Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Rousseau 7; R.: Liberalismus: Höhepunkt (Einheit atomisierter Individuen) u. Gefahr (Revolution); Revl. folgt Rs. These in 3 Wellen; Ersatz d. Natur durch Geschichte u. Freiheit; Ende politi. Philosophie (ohne Natur); Gesellschaft (zw. Zivilg. u Staat)

Kurzinhalt: With Rousseau, modern political thought reaches its ultimate expression and perplexity. It turns against liberalism only because it has carried through its original impetus and logic to the end: ... actualizing the ineffable liberty that liberalism ...

Textausschnitt: 78a With Rousseau, modern political thought reaches its ultimate expression and perplexity. It turns against liberalism only because it has carried through its original impetus and logic to the end: constructing an indivisible body politic from supposedly radically independent individuals. That means both that it fails to replace liberalism with another political doctrine founded on different principles, and that it holds over liberalism a vague and fearsome menace. This is the menace of a revolution responsible for imposing an imperious and unspecified unity on the dispersed individuals that liberalism supposedly does not sufficiently unite, of a revolution charged with actualizing the ineffable liberty that liberalism keeps in the dark. The French Revolution will follow in its very evolution the rhythm of Rousseau's thought. It will suddenly appear in 1789 with the aim of giving, at long last, adequate protection to the security and property of individuals; in 1793, it will turn against this security and property so as to obtain the absolute unity of the new body politic; on 9 Thermidor, it will abandon this "unnatural" effort which tended to nullify its own foundation, and will become reconciled with property and its inequality. But this reconciliation in turn, will remain essentially precarious. By raising itself above all the determinations of nature, the revolutionary act opened up an indeterminate "possibility" that no politics would henceforth be able either to forget or fulfill. This possibility, which is impossible, casts man's political nature into a new element, that of an elusive, uncontrollable, and sovereign history. And for controlling history, the Revolution bequeathed to Europe an extraordinarily active and powerful figure of political unity: the nation. (Fs; tblStw: Politik) (notabene)

78b To say that with Rousseau modern political thought reached its limits is to say that after him there was no longer any political philosophy in the strict or original sense.1 (15) As we have seen, once the idea of nature has been exhausted, the question of the best political regime conforming to man's nature can no longer be posed as such. Nature ceases to be the criterion, the reference, or the model. Two other criteria are going to take its place: history and liberty. All political considerations and theories after the French Revolution will develop within philosophies of history and will be subordinated to them. (Fs) (notabene Fußnote)

Fußnote oben:
15. The idea of "philosophy" is inseparable from the idea of "nature." Once the latter is dismissed, man certainly continues to think, since it is in his nature to do so; but this thought is something other than philosophy, even if it continues to nourish itself with philosophy's original insights.

78c The liberal doctrine rested on the distinction between civil society and the state. Rousseau established that this distinction is possible only because both terms have their source and foundation in a third term incorporating both of them. He is the first to bring out in all its clarity the third term, which he christens with a name that will last: "society." Rousseau made modern man aware that he does not live essentially in a body politic or a state, or in an economic system, but above all in society. In his eyes, modern man lives primarily in the element of society inasfar as he adopts the point of view of inequality in his relations with his fellow men. This is not particular inequality, economic or political, but simply inequality at large, an abstract and therefore omnipresent determination of social life. In the same train of thought, Rousseau extracts the contrary idea, just as abstract and destined to become just as omnipresent, that of equality. (Fs)

79a If, less than a century later, Tocqueville could describe modern democratic society as based on the idea of and passion for equality, it was not only because the French Revolution and Rousseau's "influence" did their job and the new society was actually "more equal" than the former one. It was also because the inequality observed by Rousseau contains or leads to the equality described by Tocqueville. More important than the inequality or the equality that characterize society is society itself, a vital and indiscernible element that nurtures men, and from which they seek to escape when they no longer command each other. (Fs)