Praise of unproductive Institutions Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Culture of the People-Nation

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is still considered the political philosopher who de- veloped in advance the theoretical foundations of the French Revolution, by defining the general will as the contractual spring of the Republic of human rights. Contrary to this established opinion, we show here how the unusual figure of the great legislator makes it possible to open a gap in the logical construct of the social contract, from which another perspective on the people and politics can be glimpsed, closer to a sociological view. From the gap opened by the great legislator, the people ceases to be, indeed, an abstract entity constructed by the mechanism of representation, and appears rather as a concrete historical subject whose secret lies in the insti- tutions that modern utilitarian rationality considers unproductive, while they contribute decisively to shape the minds and the behaviors, that is, the political culture of a nation without which the reflexive position of laws in view of the common good is utterly impossible.