Youthfulness and Legislation: Rousseau on the Constituent Moment

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221097138
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 381–392

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221097138

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Youthfulness and Legislation: Rousseau on

the Constituent Moment

Shuhuai Ren

1



Abstract

In Of the Social Contract, Rousseau argued that, for successful political founding, the social spirit that is the product of the

institutionsmust precede over the institutions.Scholars have interpreted Rousseau’s constituent momentas an unsolvable

paradox that haunts modern constitutional theory. This article seeks to challenge this view by taking seriously Rousseau’s

claim that onlya young nation can receive laws.By reconstructing youthfulnessas a necessary pre-institutional conditionfor

legislation,I argue that successful constituentmoments can be identif‌ied withinRousseau’s works, attentionto which shows

that his position is not paradoxical. Youthfulness nonetheless hinges on a tension between the innocence of a community

that shares a robustsocial bond, and the maturity evident in its dangerous desire for prosperity.Youthfulness is therefore a

moment ofcrisis and opportunity thatcalls for legislation to resolvethis tension. Rousseauillustrates two youthfulmoments

–natural youth and restored youth –both in the general human history set out in the Discourse on Inequality and in his

analysis of the particular cases of Corsica and Poland. By emphasizing youthfulness,this article calls for greater attention to

Rousseau’s political sociology, which cannot be separated from his principles of political right.

Keywords

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the paradox of politics, the constituent moment

Introduction

In Of the Social Contract, Book I, Chapter 6, Rousseau

depicts a constituent moment where a group of individuals

consent to relinquish their particular identities and obtain

a common identity by becoming citizens of a state.

1

In

doing so, individuals form a strong political union ‘under

the supreme guidance of the general will’(SC, I-6, 20/OC

3: 361). How is this transition from individuals to citizens

possible? How did Rousseau think that a well-ordered

state could be brought into being? This article investigates

Rousseau’s constituent moment and attempts to answer

these questions.

Bonnie Honig famously turned to Rousseau in identi-

fying the constituent moment as ‘the paradox of political

founding’that haunts modern democratic theory (Honig

2007, 4). The paradox lies in Rousseau’s statement that, in

founding a republic,‘the s ocial spirit that must be the work

of institutions would have to precede over the institutions

themselves’(SC,II-7, 44/OC 3: 383). This is a chicken and

egg problem, as Honig argues ‘[i]n order for there to be a

people well-formed enough for good law-making, there

must be good law for how else will the people be well-

formed?’(Honig2007, 3). A people with social spirit must

consciously acknowledge the common good of the

community to sustain the general will. Yet since the

common good is revealed and presented only through the

law of a state, the paradox remains of how a people canbe

enlightened into the social spirit necessary for establishing

a well-orderedrepublic when there is not already lawand a

political regime in place. For Honig, Rousseau’s intro-

duction of the lawgiver only exacerbates this dilemma, for

the lawgiver’s task of endowing people with the social

spirit seems lessa solution and more an impossible mission

that requires changing human nature. The lawgiver’srole

signif‌ies the insurmountable gap between formal consti-

tutionalism and realist political founding.

Honig contends that this paradox is a problem not only

of Rousseau interpretation, but extends to modern liberal

constitutional theory in general. Many who have turned to

Rousseau to draw inspiration for modern liberal de-

mocracies have, perhaps usurpingly, sought to sidestep

this problem by either interpreting the lawgiver as a

1

Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Shuhuai Ren, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London,

18 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9RE, UK.

Email: shu_huai.ren@kcl.ac.uk