Rousseau’s attitude toward political pluralism is receiving renewed attention. Against the traditional portrayal of the utopian, anti-pluralist Rousseau, scholars today either explore how his theory of peoplehood supports an agonistic and pluralist vision of democracy or defend his realist willingness to accommodate the plurality of factions within a polity. Challenging both interpretations, I explore the oft-ignored relationship between legislation and what I call youthfulness in Rousseau’s work. The youthfulness of a people is the subconscious and unsophisticated national bond among its members. It is an outcome of their spontaneous interactions rather than an artificial creation. Unlike other conditions of legislation, which only determine how legislation should be carried out, youthfulness is the essential precondition for successful legislation. It determines if legislation can be carried out and thus sets limit to the Legislator’s creativity. This relationship between youthfulness and legislation reveals Rousseau’s anti-pluralist realism. It not only confirms that inevitable political pluralism need not undermine the unity of a society, but also questions our capability of sustaining the peoplehood of a society whose members refuse to recognize one another as compatriots.
This article provides a reinterpretation of Kantian honor to resolve an ongoing debate concerning Kant's mixed attitude toward honor and to clarify the political implications of honor. Kant develops two distinct types of honor in his practical philosophy: natural honor as a human desire and ethical honor as a transcendental virtue. The conflict between these two types of honor can be resolved not in Kant's ethics but in his political theory, which tolerates nonmoral motivations owing to their positive impact on politics and which presumes an imperfect world where political authority has difficulties in properly punishing disrespect. As a viable motivation for citizens to fight disrespect in a principled way, a reformed Kantian honor that combines the normative content of ethical honor and the motivating power of natural honor into a single whole can be conducive to the politics of mutual respect.
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