Democracy, liberalism and revolution in the origins of the modern political thought

• Grant number: 07/07527-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2008
• End date: March 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Modesto Florenzano
• Grantee: Javier Amadeo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The evolution of grammar should not simply be understood through linguistic or conceptual developments as politics have also played a significant role. Our concepts, beliefs, actions and practices are connected and, thus, such developments are intertwined. In order to understand this conceptual change we must also understand political change. Democracy, liberalism, and revolution are three central concepts in our modern political vocabulary. Their significance has been constructed along centuries of conceptualization, and as a result, the history of these ideas is marked by these conflictive conceptions.The objective of our work is to investigate the origins of the concepts of democracy, liberalism and revolution, and in turn offer a critical narrative of the hegemonic institution of these concepts. To carry out this task, an analysis of the English civil war period is beneficial. During this period there was a crisis of sovereignty; this crisis raised questions about the limits of State power, as well as the nature of citizenship. The crisis of sovereignty and the questions it introduced allow us to see the formation of “the classical body of English political thought” a body of thought that, rooted in the vocabulary of civil and natural law, attempts to resolve problems of rights, liberty, civil obligation, authority and property. Before the crisis of sovereignty, English political thought had not yet formed as such; it was the turbulence during the early decades of the 17th century that allows us to find the basis for a good part of the political vocabulary still in use today.