Revolution and Democracy in the Early Romanian Modernity of the 19th Century

Abstract

The project aims to investigate by means of conceptual and intellectual history some of the various ways in which the significations and the intellectual and political meanings of a problematic cohabitation appear in the Romanian political thought. Namely, the questions raised concern two apparently incompatible concepts, revolution and representation/legitimacy of the political power through the individual expression of citizenship or through the collective expression of the general will. For the 1848 generation, the main difficulty stays in a certain confusion between the heritage of "the ancient" political philosophy, transmitted through an entire generation nourished at the beginning of the century with Aristotle and his classification of political regimes and with a whole range of seventeenth century contractualist philosophers. This background didn't meet a coherent project of rational management of politics and production of the future as the post revolutionary nineteenth century European thought had intended to. In the intellectual and political Romanian debate, the idea of predestination in the “national revolution” encountered a fertile ground and faced apperceptions - methodological or philosophical - and a welcoming "field of experience" with an intellectual background in need of hasted “Western-isation”. The result was a mixture between several political models, combined with the revolutionary discourse.