doctoralThesis
Liberalismo contra Democracia: origem e fundamentos da oposição entre o Liberalismo e a Tradição Democrática
Fecha
2020-12-04Registro en:
ALCÂNTARA, Pedro Henrique Generino de. Liberalismo contra Democracia: origem e fundamentos da oposição entre o Liberalismo e a Tradição Democrática. 2020. 238f. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências Sociais) - Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2020.
Autor
Alcântara, Pedro Henrique Generino de
Resumen
This study aims to analyze the historical and conceptual relationship between
democracy and political liberalism, in its classic period. We seek to demonstrate the serious
departure from liberal ideas in relation to democratic ideas, going through historical moments
that marked the constitution of liberal thought, from its origin to the consolidation of its
institutional model. We do this by confronting it with what we call the “modern democratic
tradition”, faithful to the sense of class that gave rise to the old democracy and heir to the
egalitarianism of popular revolts and the thinking of radical philosophers of the era of
transition between the feudal regime and the modernity. Tying together democracy and
revolution, this tradition, even before the emergence of Marxist communism, organized ideas
about freedom and its relation to equality, resulting in the defense of the universalization of
rights. Presenting an institutional model that strongly linked political representation and
popular sovereignty, it was an alternative to the advancement of capitalist mercantile laws that
promoted the worsening conditions for the existence of popular classes and boosted the
colonialist expansion of the so-called “European barbarism”. We support the hypothesis that
liberalism was formed in good measure against this tradition, placing itself in the opposite
pole to the defense of the universalization of democratic rights and ideas. We seek to
demonstrate how this is expressed in liberal theory, especially regarding the fundamental
discussion about freedom, and how it manifests itself in the institutional model of classical
political liberalism. It is, therefore, an attempt to re-read some historical and conceptual
aspects of democracy and liberalism.