LUIS FABIO GUERRA SPIRA

The study of the relationship between politics and morality in the light of the concept of customs in both the first and definitive versions of Rousseau's Social Contract makes it clear that the art of the legislator denatures man into a citizen in order to reconcile the citizen with his humanity: to form customs is to instill in hearts the feeling of belonging and obligation without which private wills are not generalized in the body politic; it is also to promote the habit of public deliberation whose culmination occurs in the emergence of “droit naturel raisonné”. Thus, in addition to the conditions for the possibility of a well-constituted state, embodied in the clauses of the social pact, Rousseau is concerned with the conditions for the effectiveness of the state, in other words, the formation of the social bond and the feeling of political and moral obligation; this is why the distinction between “art commencé” and “art perfectionné” takes on greater significance in his work; this is also why a study of customs in Rousseau seems unavoidable. It is up to the legislator, more than just to give laws to the men gathered in the city - and given that politics has no moral foundati