nation for which one is building," lest the

final product, "however excellent it may be in itself, will

prove imperfect when it is acted upon" (GP, 1). Rousseau

presents his own proposal as tailored to the Poles, and

thus an exception to the pan-European legislative systems

common in his day; rather than imitate others, he seeks to

craft legislation suited to Poland itself (GP, 11,80,82,86). But what then does he find when he turns to the nation

in question? The truth is that it fits his model of the ideal

state for legislation no better than had Corsica. Poland is

hardly the sort of small nation in which the bonds of civic

affection guarantee national self-identification and unity, but rather a large state, wracked by internal faction and

dissension, and bordered by large, powerful neighbors

(GP, 10, 31; cf. GM ILiii, 183-84; SC II.x.5). In addition,

it seems that Poland may be no more free of the cor

ruptions endemic to modernity than the rest of Europe. Thus just before examining the three great legislators of

antiquity, Rousseau describes the difference between the

ancients and the moderns:

18 It should, however, be noted that Rousseau qualifies these extreme

claims elsewhere in the piece, just as he does in CC (see GP, 73).



What prevents us from being the kind of men they were? The prejudices, the base philosophy, and

the passions of narrow self-interest which, along with indifference to the welfare of others, have

been inculcated in all our hearts by ill-devised

institutions, in which we find no trace of the hand

of genius. (GP, 5)

This of course admits of several different readings. On

the one hand, it might be seen as a call for modern leg islators to emulate those ancients who sought to trans

form corrupted peoples. On the other hand, Rousseau

explicitly means to remind us of our distance from the

ostensible disinterestedness of ancient republicanism in

insisting that "we" today are shaped by "prejudices" as

well as by the "passions of narrow self-interest"?indeed

it is to this fact that his advocacy of Polish nationalism has

been traced (Hassner 1997, 209). But such a formulation

brings Rousseau much closer to Smith; both emphasize the largely overlooked fact that the proper task of legisla tors is principally to attend to these existing prejudices and

passions (cf. Danford 1980,694-95). Such advice is indeed

fully in keeping with Rousseau's earlier admonition that

"once customs are established and prejudices have taken

root, it is a dangerous and foolhardy undertaking to want

to touch them" (GM Il.iii, 184). As we read on, it at least becomes clear that Rousseau

is concerned to appeal to the modern passions, if not pre

cisely the "passions of narrow self-interest." Interestingly he uses the example of the ancients to introduce this de

cidedly modern approach. Thus he explains the principal aim of Greek legislators seeking to fashion peoples was

to "set them on fire with the spirit of emulation," which

"tied them tightly to the fatherland" (GP, 8). Rousseau's

conception of classical republican virtue, that is, is itself

founded on the proper channeling of amour-propre via

emulation, rather than the recovery of disinterestedness.

But what is striking here is less Rousseau's endorsement of

ancient methods than his sense that such methods might be particularly suited to modern Poland. For in suggest

ing that emulation and "the love of glory" will prove the

best means of shaping the hearts and minds of the Poles, Rousseau advocates a prudent means of appealing to the

concern for the self that is fundamental not merely to

the ancient love of honor but also to the modern love of

recognition (cf. WN V.i.f.4; cf. TMS I.iii.2). In seeking

to encourage emulation, Rousseau's goal

is to direct the native love of honor in the hearts of the

individual Poles to work for the common good. In this

sense, it is lesson analogous to the lesson taught in Corsica.

There Rousseau's goal was not to abolish amour-propre, but to effect an ascent from vanity to pride, or its more

base to its less base form. The same movement is suggested in the examination of selfishness that Rousseau makes in

Poland:

One can make men act only by appealing to their

self-interest. That I know. Of all interests, how

ever, that in pecuniary gain is the most evil, the

most vile, the readiest to be corrupted, though also?in the eyes of one who has knowledge of

the human heart (I reiterate this with confidence

and shall always insist upon it)?the least im

portant and compelling. In the heart of every man there is a natural reservoir of several strong

passions.. .Learn how to foment these passions,

learn how to open up a direct path to their satis

faction that can be travelled without money, and

money will soon lose its price. (GP, 70)

The effect of this passage is twofold. First, Rousseau clearly distances his position from that of the idealism that would

seek to overcome selfishness; his legislative proposals rest

on steering self-interest well rather than attempting to

transcend it. Secondly, Rousseau makes clear how he in

tends to steer selfishness, namely by attempting to direct

it to the love of glory and away from the love of wealth.

