AS POLÍTICAS DE ROUSSEAU E AS DE ROBESPIERRE: FALSAS PRETENSÕES E VERDADEIROS ESPELHOS DEFORMADOS

la question du Pauvre au coeur de la cité républicaine

Abstract

A long historiography constructed for critiquing or assessing an obvious link between Rousseau and Robespierre. Undeniably “l’Incorruptible” used and explicitly referenced the writings of Jean-Jacques in many of his speeches. However, an important point is to be made in the difference of their opinions when assessing the degree of citizenship of the poor citizens. Herein is where his philosophy denounces the social scourge of the poverty as a result of poor governance, Robespierre counters inversely, endowing the poor a certain status of moral dignity that put him at the center of the civic construct. Thus, the republic is not built on the myth of small owners prospering themselves, but on the reality of the poor having only the value of his work for wealth. It is no longer the property of the land but the valuing of work that creates the ladder of appreciation for each by reformulating the idea of virtue, not as the consequence of savings transformed in goods, but rather by the results of a repeated volunteerism in daily labor without hopes of capitalizing.