Hope and Heroic Action: Rousseau, Paoli, Kosciuszko, and the Republican Tradition of War

Abstract

Abstract This is the third of three chapters on the three traditions of war, and introduces the republican tradition, which is represented partially through the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, along with Pasquale Paoli and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, advanced a unified system of the republican good life and war in conjunction with the laws of war. The way in which this tradition developed in the nineteenth century is depicted. The different sections of the chapter are: The Republican Tradition of War; Republicanism; The Three Founders [Rousseau, Paoli and Kosciuszko]; Rousseau’s Republican War; Rousseau, Paoli and Kosciuszko; The Nature of Man and the State of Nature: Rousseau contra Hobbes and Grotius; The Nature of War; Liberty; Government, Society, and the Republic; Republic; Patriotism and Nationalism; Republican Nationalism; Republican Founders of the Tradition of War: Paoli and Kosciuszko; The Republican Tradition in the Nineteenth Century; The Nineteenth-Century Republican Tradition of War; and The Development of the Republican Tradition of War.