Politics and Tragedy: The Case of Rousseau

Abstract

There is a growing body of scholarship in political theory that explores the ways in which a tragic heuristic can be useful for understanding politics. This scholarship has generally seen Rousseau as having articulated a political theory that might be illuminated by the application of a tragic heuristic but not one that might itself illuminate tragic predicaments in democratic politics. Readers have criticized Rousseau for inadvertently succumbing to a series of tragic conflicts, primarily by virtue of his insistence on a homogeneous political culture. Through an analysis of Rousseau’s theory of sovereignty, this essay argues that Rousseau has something more to contribute to the scholarship on tragedy and politics. His political theory includes both moments of tragic overreach as well as moments of tragic narration. More than simply a victim of tragic dissolution, Rousseau deployed his own tragic prism for conceptualizing what he called the “fundamental problem” of politics. This tragic prism, the essay concludes, expands the applicability of Rousseau’s political theory beyond the small, homogeneous republics he took as his model. The final section of the essay makes use of the “paradox of politics” to illustrate the applications of Rousseau’s theory of sovereignty to democratic theory writ large.