Sovereignty Of Reason Research Articles

La concepción del Estado conservador: Bartolomé Herrera y su proyecto constitucional de 1860

This article refers us to the creation of the Peruvian State, standing out the figure of Bartolome Herrera, one of the political voices of the nineteenth century in Peru. His proposals presented a state that kept everything under control, and was duly organized in order to circum­vent the evils of anarchy which had struck the country since the independence process. Following the call of the Congress of 1860, which was responsible for elab­orating a new constitution, bishop Herrera presented a constitutional project with the aim of strengthening the investiture of the Executive Branch and limiting the excessive power of the Legislative Branch. These propos­als sought to consolidate the “sovereignty of reason” for the creation of the state. Hence, it is interesting the way he conceived citizenship and constitutional rights.

De la soberanía de la inteligencia considerada en la historia

Translation of: Donoso Cortés, J. 1904. “Lecciones de derecho político, pronunciadas en el Ateneo de Madrid. Lección séptima. 24 de enero de 1837. De la soberanía de la inteligencia considerada en la historia” [in Spanish]. In vol. III of Obras de Don Juan Donoso Cortés, marqués de Valdegamas, 223–240. 4 vols. Madrid: Casa Editorial de San Francisco de Sales

EL CONCEPTO DE DEMOCRACIA REPRESENTATIVA EN ESTEBAN ECHEVERRÍA

We developed the concept of representative democracy in Esteban Echeverría, as result of an heterogeneous and unsystematic reading of some authors as diverse as François Guizot, Théodore Jouffroy who share, nevertheless, a common capacitary vision of politics. Their differences put in tention the concepts of “capacity” and “equality” in Echeverría's “representative democratie”. From Guizot, he takes representation as exercise of sovereignty moderated in reason, from Jouffroy, the idea of natural faculties as the foundation of democratic equality. Thus the concept is an original synthesis knotting in meaning popular sovereignty as the foundation of modern political power, sovereignty of reason as an exercise of political authority, and political capacity as a natural and dinamic principle of representative government.

PASSIONS AND EVIL IN KANT'S PHILOSOPHY

In this paper, I aim at relating passions to evil in Kant's philosophy. I begin by explaining the difference between affects and passions in the textAnthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Kant claims that both affects and passions are illnesses of the mind, because both affect and passion hinder the sovereignty of reason. I show that passions are worse than affects for the purpose of pure reason. Second, I relate affects and passions to the degrees of the propensity to evil in theReligion. I analyze the idea of an ethical community as a way to overcome the evil, which goes beyond political and anthropological solutions suggested by Kant.

Lectures on Political Right, Delivered at the Ateneo of Madrid. Lecture 2 (November 29, 1836): On Popular Sovereignty

In the second of ten Lectures on Political Right, delivered in Madrid’s Ateneo in November 29, 1836, Juan Donoso Cortes considers the notion of “popular sovereignty.” Distinguishing mind and will as two parts of human essence, Donoso deduces from the former the “law of the association” that unites all human beings, and from the latter, the “law of the individual,” that separates them. Hence, the main problem for Donoso as a liberal conservative is how to combine these two laws. Donoso states that while traditionalists propose to focus on the “law of the association” and ends with tyranny that destroys free will, revolutionaries, by contrast, focus on the “law of the individual,” which leads to anarchy as a variant of the same tyranny. In making a historical digression to the periods of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, Donoso shows how the revolutionary idea of “popular sovereignty”, linked directly to the “law of the individual”, gradually overcomes the idea of “divine right of kings”, based on the “law of the association.” Donoso criticizes the English and French philosophers of the 17-18th centuries (Hobbes and Rousseau, above all) the most, as these philosophers laid the foundation for historical drama of the Great French Revolution. Offering his own liberal-conservative alternative for the two named extremes (traditionalism and revolution), Donoso calls to abandon the “atheist”, “immoral”, “absurd”, and “impossible” “popular sovereignty”, and combine the “law of the individual” and the “law of the association” on entirely different basis of the “sovereignty of reason, sovereignty of justice”.

