Abstract The eighteenth century is doubtlessly an astonishing chapter in human history. Following America¡¦s independence that brought the first new democratic country to the world, the French Revolution further aroused tremendous political effects all over Europe, shocked the foundation of feudalism, and announced the advent of democratic era. Confronted with all these historical impacts, Tocqueville has achieved profound understanding and retrospection on the inevitable prevalence of democracy. The concept of liberty plays a very important role in Tocqueville¡¦s theory. As the wave of democracy crashed outmoded institution of feudalism, it also caused people to grow assimilated, or even philistine. In light of this, Tocqueville proposed that, in order to preclude domination and slavery, people should more actively grasp their liberty and develop the habitude and spirit of participating public affairs. Therefore, township and jury system in American tradition, as well as individual activities of organizing secondary civil groups through gilds, are highly regarded by Tocqueville with democratic connotation. From this viewpoint, Tocqueville¡¦s great expectation on liberty is essentially different from ¡§human¡¦s liberty from interference¡¨ of contractarian liberalism but is in harmony with the conventional idea of people¡¦s ¡§agency¡¨ in republicanism. This connotation of liberty, however, doesn¡¦t imply clashes without limit but suggests reasonable and restrained political participation within the schema of stable political institution. Thus, the concept echoes the conventional appreciation upon institution in roman republicanism. The researcher regards the integration of the aforementioned two aspects as ¡§liberty of institutional republicanism¡¨. This research intends to embody the republicanism value in Tocqueville¡¦s theory with an expectation to broaden the definition of his thought.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:21:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Anthony Tannus Wright.pdf: 1521098 bytes, checksum: 15141fb211e98bab528e8dd7ecf8be5b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-29 / This work aimed to discuss the philosophical basis of the Anglo-Saxon political liberty and the French Political liberty present in the North-American Constitutionalism. The first part of this research dealt with the historical, religious and political changes that culminated in a substantial mentality change of a theocentric medieval society to an anthropocentric society, founder of the modern state. Hence, the objective of this first part was to show the historical roots of the English and French liberal thought. Before discussing the central theme a political and philosophical comparison between the English, French and American Revolution was done. With this purpose the writings of Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Blackstone, and of other liberal theorists served as reference. Furthermore, to better comprehend the difference of English and French liberalism an investigation of what the terms government, political liberty, state and republic, etc., seemed necessary. A historical and political study of the common law tradition and of natural rights served to better elucidate the basis of the American Constitution. To end, a research on the Founding Fathers and on the Federalist Papers was key point to comprehend how one should read and interpret the Constitution in light with English classical liberalism / Este trabalho trata da base filosófica da liberdade política anglo-saxônica e da liberdade política francesa presentes na Constituição norte-americana. Para tanto, a primeira parte do trabalho abrange os aspectos históricos, religiosos e políticos que culminaram na mudança de mentalidade teocêntrica da sociedade medieval para antropocêntrica, criadora do Estado moderno. Assim, o objetivo desta primeira parte é mostrar as raízes históricas do pensamento liberal inglês e francês. Ainda antes de adentrar o tema central, procura fazer uma breve comparação filosófica e política entre a Revolução Inglesa, Francesa e Americana. Com esse intuito, as obras de Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau e Blackstone, entre os escritos de outros pais do pensamento liberal, serviram como referência. Aborda-se também, ao longo do trabalho, a compreensão da liberdade política pelo liberalismo francês e inglês, governo, estado, república etc. Ainda, no que diz respeito à Constituição norteamericana, é estudada a base histórica e política, a importância do common law e do natural rights. Por fim, ao tratar dos Founding Fathers e dos Federalist Papers pode-se descobrir a presença do pensamento político inglês, e como deve ser interpretada a constituição à luz destes princípios

Dans l'histoire des idéologies philosophiques de l'humanité, les philosophes politiques français du XVIIIème siècle, et particulièrement Montesquieu et Rousseau, ont eu une importance décisive, non seulement dans la fondation de la république en France mais aussi pour leur contribution à la définition de ce qu'est un Etat de droit ou Etat juridique. C'est à ce titre que ces deux penseurs nous intéressent ici, comme autant de contributions idéologiques majeures à la détermination du pouvoir d'Etat et de l'Etat de droit. C'est pour ces raisons d'ailleurs que ces deux théoriciens jouent actuellement un grand rôle dans la construction d'un état juridique au Vietnam, et c'est ce rôle que nous entendons éclairer dans cette thèse. / In the history of philosophical ideologies of humanity, the French political philosophers of the eighteenth century had a decisive importance, especially Montesquieu and Rousseau, not only in the founding of the republic in France but also for their contribution to the definition of the Rule of law or legal state. These two thinkers are of central interest to understand their evolution of political concepts, because of their major ideological contributions to the determination of the State power and the Rule of law. Likewise, their influence has been extended through the time until our days, playing a big role in the configuration of a legal state in Vietnam. This thesis aims to illuminate this role.

Claude Lefort est un penseur majeur du totalitarisme soviétique et un théoricien original de la démocratie ; mais cette pensée souffre d’être encore trop peu étudiée, et surtout peu comprise dans son articulation générale. Ce travail se propose de remédier à cette carence, et s’efforce, au travers d’une reconstruction des dimensions fondamentales de l’œuvre, de restituer à la pensée de l’auteur sa cohérence interne. Nous postulons ici que cette cohérence se dévoile à bien vouloir identifier le projet central de Claude Lefort, qui fut de penser les conditions de possibilité de la liberté politique, et partant, la démocratie comme un régime de la liberté. Un tel projet, d’abord envisagé dans le cadre de la théorie marxiste, va progressivement être réévalué à l’aide de la philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, pour aboutir à une récusation des acceptions traditionnelles – telles que comprises en droit public – des notions de pouvoir et de liberté. Il s’agit alors pour Lefort de permettre la liberté politique, c’est ce que s’efforce de montrer la première partie. Il faut ensuite tirer les conséquences logiques d’une telle récusation. Elle amène à reconsidérer en profondeur la nature des deux termes : le pouvoir gagne une dimension « symbolique », et les libertés se pensent comme indissociablement individuelles et collectives. Cette construction se veut une manière spécifique d’organiser la liberté politique, c’est ce que s’emploie à révéler la seconde partie. / Claude Lefort is a major thinker of Soviet totalitarianism and an original theorist of democracy. However, his contributions remain much overlooked, and the overall coherence of his body of work is often misunderstood. This work aims to remedy this deficiency, and endeavours to identify and organize the fundamental dimensions of his thought, in order to re-establish its internal coherence. The hypothesis of this doctoral thesis is that this coherence is revealed through the identification of the central project of Claude Lefort, which was to apprehend the necessary conditions for the advent of political liberty, and therefore democracy as a “regime of liberty” (régime de la liberté). This intellectual project, developed first of all in the context of Marxist theory, was progressively reassessed in the light of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, eventually resulting in a rejection of the traditional understanding – that of public law – of the two concepts of power and liberty. The problem, for Lefort, is how to bring about the existence of political liberty ; which the first part of this work aims to demonstrate. It then becomes necessary to draw the logical consequences of such a rejection. It leads to a profound reconsideration of the nature of the two concepts : power gains a “symbolic” dimension, and liberties are inseparably thought as both collective and individual. Lefort’s construction must thus be understood as a specific way to organise political liberty ; as the second part of doctoral work attempts to reveal

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