Rousseau e as condições da liberdade republicana

Abstract

The intention of this article is to examine the conditions of republican freedom in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political thinking from the distinction between the notions of independence and freedom. Independence consists in not depending on any power - personal or collective - and to be exempt of all law. For Rousseau, only the law can establish true freedom, because it neither seeks nor expresses particular interests, making it possible to overcome and eliminate any arbitrariness. Rousseau, distancing himself from nascent liberalism, keeping to the republican tradition, does not consider legal coercion a form of limitation of freedom, but his best guarantee. Citizens' freedom is not threatened by the interference of the law, but by the relations of domination that establish forms of dependence.