Demokracija u republikanskom ključu: Hannah Arendt verzus Jean-Jacques Rousseau
DEMOCRACY IN THE REPUBLICAN KEY: HANNAH ARENDT VERSUS JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Summary/Abstract: The problem matter of this paper is the theoretical dialogue between two republican theories of democracy as a form of political subjectivisation of people as citizens. The first part focuses on H. Arendt’s criticism of Rousseau’s conception of general will in opposition to the will of all and the particular will as such. In the second part, examples are provided of possible textual support in the Social Contract to such an understanding of Rousseau’s generalwill concept, not only as different in quality but also as truly antagonistic towards the will of all as a sum of particular wills of members of the political body of the republic. In the third part, the author shows that H. Arendt’s reading is explained, on the one hand, by the equation of Rousseauian political theory with its Jacobin ideological reception and political instrumentalisation at the time of the French Revolution; in connection therewith, H. Arendt’s interpretation of the logic of the French Revolution, with its reduction of the Revolution’s goals to the social question, is elucidated by Habermas’s interpretation of the French version of the natural-law construction of civil society as an amalgamation of Rousseauian and physiocratic theories. On the other hand, the criticism of Rousseau is conditioned by Arendt’s refusal to reflect on political freedom within the logics of sovereignty. In the final part, the author indicates how H. Arendt and her conceptual framework (distinction between power and violence) may contribute to a better understanding of Rousseau (the sovereign as a synthesis of general will and political power; the government as a synthesis of particular will and violence).

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