Legislators as musicians. On Rousseau’s foundation of democratic republicanism

By focusing on the Essay on the origin of languages, I will discuss Rousseau’s belief that music, education and politics, can enhance man’s moral freedom through the establishment of a “melodic” language of wisdom, capable of healing the wounds of moral corruption and social divisions. Language is conventional and its conventionality is the result of a development in communication that was driven by the human search for perfectibility and pity; these both imply mutual recognition and cooperation as well as conflicts and divisions. In this sense, Rousseau’s theory on language and music is a reflection on the “moral effects” of melody which has a relevant implication in his ideas on politics. In fact, the analysis of the origin of languages reveals the principles upon which political societies are instituted and through which they develop their identities. I will focus on the legislator as the figure that, through persuasion and “sound” discourses, not only proposes laws, but also establishes moeurs and shared social meanings in the very first moment of the joining together of men in a political community. Legislators and wise politicians, in fact, should rely on their capacity to provide people with good laws and customs, convincing them to join a political society. Rousseau’s republicanism relies on a base capacity to provide, but legislators and politicians should also yield on “reason of state”, as a complex science of politics, in order to set up the condition by which a political community can promote political equality and good government. Rousseau does not intend raison d’état as derogatory or cunning politics, but as the knowledge of all the rules concerned with the governing of a population through policy, administration, and economy. By joining virtue with reason of State, Rousseau reveals the necessity to sustain his republicanism, and his proposal for a democratic political order, with a governance that strengthens the capacities for self-government of people and individuals. If this holds true, while education and self-recognition through narration are two pillars for the rediscovery of human singularity bridging the gap between individuality and sociality, it is reason of State that closes the circle between politics and morality in Rousseau’s political philosophy. A political philosophy resting between the melodious language of the legislator and the harmony implied in a well ordered society.