Representative Of Popular Sovereignty:Principled Realism

As a thinker who has been forgotten by history for a long time,Constant has not received attention that he deserved from the academic circles.As a result of the prevalence of totalitarian research in the mid-twentieth century,The thought of Constant was revived because of criticizing about Rousseau’s theory of popular sovereignty and advocating about individual freedom in modern society.With the deepening of Constant research,more and more researchers realized that although Constant’s thoughts are extremely complex,but they are highly related and complementary.In view of this,this article attempts to use political representative as the perspective to study Constant’s political thoughts on the basis of the historical background of the French Revolution and its post-revolutionary era.This article will consider Constant’s political thoughts about popular sovereignty,ancient freedom and modern freedom,constitutionalism and democracy.As Constant said,“Freedom,order,and the welfare of the people are the purpose of human union,and political organization is only a way.” In this regard,the political representative has assumed the necessary function of intermediary hub in Constant’s entire political ideological system.In addition,because Constant is not a purely theoretical speculator but an active political participant,that makes Constant’s thought of political representation more realistic in adherence to the principle of popular sovereignty,stable order,and respect for freedom and equality.It is precisely on the basis of political representative as an intermediary and realistic choice that this article believes that Constant’s political representative is achieved,through the criticism and transformation of Rousseau’s theory of popular sovereignty and the inheritance and innovation of some traditional representative concepts.It presents the typical characteristics of taking the representative of the popular sovereignty as the core,the dual representative of the elite and the monarch and the trustee representative model as the two wings,the order and freedom as the goal.Of course,the idea of political representative of Constant is the product of the time after all.We also need to acknowledge its shortcomings when it transcends the feudal thought of representative in the old times and resolving the theoretical and practical significance of Rousseau’s theory of popular sovereignty.Since France urgently needs to establish a stable political order and guarantee freedom after the Great Revolution,the sovereignty of the people itself was deliberately hidden,and the political participation of the people was also deliberately weakened in the theory and practice about Constant’s thought of political representative.Therefore,Constant has been criticized in the study of contemporary republicanism and communitarianism.