SAINT JOHNversion to be achieved turns man toward the life of republican, or civic, virtue rather than
toward God. He continues his introduction by asking, ‘‘How did this change [i.e., man’s
enslavement in his fallen state] occur?’’ and answers, ‘‘I do not know,’’ as the modern
condition to which he is responding is largely determined by the recognition that men
are incapable of comprehending the laws of heaven. But concerning the question ‘‘What
can make it legitimate?’’ what can serve as anearthlyresolution of the problem, he main-
tains, ‘‘I believe I can answer this question,’’ and the answer is that a good-enough re-
demption of the situation consists in approximating the proper form of the social contract
and establishing the agency of the general will, by which the split in man’s nature between
private and public interest, between inclination and reason, can be resolved. In its more
famous form, the solution is one in which man is forced to be free and made desirous of
his own bondage to the law through his reconciliation with his society.^25
But this account omits stating clearly the conditions of the paradox. Elsewhere, Rous-
seau puts the central problem as follows: ‘‘How will a blind multitude, which often does
not know what it wants because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out by itself an
undertaking as vast and as difficult as a system of legislation?’’^26 It is helpful to recall the
force of theTwo Discourses: for Rousseau, man is irresolvably split—even in the rightly
constituted order he remains, necessarily, divided or ‘‘doubly engaged,’’ as citizen and
subject, private and public being—and in his current condition, moreover, both his will
and his reason are corrupt. This is at once a theological and a sociological assessment:
human nature and human society mirror one another in their corruption. But if Rous-
seau’s doctrine is controlled by a distinct understanding of man’s condition as a fallen
being and his culture as marked by a corruption of nature, it is equally governed by a
concern to hold out the hope of, indeed to formulate a plan for, the redemption of his
soul and of his society. Having placed man in the world, Rousseau’s God is not Hobbes’s
God, retreating on high, nor is he Spinoza’s God, retreating into nature, but, rather, he
personally touches upon the social contract at two significant points, both of which deter-
mine and authorize the precise form of Rousseau’s democratic hope.
The figure of God is evident in all the books of theSocial Contract, but it is in the
second and fourth that His presence is most significant. There, in the chapters ‘‘On the
Legislator’’ and ‘‘On Civil Religion,’’ He can be seen supervening upon the contract in its
founding moment and subtending its continuation in time. In ‘‘On the Legislator,’’ Rous-
seau notes that ‘‘Gods would be needed to give laws to men.’’^27 This is not only because
a patient, disinterested, and dispassionate knowledge of man’s good exceeds his capacity
for comprehension, not only a problem of limited knowledge or insufficient reason—
rather the problem is that nothing in man’s nature guarantees his acceptance of the law,
even when it is given its proper formulation. This is where making a connection with
Kant would be misleading. Were demonstration of the proper form of the social contract,
and steady reflection upon this form, sufficient to establish it, Rousseau’s having drafted
The Social Contractwould have been sufficient to solve the problem, or paradox, of poli-
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