Modern subversives: Althusius, Spinoza, and Rousseau

Abstract

Modern political theory is commonly referenced by the clash between absolutism and liberalism to have emerged between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are, however, thinkers who built elements beyond the modern State and who inform the current democratic debate. As such thinkers are historically modern, but theoretically contemporary, they are modern subversives. This article provides a comparative analysis of the political ideas of three theorists who may be considered as modern subversives: the German Johannes Althusias, the Dutchman Baruch Espinosa, and the Genevan to have settled in France, Jean Jacques Rousseau. These thinkers discussed the themes of popular sovereignty, the democratic power of the multitude, and on the general will as overcoming representation. What unites them is the radical and subversive desire to establish, against any form of oppression, the demos as sovereign. Reconsidered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these authors have not only informed the contemporary debate on democracy, but also contributed to the very renewal of political theory.