Only in this way, Rousseau insists, can the characteristic

vice of modernity, the love of opinion, be employed to

recover what modernity has lost. Thus the remedy most

likely to succeed:

It consists in seeing to it that every citizen shall

feel the eyes of his fellow-countrymen upon him

every moment of the day; that no man shall move

upward and win success except by public appro

bation; that every post and employment shall be

filled in accordance with the nation's wishes; and

that everyone?from the least of the nobles, or

even the least of the peasants, up to the king him

self, if that were possible?shall be so completely

dependent upon public esteem as to be unable

to do anything, acquire anything, or achieve any

thing without it. The resulting emulation among all the citizens would produce a ferment that, in

its turn, would awaken that patriotic fervor which

raises men?as nothing else can raise them?

above themselves. (GP, 87)

The key to elevating the moral character of the Poles is to

meet them where they stand. So far from insisting that the

love of opinion engendered by amour-propre should be

abolished, Rousseau employs it as the source of its tran

scendence. Already corrupted by an extreme solicitude



for esteem, the Poles' best hope lies in total submission to

opinion. The division of the bourgeois between his pri vate happiness and his solicitude for public esteem which

always transports him outside of himself is to be rectified

by rendering the solicitude for esteem the only source of

his happiness: "let him be conscious always that every de

tail of his conduct is being observed and evaluated by his

fellow-citizens, that no step he takes will go unnoticed, that no action he performs will be disregarded, and that

the good and the evil he does are being posted upon a

scrupulously accurate balance-sheet that will affect every

subsequent moment of his life" (GP, 88). The struggle for

public recognition must thus become the only concern of

the good citizen (GP, 15,22,64,102). Rousseau hopes that

such competition for the honors and esteem of the public will ultimately lead each to "channel all their efforts into

forwarding the glory and prosperity of the state" (GP, 52). In such a manner, his legislative science comes full circle

back to Smith's, for what is true of Smith's market holds

true for Rousseau's Poland: not the disinterested love of

virtue, but the competition of each with all, in which every individual is driven by a desire for the external good of es

teem, becomes a mechanism for promoting the universal

well-being of the whole.

"Rules of Natural Justice" and

"Principles of Political Right"

Above I have argued that both Rousseau's and Smith's vi

sions of the science of the legislator seek to promote mod

eration insofar as each emphasizes the need to mitigate a

commitment to the universal principles of justice with a

sensitivity to the exigencies of a given political context. Yet

this emphasis on expedience, or moderation, itself raises a

heretofore unaddressed question: how is Rousseau's con

cealed moderation to be squared with the explicit political immoderation of SC Il.vii?19 It is this question that the

article's remainder will address. Yet doing so requires ad

dressing a second question. For while it has been argued above that both Smith and Rousseau are dedicated to tem

pering the ideal with the real, it is by no means clear that

they have similar conceptions of what it is that requires

tempering. That is, it is not clear that Smith's vision of

the "general principles" or "rules of natural justice" is

commensurate with Rousseau's vision of the principles of "universal justice" or the "principles of political right." Thus we might ask: given their shared commitment to

19I am grateful to Louis Hunt for compelling me to address this

question.

the moderation necessary for the instantiation of their

respective political ideals, how do Rousseau and Smith

understand those principles themselves?

