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| Author(s): |
Felipe Freller
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2020-11-27 |
| Examining board members: |
Eunice Ostrensky;
Frédéric Brahami;
Christian Edward Cyril Lynch;
Pierre Manent;
Newton Bignotto de Souza
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| Advisor: | Eunice Ostrensky |
| Abstract | |
This thesis aims to study the \"arbitrariness issue\" in the work of Benjamin Constant. Although the author has been a relentless critic of arbitrary governments, we seek to treat arbitrariness as a real political issue faced by him, not as a simple harm rejected by him on a normative level. We argue that Constant does not cast out definitively arbitrary decision from the field of legitimate politics, as some of his interpreters suggest. He rather seeks to incorporate arbitrariness into the political system in a controlled manner, in order to avoid its tyrannical drift - an attitude for which we propose the designation of \"moderate decisionism\". The thesis accords methodological primacy to the dynamic interaction between the author and the political reality of his time, considering this interaction as the source of the issues to be elaborated on the theoretical level. Thus, in Chapter 1, we seek to understand how the arbitrariness issue arises in Constant\'s thought under the First Directory (1795-1797), in a critical dialogue with authors we propose to interpret through the category of \"liberalism of order\" - notably Pierre-Louis Roederer and Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia. Although Constant\'s first response to the arbitrariness issue was its unconditional rejection, we argue, in Chapter 2, that this rejection is reassessed after the Coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V, and that this reassessment culminates in the formulation of the idea of neutral power as a \"discretionary authority\". In Chapter 3, we examine the new configuration of the arbitrariness issue provided by the \"liberal turn\" of the 1806 Principles of politics, seeking to demonstrate that, on the one hand, arbitrary is condemned on a new basis, but that, on the other hand, arbitrary decision is disseminated within the constitutional edifice, in the form of multiple cases in which the law can be circumvented or broken, in order to avoid the tyranny of excessive law. Finally, Chapter 4 focuses on the place of arbitrariness in the constitutional monarchy theorized by Constant from 1814 onwards, analyzing the new nuances of the monarchical version of neutral power and the responsibility of ministers interpretation as an inevitably arbitrary judgement. The Conclusion highlights Constant as an eminent theorist in the domains of discretion and arbitrariness, seeking to discern in his work an alternative paradigm of the concept of political decision in relation to those already established in political theory. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 15/21607-6 - The problem of arbitrariness in Benjamin Constant |
| Grantee: | Felipe Freller |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |