MATTHEW SCHERERtics. But, according to Rousseau,there is nothing in man’s original nature to stir in him
reverence for the law, and we have no right to hope, as Kant does at the conclusion to the
Critique of Practical Reason, that ‘‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens
above me and the moral law within me.’’^28 Where right, for Kant, inspires reverence of
its own accord, and right, for Hobbes, inspires reverence only when it comes bearing a
sword or threatening war, and right, for Locke, requires only the tacit consent granted it
by virtue of one’s mere presence in society, Rousseau has nothing to guarantee the needed
reverence for the law, save for the grace of God or, what amounts to the same, the proper
education of man’s social spirit. In theSocial Contract, the agent of this education alter-
nately takes the form of the profession of civil religion, which ensures one’s continued
compliance with the law, and the figure of the wise legislator, who gives the law and
whose ‘‘great soul is the true miracle that should prove his mission.’’^29
The problem of our condition, and this is what makes it a paradox calling for miracu-
lous resolution, is double: man’s reason is benighted, and his will is corrupt. Were one
intact, it could suffice to correct the other, but because neither is in order, to establish
and maintain a just order, God must touch twice, once through the legislator upon reason
and again through the doctrines of civil religion upon the mass of man’s habits, mores,
and moral sentiments. Here is the classical formulation of the paradox given in ‘‘On the
Legislator’’: ‘‘In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics,
and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause;
the social spirit, which should be the result of the institution, would have to preside over
the founding of the institution itself; and men would have to be prior to laws what they
ought to become by means of laws.’’^30 Without the ‘‘social spirit,’’ which men lack because
they have been raised in an unjust society, the ‘‘rules,’’ which could alone serve to order
a society just enough to conjure this spirit, cannot be formulated. Likewise, without the
‘‘fundamental rules of statecraft,’’ which are nowhere written and which would be neces-
sary to constitute the kind of society that could produce men able to ‘‘appreciate’’ its
maxims, the ‘‘social spirit,’’ which alone could guide the formulation of such rules, cannot
be conjured up.
Rousseau continues: ‘‘Since the legislator is therefore unable to use either force or
reasoning, he must necessarily have recourse to another order of authority, which can
win over without violence and persuade without convincing.’’^31 Here, because a political
wisdom that uses its ‘‘own language, rather than that of the common people,’’ fails to
persuade in the absence of a social spirit that would animate conviction and because
force, in the form of another’s violent dominion, fails to win one over by failing to accord
with the dictates of one’s own reasoning, the legislator must have recourse to something
other than reason or force.^32 In short, what is called for is nothing less than the revealed
authority of the miraculous event.
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