We begin with Smith. The foundations of Smith's sys tem of natural liberty are to be found in his commitment

to the existence of "rules of natural justice." The question has rightly been raised by several of Smith's commentators

as to whether in fact the sort of skeptical epistemology that

Smith articulates allows him to claim that the principles of

natural justice are in fact humanly knowable; on this view, it is held that the "standpoint external to the human spec tacle" necessary for the investigation of the first principles of natural justice is "unavailable" (Griswold 1999, 256

58 and 2006, 182-86; Fleischacker 2004, 166-69). This

question of whether Smith's skepticism can be reconciled

with his faith in the existence of natural order is impor tant and demands separate treatment. But what is most

important for us here is less the potential epistemological

problems posed by Smith's conception of natural order

than the positive political work that this conception does

in Smith's system of natural liberty. Indeed, in one sense,

the fact that the universal principles of natural justice can

not be comprehensively known is of the greatest political

import for Smith. Smith's primary defense of individual

liberty in the Wealth of Nations is founded not in an ap

peal to natural rights but rather in the evidence that he

adduces for what Griswold calls "the epistemic limits of

statesmanship" (Griswold 1999, 302-4). One of Smith's

principal normative intentions in presenting the science

of the legislator in the manner that he does is clearly to

induce humility?and hence a greater restraint?via the

reminder that the imperfection of our ability to under

stand natural order ought to restrain our interventions.

Yet such an approach to legislation can only work

if indeed the system of natural liberty can be assumed

to operate with minimal external involvement. Much of

Smith's positive political program rests on the claim that

natural order is more efficient than the constructs of men, a view that itself seems to be founded on Smith's faith in

the existence of a providential or ideological natural or

der (see esp. Alvey 2004; Hill 2001; Waterman 2002; cf.

Haakonssen 1981, 77). Put differently, Smith's argument

against the manipulation of human interests by ambi

tious legislators is founded on the claim that human in

terests are naturally self-regulating and can promote the

common interest of the whole, independent of extensive

human intervention. It is, however, precisely this claim

that Rousseau is most concerned to challenge. Despite his several explicit invocations of natural order, Rousseau

consistently denies that it can be known or might serve

as a guide for political order. Given this skepticism, the

fundamental legislative task is not imitation of natural



order but creation of an artificial order to replace a nat

ural order that is largely unknowable, and to the degree that it is knowable, appears to be inimical to justice.

Rousseau's consistent claim on this front?indeed the

claim that necessitates the extensive political proposals of

the Social Contract?is the claim that unregulated nature

tends towards injustice. Thus Rousseau's striking rejoin der to Smith's natural justice is that nature, left unto it

self, tends to promote injustice: "Far from there being an

alliance between private interest and the general good,

they are mutually exclusive in the natural order of things"

(GM I.ii, 160). Consequently, Rousseau claims, nature

cannot serve as a guide for politics (GM I.ii, 158-60; cf.

PE, 6; Melzer 1983, 639, 645), insofar as politics must

artificially create the justice that is absent from nature.

Hence Rousseau's departure from Smith: where Smith's

"libertarianism" finds its anchor in his conviction that

the natural order is capable of self-regulating private in

terest for the sake of general interest, Rousseau argues

that it is precisely nature's insufficiency in this regard that

requires replacing natural disorder with artificial order.

And hence Rousseau's version of Hume's sensible knave

problem. Left unto nature, he insists, man necessarily fol

lows his selfish instincts, and it is this that necessitates

creation of a comprehensive conventional order with the

sole purpose of redirecting individuals from the pursuit of their "apparent interest" towards an appreciation of

their interest "properly understood" (GM I.ii, 163)?that

is to say, politics must be dedicated to "substituting justice for instinct" (GM I.ii-iii, 163-65; SC I.viii.l).20 It is then

Rousseau's pessimism over the existence of natural justice that leads him to propose the creation through convention

of "the rules of rational natural right" in order to supplant what goes under the name of "natural right properly so

called," and is "based only on a true but very vague senti

ment that is often stifled by love of ourselves" (GM II.iv,

191 ). In this light, Rousseau's positivism is founded on the

rejection of the principles of natural justice that Smith is

concerned to establish. "Law comes before justice and not

justice before law" precisely because the injustice of nat

ural interest demands it: "The true principles of the just and unjust must, therefore, be sought in the fundamental

and universal law of the greatest good of all, and not in

the private relations between one man and another; and

there is no particular rule of justice that cannot be easily deduced from that first law" (GM Il.iv, 190-91; cf. GM

20This claim, in conjunction with the suggestion that wise legis lators should "attribute their own wisdom to the gods" (GM II.ii,

182; SC II.vii.4, 9; cf. PE, 19), leads one to wonder whether the ac

count of justice at SC II.vi.2 is delivered in the voice of the political

philosopher addressing a potential legislator or that of the legislator

addressing a people.

