The concept of Virtus as legitimation of the bourgeois igualitarism

• Grant number: 11/21628-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2012
• End date: April 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Carlos Mazzeo
• Grantee: Antonio Carlos Mazzeo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The central thesis of this work is to discuss the secularization (säkulariesierung) of the concept Virtus. Our goal is to contextualize theoretical and historically the concept of Virtus and its relationship with the new understanding oflegitimacy (and secularism) - that, somehow, allow their secularization- embedding Virtus on the rationality of bourgeois egalitarianism. The notion ofegalitarianism transfers itself from the medieval idea of equality of men before God to the generic modern notion of equality of men before the State,through political and legitimize action of the individual citizen. The idea of modernity constituting the historical scope of the dissolution of theological-metaphysical hypostates, not only appears opposed to the idea of secularization - that now transfears to the individual subjectivity the attributes of the theological-political sovereignty - but now as its internal variant in this sense, we understand that possibility to demonstrate that attempts to place the power of State within understandings that aimede to go beyond hypostatic forms of legitimation, end up giving not only to the analytical generalizations that detach from the idea of power of its own materiality - the generic-abstract power -but also to the old conceptions that evoke, ultimately, and not rarely, in a hidden way, the "natural rights", with strong eschatological connotations. (AU)