Thèse complémentaire--Paris. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris V, 1978. / Bibliography: p. 699.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris V, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 699).

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Filosofía con Mención en Filosofía Moral y Política / En esta tesis, se indagará acerca del estatuto del concepto de naturaleza en la obra de dos autores mayores de la modernidad, Rousseau y Kant, y sus efectos en el pensamiento y en la praxis de lo común que le siguen. El juicio provisorio que guiará esta indagación es que, en torno al funcionamiento polisémico e inasible de este concepto, en la época que llamamos modernidad, se juega un nuevo régimen de sentido, cuya clave de intelección no puede ser pensada sin recurrir a los conceptos de singularidad e inmanencia, los que, veremos, son puestos en movimiento cada vez que queremos pensar tanto la naturaleza, el hombre y el fundamento de lo común. Examinaremos este movimiento en la obra de Kant y Rousseau, pero también seguiremos su traza en el pensamiento contemporáneo, con casos relevantes tanto de reacción como de radicalización de la representación del hombre que emerge en la modernidad, representación que rápidamente definiremos como auto-conciencia originaria de sentido y de valor, representación que irrumpe de manera inaugural y generando impactos y resonancias persistentes hasta hoy. Estos efectos levantan un horizonte no superado, un punto de no retorno, respecto de aspectos fundamentales de nuestra vida individual y colectiva. Una nueva representación del hombre, pues, y una nueva representación de la naturaleza, la que, de constituir antaño fuente de sentido, deviene desde entonces una pura extrañeidad domesticable. Todo lo que nos remitía a la noción de naturaleza funcionaba bajo el régimen de la continuidad. El gran mérito de la Modernidad fue comenzar a pensar el hombre bajo el régimen de la disrupción y la emergencia. Pensamos que un examen de los debates de sociedad o de civilización contemporáneos relevantes a la luz del funcionamiento de los conceptos que nos interesas, puede entregarnos elementos importantes de comprensión acerca de lo que está allí en juego, esto iv es, una cierta determinación de la noción de valor, no en cuanto a sus diferentes contenidos posibles, sino en cuanto a su sentido originario mismo y a su lugar de origen. El funcionamiento y el estatuto del concepto de naturaleza, en su fricción con aquellos de singularidad e inmanencia, nos ayudarán a describir ese lugar, que no es otro que el hombre mismo.

Thesis advisor: Christopher J. Kelly / In an effort to shed light on recent doubts about the future of liberal democracy, this dissertation compares the political thought of Montesquieu and Rousseau – two eighteenth-century philosophers who, beginning from strikingly similar premises, diverged radically in their prescriptions. Whereas Montesquieu sought to rationalize political life by nudging religion to the periphery of public consciousness, by attenuating patriotism, and by shifting legislative and judicial power to educated professionals, Rousseau sought to shore up religion’s popular influence, to instigate revivals of patriotism, and to defend popular self-government. I first take up their views of “the state of nature.” My account differs from those of the previous interpreters who have read the state of nature as a hypothetical construct, but it differs also from those of the previous interpreters who have read the state of nature as historical, inasmuch as I show that neither Montesquieu nor Rousseau made implausible assumptions about the naturalness of asociality or peacefulness. Next, I focus on the issue popular enlightenment. Whereas commentators have tended to cast Montesquieu simply as a proponent of the pacifying effects of enlightenment and Rousseau as a critic of its morally corrupting effects, I argue that they were both primarily interested in the relation between the dwindling of religious faith and the maintenance of the psychological qualities that underlie resistance to foreign and domestic threats to liberty. I then turn to the question of cosmopolitanism, suggesting that Montesquieu embraced it not because of any extreme idealism but because of his horror at the repressiveness and belligerence of actual patriotic republics. Likewise, I maintain that Rousseau’s embrace of patriotic “intoxication” was not a product of any romanticism; instead, it was a product of his thoroughly rationalistic inquiry into the phenomena of law and government. Finally, I argue that the divergence between them on the question of popular self-government followed from their divergent understandings of freedom. This divergence cannot be reduced either to “negative liberty” versus “positive liberty” or to “liberty as non-interference” versus “liberty as non-domination,” two paradigms that have long dominated Anglo-American political theorists’ thinking about freedom. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Christopher J. Kelly / This dissertation is an attempt to elucidate Jean-Jacques Rousseau's answer to the question "why keep a promise?" with the aim of answering the more particular political question of why one should keep the social contract. I begin by explicating Rousseau's arguments against natural law in order to demonstrate why the theme of promises is so important for his political thought. Rousseau rejects the position that natural moral inequalities among people dictate who should rule and who should be ruled. Like other modern political thinkers, he maintains that political right derives from each citizen's signing of the social contract. But unlike some other modern thinkers, Rousseau denies that the self-interest of each individual is sufficient motivation for keeping that contract. Moreover, he argues that one who is merely self-interested and who makes promises "only for profit" will "set himself in contradiction with himself." I show the nature and causes of this contradiction in the soul. But although self-interested, deceitful promises cause one to come into contradiction with oneself, Rousseau does not believe that even awareness of this fact can sufficiently motivate people to give up the desire for what can be gained by deception. I therefore turn to the question of what can provide this motivation. I first examine Rousseau's understanding of moral freedom, virtue, and the conscience. I find that virtue is constituted by the commands of reason and the conscience, and that the conscience is formed out of well-ordered sentiments. Having these sentiments and the strength of soul necessary for virtue can make a person keep his promises and avoid coming into contradiction with himself. But most people lack this strength of soul, and therefore belief in a providential God is needed in order for them to be just. I then show how the faith of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar is capable of providing sanctity to the social contract by allowing for the civic-minded appropriation of what Rousseau calls "the language of sign." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Kelly / The question my dissertation addresses is the relationship between human passions and politics. It attempts to try to understand whether or not there is a standard in nature for judging how human passions ought to be ordered, if at all, taking as guides Montesquieu and Rousseau. I try to see if we can know this standard by reason, and if so, how? And I try to understand whether or not any natural passions might be preserved and ordered well in society. In addition, I try to investigate how society, or various forms of government, modify or transform the natural passions, for good and ill. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu produces an ambitious yet politically practical vision of the best form of government. After evaluating and rejecting ancient republics animated by political virtue, monarchies animated by honor, and despotisms animated by fear as possible candidates for the best form of government, Montesquieu thinks he has found the best form of government in the modern English form of liberal commercial republicanism, rooted in political freedom, commerce, and a moderate and tolerant if diluted form of religion, which might triumph over the globe as the final rational and most humanly satisfying form of government. And according to Montesquieu, the principles of the modern commercial republic adhere to the political standards that have been rationally discovered through the final and correct understanding of men’s passions in the state of nature. Against this confident assertion and the ambitious scope of Montesquieu’s goals, nothing less than universal peace and prosperity, and the apparently true knowledge of the best form of government, Rousseau launches a no less ambitious critique of the early modern vision, casting doubt on its political feasibility, and on its awareness of the true core of human nature and happiness. Rousseau ultimately thinks that we cannot order the passions to create a best and enduring government, since human self-interest, irrationality, and corrupt social passions ultimately tend toward oppression, despotism, and universal misery. And according to Rousseau a return to nature is for virtually everyone impossible. I consider Rousseau’s account of the same passions that Montesquieu evaluates, which he examines primarily in the Second Discourse, Emile, Considerations on the Government of Poland, and Political Economy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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