I.vii, 178; PE 19; Melzer 1983, 640-42). This in turn be

comes the task of the legislator. Realizing the absence of

natural justice, the legislator is charged with the responsi

bility of replacing natural law with positive law (GM I.iii;

SCI.i.2).21

Conclusion: The Enlightenment and Nation Building Today

How then do Smith's and Rousseau's conceptions of the

science of the legislator compare? Their fundamental

agreement, I have argued, lies in their shared insistence

that legislators must temper their efforts at instituting

general principles with a prudential and moderate sensi

tivity to the conditions and contexts in which they work. In

particular they require an appreciation of the "passions" and "prejudices" native to the people for whom they legis

late, as well as an appreciation of the degree to which these

native passions and prejudices have been transformed by

exposure to passions and prejudices of alternative prove nance. Their difference then lies not in their positions on

the need to accommodate the conditions of modernity? on which they agree?but rather their differing concep

tions of the ideals that such accommodations are intended

to instantiate. Rousseau's science of the legislator, dedi

cated to creating the principles of political right, in this

respect sharply clashes with Smith's. Where Smith seeks to

preserve natural justice, Rousseau seeks to create justice to

remedy the challenges that an unregulated nature would

otherwise pose. Where the goal of Smith's moderation is

then to restrain the claims of political life and thereby allow for the persistence of nature in society, Rousseau's

legislative moderation is dedicated to the comparatively immoderate goal of transcending the injustice and chaos

that are, on his view, endemic to nature.

Contemporary nation builders stand to gain from

attention to Smith's and Rousseau's agreements and dis

agreements. It would be dangerous to suggest that any thinker in the history of political philosophy can provide

ready answers to our problems; attempting

to extract con

temporary lessons from historical texts would be particu

larly egregious in the present instance, in which the texts

in question teach the import of appreciating nuances and

particularities in discrete situations and of resisting urges

21 Hence Rousseau's anti-foundationalism: "For the science of gov

ernment is nothing but a science of combinations, applications and exceptions, according to times, places, circumstances" (Let ter to Mirabeau, 26 July 1767, in Gourevitch, Later Political Writ

ings, 269). For important challenges to the "positivistic" reading of

Rousseau, see especially Scott (1994) and Williams (2005b).



to legislate via imposition of ideal templates. At the same

time, the Enlightenment's conception of the science of

the legislator is worthy of our attention for at least two

reasons. First, for all their internal disagreements, cur

rent debates over nation building concur in recognizing that America is likely to be engaged in nation building for

some time, and that we have thus far failed to establish

an adequate framework for dealing with its challenges

(Dobbins 2003, xiii-xxix; Fukuyama 2006, 8-12). Con

temporary lack of clarity thus provides one argument in

favor of returning to the Enlightenment. Yet more impor

tantly, the Enlightenment's conception of the science of

the legislator also enables us to understand better both the

necessary disposition required of nation builders, as well

as how nation builders might most effectively cultivate

a no less necessary receptivity to the dispositions of the

peoples who comprise the nation to be built.

With regard to the former, Smith and Rousseau de

scribe a disposition likely to be both more sustainable and

more successful than those often seen today. Recent Amer

ican nation-building efforts have prominently featured

two dispositions: the enthusiasm and idealism of initial

reformers and the pessimism and despair of retrospective assessors. It would be easy to counsel "moderation" in the

face of such extremes?yet this would miss the subtlety of the particular sort of moderation Smith and Rousseau

recommend. In the first place, their moderation empha sizes the limits of political intervention and calls for an

embrace of second-best solutions. But to leave matters at

that would be to recommend a deflationary realism rather

than genuine moderation. What distinguishes their vision

of the science of a legislator is that it joins to this tempering of idealism a steady attachment to guiding universal prin

ciples. Smith and Rousseau realize that the hard-nosed

dismissal of universal principles is likely to degenerate into Machiavellianism, just as the too-eager embrace of

such principles is likely to lead to hubristic enthusiasm.

