PHIL2634 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: French Revolution, Sovereign People
Document Summary
If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually assembled to devote their time to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed. This is why a famous writer has made virtue the fundamental principle of republics; for all these conditions could not exist without virtue. Theorists are led into error because, seeing only states that have been from the beginning wrongly constituted, they are struck by the impossibility of applying such a policy to them. For each magistrate is almost always charged with some governmental function, while each citizen, taken singly, exercises no function of sovereignty. Men have presumed to call the third estate.