Renaissance Individualism in Hamlet

New Historicists and Cultural Materialists argue that men/women in English Renaissance drama do not have any meaningful sense of interiority or personal autonomy, which are important points in exploring individualism. They consider that Renaissance self is fictitious and fragmented, which is postmodern interpretations of self, not Renaissance notion of self. Cultural Materialists counter the existence of interiority in Hamlet. They see Hamlet not as an autonomous agent, but rather as the protagonist in morality paly. New Historicists deny personal autonomy, arguing that self- fashioning involves submission to an absolute power or authority such as God, church, court and military administration. Contrary to their arguments, Hamlet expresses the existence of inner life and autonomy. It is noteworthy that two great historical events－the Reformation and Renaissance Humanism－made great contributions to forming the Renaissance self. During the Reformation, Renaissance individuals had to conceal their religious identity because of repeated persecutions, which eventually brought about people’s desire to know others’ inward truth. Also, the fact that the internal self and one’s words or actions could be different developed the ideal of sincerity, which, in turn, contributed to the idea of expressing one’s emotions sincerely. Furthermore they approved each individuals had different desires and emotions. These aspects of individualism are witnessed in Hamlet’s insistence on his interiority and his particular emotion. Hamlet expresses his inwardness and his own emotion by saying “I have that within which passes show.” He also manifests his interiority through moral struggle in his soliloquy. Renaissance humanists such as Ficino and Giodarno Bruno appreciated human reason and free will. Hamlet also affirms the sovereignty of reason and free will. Hamlet, trying to be freed from the ghost’s order for revenge and a variety of pressures imposed on him by the Danish court, makes decisions based on his reason and strives to live his own life. Hamlet never surrenders to Claudius’ authority. It is true that inevitable circumstances happen in Hamlet. However, Hamlet attempts to cope with them, making important choices by himself. And in case he can not control the circumstances, he enhances self-realization by accepting them. Even if Hamlet’s self is affected by Renaissance Humanism and Reformation, we can not merely say that Hamlet is not an autonomous being because he presents strong desires to lead his own life based on his interiority until the moment of his death.

Guizot, o dell'Europa una e molteplice.

This essay examines the idea of Europe developed by Guizot in the famous course on the Histoire de la civilization, and its innovations with regards to the framework outlined by the eighteenth century, seeing it as a geopolitcal application of the author�s philosophy of history and "doctrinaire" liberalism. For him, if in European civilization the very essence of progress is achieved - whose meaning is a never-ending tendency to match principles and facts, the ideal and the real -, this is due to the plurality of forces in field, because only by the interplay of different and always relative values the sovereignty of reason establishes itself. In the second part the essay discusses the primacy which Guizot assigned to France as the country that best represents this model of civilization; it shows that in his speech universalism and national particularism still coexist, but opening on very different future scenarios.

'Liberty and truth' or 'the sovereignty of reason': Carlo Cattaneo and the place of politics in the modern world

My purpose here is to place the thought of Carlo Cattaneo in relation to French Restoration liberalism, and I therefore consider the doctrinaire school (among others, Guizot and Cousin) and the Coppet Circle (notably, Constant, StaËl and Sismondi). A concern to render reason sovereign was perhaps shared by all in post-revolutionary Europe who were cultivating human or social science, yet there was in Guizot's concept of 'the sovereignty of reason' a spiritualist, authoritarian and anti-individualist implication. By contrast, Cattaneo wished to honour 'the truth of local facts', that is the specific attributes of all the parts of which a state consisted, and in this regard his thought is descended not from the doctrinaires but from the individualist liberalism of Constant. I also remark upon Cattaneo's debt, openly declared, to the earlier historical writings of Thierry,and therefore to the political precepts of the late id é ologue tradition. Il mio scopo è quello di porre il pensiero di Carlo Cattaneo in relazione al liberalismo francese durante il periodo della Restaurazione, e confrontarlo in particolare con l'Ecole Doctrinaire (tra gli altri, Guizot e Cousin) ed il Circolo Coppet (principalmente, Constant, StaËl e Sismondi). L'idea di rendere la ragione sovrana era forse un sentimento condiviso da molti intellettuali nell'Europa post-rivoluzionaria, specialmente in coloro che dedicavano attenzione ed interesse alle scienze umane e sociali; tuttavia, nel concetto di Guizot sulla 'sovranitÀ della ragione' era insita una componente spiritualista, autoritaria ed antindividualista. Cattaneo, diversamente, tendeva ad onorare 'la veritÀ delle realtÀ locali', ossia di tutte le caratteristiche insite negli innumerevoli elementi di cui lo stato è composto; ed in questo aspetto, il suo pensiero traeva ispirazione dal liberalismo individualista di Constant piuttosto che dai doctrinaires. Credo anche che il liberalismo di Cattaneo sia dichiaratamente debitore verso gli scritti di Thierry ed inoltre nei confronti della filosofia politica appartenente alla tradizione degli idéologues.

French Enlightenment: truth and life

This paper considers the relations of truth, life and norm in the work of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault argued that in France it was in the philosophy of science that one finds the clearest formulations of the problems of rationality and the sovereignty of reason. This distintive confrontation can be termed French Modern. For Canguilhem, an ontological and existential pathos arose from the fact that living beings were fated to struggle in the face of circumstances. For Foucault, this ontology became historical and political. For both, the key question was the relationship between life itself and the understanding of life. The paper concludes by reflecting upon some implications of the ways in which the relation between life and lived experience is posed today.

The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment (review)

The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment (review)

The sovereignty of reason: the defense of rationality in the early English Enlightenment

This is a survey of the rule of faith controversy in 17th-century England. The book examines the arguments by which reason eventually became the sovereign standard of truth in religion and politics, and how it triumphed over its rivals: scripture, inspiration and apostolic tradition. The book argues that the main threat to the authority of reason in 17th-century England came not only from dissident groups, but also, and chiefly, from the Protestant theology of the Church of England. The triumph of reason was the result of a new theology, rather than the development of natural philosophy, which upheld the orthodox Protestant dualism between the heavenly and earthly.