Indivíduo e República em Jean-Jacques Rousseau: realização e reconhecimento

Abstract

The present work seeks to highlight Rousseau's gaze on the modern individual. However, for many readers of Rousseau, this issue has no proeminence in his work. It is an issue that does not interest Rousseau's philosophy, and the proof of this is that most interpreters point out that the center of this philosophy revolves around the importance of republican life. And so the question of individuals does not have the due attention of Rousseau. Here, the opposite is the case. It is considered that the great question that surrounds Rousseau's thinking is around the problems faced by individuals, which are due to the evolution of modern society. Modern society has fostered the development and progress of the sciences, which made the problems of individuals worse, rather than being solved. The structures of modern society have led individuals to block their possibility of realization. And it is precisely this that Rousseau tries to heal in his reflection on the modern world, on individuals. For him, the key to formulating solutions that overcome the problems of the modern individual lies in the possibility of recognition of the individual as an embodiment, which is a source of realization of this same individual. The realization as recognition can only take place within a specific context, which for Rousseau is the context of the republic. It is the republic the place in which the individual must construct, in order to make its realization possible. Moreover, this realization takes effect to the extent that the individual has preserved his or her deeper constitution, which is sustained primarily by the feeling of existence, the love-of-self. The possibility of realization as recognition is only feasible for the individual in the proportion in which he has guaranteed his full constitution. As an individual who is the agent of the construction of a republic that makes him as a citizen. As an individual, who has in his hands, the possibility of being an architect of the construction of the republican pact. In this way, Rousseau is part of an important tradition, which has in the individual his great concern.