Abstract

FERRERO, Maximiliano. The principle of evil. Rousseau, Constant and the Revolution. Tópicos [online]. 2019, n.37, pp.54-75. ISSN 1666-485X.

The present article deals with Benjamin Constant’s political ideas of the French Revolution. Constant was one of the most representatives thinkers in the postrevolutionaryFrench scene and helped to delineate the philosophical corpus of classic liberalism. We will try to show two points from the texts that the author produced between Thermidor and the first years of the Empire: first, Constant does not condemn the French Revolution itself, his philosophy is instead a defence of the 1789 Declaration. Second, his critique addresses to what has been called the “Terror” and to its main perpetrators, the Jacobins. For this, Constant will enter into dispute with some principles of the political philosophy of Rousseau and how they have been used by Jacobinism. This article has been divided into three parts: in first place we will analyse the new ways of reading in the second half of the 18th. Century, which allowed a wide spreading in France of Rousseau’s works. Secondly, we will analyse the impact of Rousseau’s philosophy in the Revolutionary environment, specially in the most culminating point of the Jacobin hegemony, represented by Robespierre. Finally, we will look at Constant’s positioning around the Revolution, Rousseau and the revolutionaries.

Keywords : Benjamin Constant; French Revolution; Rousseau,Jacobins; Terror.

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