The genius of their moderation lies in its effort to establish

a balance between ideals and context, and thereby enable

a legislator to navigate a course between the Scylla of un

mitigated practicality and the Charybdis of immoderate

idealism.

Smith and Rousseau also provide insight into the

practical methods as well as the spirit of contemporary nation building. While on some level true, it would be

facile to suggest that both emphasize the importance of

gathering the "intelligence" that is so often said to be lack

ing in our recent nation-building projects. Their claim is

more specific. In calling for legislators to come to an ap

preciation of the passions and "prejudices" of the peoples for whom they legislate, their aim is to encourage an ap

preciation of the current state of the psychology of such

peoples and the ways in which this psychology has been

shaped by their political experience. In particular, Smith

and Rousseau counsel that the legislator's first and most

important task is to grasp the nature of the particular loves of a particular people, and craft legislation that ap

peals to such loves, however corrupted by recent experi ences. The lesson is particularly apt for democratic nation

builders seeking to build democratic nations. America's

recent nation-building projects have largely been in na

tions emerging from undemocratic and sometimes total

itarian conditions. Attention to the science of the legisla tor proposed by Smith and Rousseau would suggest that

while freedom and democratic self-rule remain noble and

proper goals for these efforts, a direct appeal to such a peo

ple's love of freedom is unto itself unlikely to succeed; also

needed is engagement with the actual present loves and

needs of such a people, and not merely those loves and

needs one might wish them to have (see also Williams

2007, 30-31). Smith and Rousseau, that is, can remind

"our present-day lawgivers, thinking exclusively in terms

of coercion and punishment," how much they err in for

getting that the essential problem consists in the question of "how to reach men's hearts" (GP, 4).

References

Alvey, James E. 2004. "The Secret, Natural, Theological Founda

tion of Adam Smith's Work." Journal of Markets and Morality 7: 335-61.

Anhalt, Emily. 1993. Solon the Singer: Politics and Poetics. Lan

ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Aristotle. 1984. Politics. Trans. Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Barrington, Lowell W. 2006. "Nationalism and Independence." In After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in

Postcolonial and Postcommunist States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 3-30.

Berlin, Isaiah. 2002. Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty. Ed. Henry Hardy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Brubaker, Lauren. 2006. "Adam Smith on Natural Liberty and

Moral Corruption: The Wisdom of Nature and Folly of Legis lators?" In Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,

191-217.

Cassirer, Ernst. 1954. The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Trans. Peter Gay. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cohen, Edward S. 1989. "Justice and Political Economy in Com

mercial Society: Adam Smith's 'Science of a Legislator'." Jour

nal of Politics 51 (February): 50-72.

Cooper, Laurence D. 1999. Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life. University Park: Pennsylvania State University

Press.



Cropsey, Joseph. [1957] 2001. Polity and Economy: With Further

Thoughts on the Principles of Adam Smith. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press.

Danford, John W. 1980. "Adam Smith, Equality, and the Wealth of Sympathy." American Journal of Political Science 24(4): 674-95.

Dent, N. J. H. 1988. Rousseau. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Dobbins, James, et al. 2003. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Feldman, Noah. 2004. What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics

of Nation Building. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fleischacker, Samuel. 2004. On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:

A Philosophical Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni

versity Press.

Forman-Barzilai, Fonna. 2003. "The Emergence of Contextual

ism in Rousseau's Political Thought: The Case of Parisian Theatre in the Lettre ? d'AlembertT History of Political

Thought 24(3): 435-63.

Fukuyama, Francis, ed. 2006. Nation-Building: Beyond

Afghanistan and Iraq. Baltimor

Documents

Hanley 2008 Enlightenened Nation Building Science of the Legislator in Smith and Rousseau