What does it mean to be Polish according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland Cover Image

Qu’est-ce qu’être Polonais selon les Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne de Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What does it mean to be Polish according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland

Author(s): Jean-Luc Guichet
Subject(s): Social Sciences, History of Philosophy, Philosophical Traditions, Social Philosophy, Special Branches of Philosophy
Published by: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Poland; Rousseau; identity; resistance; Corsica; political philosophy; eighteenth century

Summary/Abstract: For Rousseau, the Polish problem is the construction of a national identity. Poland, a vast open plain threatened by powerful neighbors, cannot find any principle of resistance except in itself in the form of a Polish soul. In order to face danger, it is necessary to train the citizen by shaping all his passions and opinions in order to make him love and cultivate this identity which bears a Polish unity. A main difficulty, however, will be to generalize this identity originally rooted in a particular group: the nobility. Thus, responding to the bet of a situation of vital emergency, the Considerations represent themselves a kind of theoretical bet of Rousseau.

  • Issue Year: 63/2018
  • Issue No: 63
  • Page Range: 189-203
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: French