À l’origine de la politique moderne : les passions et les intérêts
Elena Pulcini
Cet article se penche sur le lien entre passions et politique, si souvent négligé
par la tradition libérale, et montre comment les passions égoïstes à l’origine
de la modernité ne sont pas seulement celles de l’Homo œconomicus, mais
aussi la passion d’acquérir et la passion de soi. Que ces passions soient
fortes (comme chez Hobbes, qui permet de penser la modernité) ou faibles (comme chez Tocqueville, qui permet de penser la postmodernité), ce
qu’elles alimentent, c’est un besoin d’ordre. Qu’il est possible de penser à
partir de diverses constellations de passions : les passions communautaires
ou d’appartenance, que l’on peut mettre en relation avec le paradigme de la
reconnaissance, et les passions désintéressées ou passions de solidarité qui
peuvent être associées au paradigme du don.
The paper focuses on the nexus of passions and politics, which has been
largely neglected by liberal tradition, and aims to show that at the origins
of modern politics there is not only the rational interest of the homo oeconomicus, but a constellation of egoistic passions which can be summarised
as the passion of acquiring and the passion of the self. Through the analysis
of two models – the hobbesian, which is representative of modernity, and
the tocquevillian, which is representative of post-modernity – I argue for
the following thesis : from egoistic passions (both from their force, as in
Hobbes, and from their weakness, as in Tocqueville) stems a need for order
which remains even within the democratic configuration of politics. From
the analysis of passions, emerges the order function of politics which characterises more or less manifestly the entire trajectory of modernity. On the
basis of such a diagnosis, I propose to look at a different constellation of passions, which I define as sympathetic and which enable to disclose a different
function of politics. Such passions revolve around two fundamental poles :
communitarian passions or passions for belonging, which can be traced back
to the paradigm of recognition, and the disinterested passions or passions for
solidarity, which can be traced back to the paradigm of gift.
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