I would like to propose here some ‘‘new reflec- tions’’ concerning the notion of equal liberty (aequa libertas), a notion that has persisted across the entire republican political tradition from antiquity (Cicero) to contemporary debates around the work of John Rawls and Amartya Sen, and that I have previously presented in the compressed form of the portmanteau word equaliberty (égaliberté, igualibertad, Gleiche Frei- heit, or Gleichheit/Freiheit, etc.). 1 These reflec- tions are intended to contribute to the discussion of a classical problem in political philosophy, that of the democratic foundation of the rights of the citizen. In philosophy, foundation is to be under- stood as meaning the explanation of a principle, particularly a constitutive principle. If we pre- sume that the ‘‘rights of the citizen’’ themselves form the heart and the goal of the constitutional order, whether written or unwritten, formal or material, normative or structural, then what we will be concerned with is something like a constitution of the constitution, following a philosophical-political wordplay deeply rooted in our history...
Description:
I would like to propose here some ‘‘new reflec- tions’’ concerning the notion of equal liberty (aequa libertas), a notion that has persisted across the entire republican political tradition from antiquity (Cicero) to contemporary debates around the work of John Rawls and Amartya Sen, and that I have previously presented in the compressed form of the portmanteau word equaliberty (égaliberté, igualibertad, Gleiche Frei- heit, or Gleichheit/Freiheit, etc.). 1 These reflec- tions are intended to contribute to the discussion of a classical problem in political philosophy, that of the democratic foundation of the rights of the citizen. In philosophy, foundation is to be under- stood as meaning the explanation of a principle, particularly a constitutive principle. If we pre- sume that the ‘‘rights of the citizen’’ themselves form the heart and the goal of the constitutional order, whether written or unwritten, formal or material, normative or structural, then what we will be concerned with is something like a constitution of the constitution, following a philosophical-political wordplay deeply rooted in our history...