Teaching by Examples: Rousseau’s Lawgiver and the Case of Benjamin Franklin

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231196832
• Author: Timothy Brennan
• Date: 01 June 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231196832

Political Theory

2024, Vol. 52(3) 348 –373

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917231196832

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Article

Teaching by Examples:

Rousseau’s Lawgiver and

the Case of Benjamin

Franklin

Timothy Brennan1

Abstract

Rousseau’s account of the “legislator” or “lawgiver” is commonly regarded as

one of the most far-fetched, ominous, and baffling parts of his teaching in the

Social Contract. In brief, Rousseau’s lawgiver seems to be a proto-totalitarian

figure whose self-appointed mission is to found a political community by

“denaturing” people at a single stroke and who may be a mere figment

of Rousseau’s overheated imagination. Accordingly, this part of the Social

Contract threatens to make a mockery of Rousseau’s claim to be “taking men

as they are and laws they can be,” as well as his claim that the combination of

“freedom and equality” is “the greatest good” in the civil state. Following and

extending Rousseau’s own method of teaching by examples, however, this

essay argues that Benjamin Franklin’s influence over the American republic—

especially through his posthumous Autobiography—offers a prosaic example

of the apparently fantastical phenomenon sketched by Rousseau. In fact, I

argue that Franklin’s case corresponds more fully to Rousseau’s description

than do any of Rousseau’s own examples (such as Moses, Lycurgus, and

Numa) and that Franklin showed in practice what Rousseau suggested in

theory: that a lawgiver can succeed without relying on coercion and without

undercutting the equality that underlies a just society. Franklin’s denaturing

influence, I suggest, has been crucial for the durability of republicanism in the

United States, given the country’s size and diversity.

1University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA

Corresponding Author:

Timothy Brennan, Institute of American Civics, Baker School of Public Policy, University of

Tennessee, Knoxville, 1640 Cumberland Avenue, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-3340, USA.

Email: tbrennan231@gmail.com

1196832PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231196832Political TheoryBrennan

research-article2023

Brennan 349

1. The Collected Writings will hereafter be cited as CW.

Keywords

Rousseau, lawgiver, legislator, social contract, founding, Benjamin Franklin

Along with his account of the general will, Rousseau’s account of the “legis-

lator” or “lawgiver” is commonly regarded as the most far-fetched, most omi-

nous, and most baffling part of his teaching in the Social Contract. An ideal

lawgiver, according to Rousseau, would meet seven criteria: (1) seeing “all of

men’s passions,” yet experiencing “none of them”; (2) having “no relation-

ship at all to our nature,” yet knowing it “thoroughly”; (3) enjoying a happi-

ness “independent of us,” yet being “willing to attend to ours”; (4) desiring a

“glory” that can crystallize only in a future century; (5) feeling himself capa-

ble of “changing human nature, so to speak”; (6) giving laws from outside the

“constitution” of the republic, without executive or indeed legislative author-

ity; and (7) displaying a “great soul,” with genuine “wisdom,” hence being

able to “persuade without convincing” by laying a credible claim to divine

support (Rousseau 1990–2010, 4:154–57).1

Thus, as Frank (2021) notes, “The role of the lawgiver in Rousseau’s polit-

ical theory . . . has often been treated as an anachronistic embarrassment in

what is otherwise a thoroughly modern theory of democratic legitimacy”

(51). Dent (2005) observes that “Rousseau’s having recourse to such a figure

is one of the most perplexing points in his whole enterprise. Indeed, it is hard

to be quite sure how seriously he took this concept himself” (140). Bertram

(2004) describes the lawgiver as “one of the most curious and apparently

anomalous features of the Social Contract,” one that “solves a problem at the

centre of Rousseau’s thought, but arguably does so at the cost of diminishing

its plausibility” (129).

Worse, as O’Hagan (1999) writes, the lawgiver looks very much like a

“totalitarian figure” (23). Hence, Berlin (2002) links Rousseau with the

“Jacobins, Robespierre, Hitler, Mussolini, the Communists”: “They do not

know what their true self is, whereas I, who am wise, who am rational, who

am the great benevolent legislator – I know this,” Berlin says of “Rousseau’s

central doctrine” (50). Similarly, Grant (1997) argues that the lawgiver’s

activity may cause citizens, “the subjects of manipulation,” to “experience

themselves as childlike dependents” (134–35). And Koganzon (2021) sug-

gests that Rousseau’s lawgivers are “so compelling as to make it undesirable,

if not altogether impossible, for those under their sway to achieve or even