Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32701/dp.22.1.3
Rousseau‘s Conception of Government in the Work Discourse on Political Economy
Petar Jakopec
orcid.org/0000-0003-0353-2806
; University North — Varaždin, Croatia
Abstract
In this article the author problematizes Rousseau’s Discourse on Political Econ- omy and his conception of government in the political community. Rousseau’s Discourse on Political Economy was chronologically written seven years before his major work The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. Regardless of the fact that the Discourse on Political Economy was published earlier, it left a re- markable trace in Rousseau‘s philosophical opus. In this work, which was pub- lished as part of the fifth volume of Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Rousseau indicated his direction in political philosophy. This philosophical and political direction began with the Discourse on Political Economy and culminated in the philosophical and political conception of republicanism, elaborated in detail in The Social Contract. In this article the author uses critical analysis and recon- struction to establish Rousseau‘s fundamental ideas about his political philoso- phy present in the Discourse on Political Economy, with a focus on observing and studying the role of a sovereign and the public economy in the function of the government by general will within the political community.
Keywords
Jean–Jacques Rousseau; Discourse on Political Economy; public economy; government; general will; particular will; sovereign; virtue; political community
Hrčak ID:
250673
URI
Publication date:
24.1.2021.
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