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Copyright (c) 2001 by Sage Publications (posted by permission)

 

Arash Abizadeh. "Banishing the Particular: Rousseau on Rhetoric, Patrie, and the Passions." Political Theory 29.4 (2001): 556–582. pdf

 

Article Keywords: Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Descartes; authenticity; freedom; republican virtue; general will; rhetoric; language; passions; bon sens; patriotism; territory

Article Abstract:

Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When the spectre of rhetoric undermines this strategy, he is led to ground the volonté générale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen’s inner conscience, which through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes’s category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. But when rhetorical eloquence turns out to be indispensable to politics, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the trope of grounding the polity’s freedom in the patrie’s territory and, subsequently, in the citizen’s heart.

 

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