LA RÉVOLUTION FRANCAISE SELON KANT ET ARENDT
FRENCH REVOLUTION IN THE VIEW OF KANT AND ARENDT

Summary/Abstract: French Revolution in the View of Kant and Arendt. What is political in a Revolution? Kant and Hannah Arendt reject the idea that the revolution is mere destructive violence and they are both considering that an authentic revolution is the emergence of a public space of freedom. Their views of revolution diverge regarding the concepts of novelty and beginning. For Kant, the wide approbation of the cultivated European public shows what is radically new in the French Revolution: the will to asset politics on the law. It is a beginning in the sense of an event which will remain unforgettable. For H. Arendt, the American Revolution is a beginning in the sense of a “foundation” similar with the Roman model that she described in her article What is Authority?. It had not to destroy an already installed despotic political regime, as in the case of France; it was sufficient to build, in a new world, the possibility of a common life without precedent.

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