The article is an attempt to highlight the inherent tensions and mutual contradictions that popular sovereignty perceived as a category of modern political thought is marked by. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM ...AND METHODS: Through the analyses of the crucial passages of Rousseau's political writings I show that different interpretations of popular sovereignty should be analyzed in the context of Robert Spaemann's reading of the rousseauian thesis of the irreversible disintegration of political unity and the separation of public and private. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: I argue that the thought of Jan Jakub Rousseau may be a basis for deriving different meanings of popular sovereignty according to different and sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations typical of neorepublicanism, civic humanism, communitarianism and political liberalism. Rousseau's idea of popular sovereignty may be perceived as combining classical and nominalist traditions (an actual consensus of the majority as a representation of the general will). RESEARCH RESULTS: The main conclusion of the article is that the tension implicit in the idea of popular sovereignty is inherently linked with a dual condition of the modern man who is incapable of both a political and private existence. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The idea of a well-ordered society as described in The Social Contract and Considerations on the Government of Poland shows the tensions and ambiguities in the modern idea of popular sovereignty, which can be taken into consideration while analyzing it as one of the main constitutional principles .
Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining ...individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political theory remains divided on the normative implications of division and unity—witness the battles between agonistic and consensus-oriented schools of democratic theory. In this article I examine the thought of two eighteenth-century writers who, while often treated as contributing to a common intellectual project of reinvigorating classical civic virtue, took opposite positions on the desirability of division. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson offered competing accounts of what corrupts civic virtue, one decrying party divisions and the other lauding them. The article examines the underlying philosophical presuppositions of Rousseau and Ferguson's competing claims and suggests, ultimately, that both positions suffer from neglecting to attend to an important distinction between salutary and harmful divisions. L'esprit de parti inspire une certaine ambivalence. La pensée politique républicaine a souvent dénoncé les divisions et l'esprit de parti comme des phénomènes corrupteurs qui portent atteinte au jugement individuel et qui promeuvent un clientélisme, des dépendances et des loyautés contraires au bien public. Mais il existe également une intuition – aussi très répandue – voulant que l'unité excessive soit corruptrice, portant atteinte à la vigueur de la vie civique. La pensée politique contemporaine demeure divisée à l'égard des implications normatives de la division et de l'unité (pensons, par exemple, aux débats dans la théorie démocratique entre les champions de l'agonisme et ceux du consensus). Dans cet article, nous considérons la pensée de deux écrivains du dix-huitième siècle qui, quoique souvent traités comme des alliés dans le projet de faire revivre une vertu civique ancienne, prirent des positions opposées sur la désirabilité de la division sociale. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Adam Ferguson offrirent deux conceptions distinctes de ce qui corrompt la vertu civique : l'un déplora les divisions partisanes tandis que l'autre les loua avec enthousiasme. L'article examine les présupposés philosophiques sur lesquels reposent leurs positions divergentes et suggère que ces deux positions négligent de considérer une importante distinction entre les divisions salutaires et les divisions néfastes.
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau Written by Michelle Markel Illustrated by Amanda Hall Eerdmans, 2012, unpaged, ISBN 978-0- 8028-5364-6 The exotic paintings and indomitable spirit of Henri ...Rousseau are mirrored beautifully in this upbeat story about the joy of artistic innovation and the inexhaustibility of one man's creative force.
This paper explicates some aspects of Hans Kelsen’s defence of democracy. Kelsen’s aim was to formulate a realistic normative alternative to the democratic ideal derived from Rousseau. He provided ...two, independent arguments for majoritarian democracy. First, the validity of majority principle could be derived from epistemological relativism. Second, majority principle maximized individual liberty. The latter argument is based on Kelsen’s own definition of liberty as a correspondence between an individual will and the ruling norms. This argument could be interpreted as reasoning based on a hypothetical contract. The most important critiques of majoritarian proceduralism are based on (1) the problem of the possibility of democratic self-destruction, (2) the problem of the democratic origins of democracy and (3) the problem of the possibility of permanent majorities. Kelsen had a convincing answer to problems, (1) and (2). The problem of permanent majorities is more difficult to solve. Ultimately, Kelsen is forced to abandon his purely proceduralistic starting point.
This paper primarily aims at conceptualizing a new philosophical approach to literature education, one that we—in the vein of certain pedagogical trends—propose to call “thing-centered”. Point of ...departure is the ongoing confrontation with a two-sided educational problem: on the one hand, the confrontation with the steady decline of younger generations’ engagements with ‘classical’ literature; on the other hand, that with the unsatisfactory answers which either accept (and even support) this development, in light of the world’s irresistible digitization, or try overcoming it through a more student-centered, ‘biographical’ appropriation of literature. Beyond the more immediate didactical difficulties which this two-fold problem poses, we ask ourselves the question whether it is not time for a more fundamental renewal of our understanding of literature’s contemporary educational significance. In answering this question, for which we turn to such diverse authors as Rousseau, Deleuze and Calvino, it is argued that if education is to continue its care for both classical literacy and literary classics—and not so much against as in relation
to
ascending digital literacies—a more radically immanent,
thing-centered
perspective is likely to prove the most sustainable, in the sense of enabling truly new, ‘care-ful’ literary-educational practices to emerge.
Rousseau's use of Robinson Crusoe as the only text in Emile's curriculum is often read as furthering his project of teaching Emile to be an autonomous, natural man. Yet in introducing the novel, ...Rousseau has a surprising treatment of economics. If Crusoe, an isolated individual,
is supposed to further Emile's education in autonomy, why does Rousseau introduce him with a discussion of society, specifically economics? This paper argues that through the novel, Rousseau provides a broader economic education that shows Emile how to maintain healthy self-love and fulfil
his duty as citizen in corrupt, commercial society. Further, Rousseau invites the reader to be critical of the character of Crusoe, who is self-sufficient, but alone.
Il saggio prende spunto da un ricordo d’infanzia annotato nello Zibaldoneil 26 marzo 1820, che Leopardi rubrica sotto la voce “Servitori”. A partire da questo appunto, il contributo indaga la ...presenza del motivo della servitù, e del rapporto servo-padrone, nel diario leopardiano e nei ricordi autobiografici raccolti nella Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno, intrecciandolo dapprima con le considerazioni rousseauiane sul tema (Émile e Confessions) e poi con il concetto arendtiano di ‘vita activa’. Attraverso l’analisi di temi (la schiavitù, il pubblico e il privato, il consumo alimentare, l’egoismo) e di figure emblematiche (il domestico, il tiranno, il monofago, il viaggiatore solitario), il saggio mostra le implicazioni autobiografiche, storiche (l’«umanità degli antichi») e filosofiche dell’interesse leopardiano per il motivo della servitù: la desolata presa d’atto che la società moderna condivide con la natura un inevitabile egoismo, nella misura in cui il bisogno del singolo prevale su valori durevoli e pubblici come la gloria e l’onore.
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