Literary notes about legislator (AI summary)
The term “legislator” has been employed in literature to denote not only the creator of laws but also a visionary, moral, and sometimes divine figure who embodies the ideals of a community or state. In Rousseau’s works, for example, the legislator is portrayed as a unique soul bearing the weight of societal transformation and as the architect distinguishing freedom from tyranny ([1], [2], [3], [4]). Plato, on the other hand, uses the term to question whether even great heroes or poets can rightly claim such a role, suggesting that the legislator possesses an elevated, almost otherworldly authority ([5], [6], [7]). Other authors extend the notion further by contrasting the legislator with figures of tyranny or corrupt authority, as seen in works by Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Thoreau, where the role is intimately bound up with moral accountability and the proper alignment of law with universal principles ([8], [9], [10], [11]). Across eras and genres—from the political treatises of Carlyle and Jefferson to narratives in Victor Hugo and even ethical considerations in Durkheim—the legislator emerges as a central and multifaceted symbol of order, justice, and the ideal state ([12], [13], [14]).
- The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - CHAPTER VII THE LEGISLATOR
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The legislator is the engineer who invents the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - I think not, said Glaucon; not even the Homerids themselves pretend that he was a legislator.
— from The Republic by Plato - His ideal was not to be attained in the course of ages, but was to spring in full armour from the head of the legislator.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - D)—that he was a better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who trained them for war.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - This result is obtained through division of labour (so that responsibility is subdivided too):— The legislator—and he who fulfils the law.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche - Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - For the Legislator, is he that maketh the Law.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - For all Lawes are generall judgements, or Sentences of the Legislator; as also every particular Judgement, is a Law to him, whose case is Judged.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - The day on which some legislator in Spain forbids virtue and commands vice, then all will become virtuous!”
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal - Petion was re-elected Mayor of Paris; but has declined; being now a Convention Legislator.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - Even for the Christian, is not God the Father the guardian of the physical order as well as the legislator and the judge of human conduct?
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim