Saint-Just against the Social Contract: Society without a Polity

Abstract

The preceding discussion of the social contract, and the nation that results therefrom, places us on the threshold of an examination of the political sphere proper as constituted in its specifically modern and reflexive sense. However, the position of Sieyès, though in many respects decisive for the constitutional elaboration of the emergent polity, was hardly the only position put forward by the revolutionary camp. Indeed, perhaps because its underlying suppositions had come to correspond to, even insinuate themselves within the new regime’s institutional reality, it gave rise to ideas that sought to counter what appeared as its more disturbing implications. In this respect, the manuscript by Saint-Just that we are about to discuss, will be seen to cover much the same territory as the preceding chapter, but from a completely antithetical perspective. ‘De la nature, de l’état civile de la cité ou les règles de l’indépendance du gouvernement’,¹ is an argument specifically directed against the social contract, an argument which, not without a certain perspicacity concerning the alterity of power, culminated in the blanket refusal of the political. As such, one might add — if only to confound certain ‘idées reçues’ — that Saint-Just was not very well disposed to Rousseau’s theoretical endeavours, though he did admire the latter’s personal integrity and courage:

Rousseau ceaselessly turns his eyes towards nature; he seeks an independent society, but the latter cannot be reconciled with the harsh government that he proposes. He stifles liberty with his own hands; and the more barriers he establishes against slavery, the more arms he forges for tyranny.²