Pettit e Rousseau: sobre contestabilidade

Abstract

Pettit distinguishes two republican traditions one of Italian-Atlantic origin and another Franco-German one. While he identifies with the first, the thought of Rousseau is one of the theoretical pillars of the second. Both agree in the defense of freedom as non-domination but differ fundamentally in their conception of citizenship and representation. Pettit argues that Rousseau faces a dilemma between the defense of freedom as non-domination and the rejection of representation. In order for the State not to become a source of domination, it is necessary to generate means of contestation for citizenship, which is only possible - according to Pettit - in a regime of mixed constitution. By rejecting the representation Rousseau would not account for these channels and would deny the possibility of revising and changing the course of laws and policies that do not pursue the common good. In this article I argue that Pettit's defense of the existence of a dilemmatic situation in Rousseau's theory between the defense of non domination and the rejection of representation is done by assuming a dense version of the general will, and that from an alternative characterization of it, such as - for example - the one proposed by John Rawls, it is possible to base that in Rousseau the disputation of the public power is justified.