The creation of a citizen (evolution of the concept of «citizenship» in the Early Modern time)
Bovykin Dmitry
Before the French Revolution, there was a rich tradition of comprehension of the term "citizen", dating back to Antiquity, to Aristotle. The meaning of this concept evolved from a member of a community (city-state) participating in the exercise of political power to a bourgeois who had certain rights and privileges within the city, and further, already in the Modern times and the Age of Enlightenment, to a full member of the political organism created as a result of a social contract. Such great minds as J. Bodin, T. Hobbes, S. von Pufendorf, B. Spinoza, J. Locke, C.-L. de Montesquieu, J.-J. Rousseau contributed to the understanding of this term. Only the American War of Independence forced these theoretical considerations to be translated into practice and to decide how the sovereignty of the nation would be implemented in practice. In 1789, this most difficult problem arose before the deputies of the Estates General, who proclaimed them the National Constituent Assembly: they had to determine who would henceforth be not just a subject of the king, but a citizen of the renewed France, what rights and obligations he would have from now on, and how he should exercise one of the most important rights in practical terms – the right to vote. This was also due to the fact that a new understanding of the concept of citizenship turned out to be necessary for the legitimization of the new government after the collapse of the Old Order in France. Since then, the term “citizen” itself, the images of “citizen”, “citizen king”, “citizen soldier” became one of the foundations of revolutionary propaganda.
The study was supported by a grant of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 25-18-00108 (https://rscf.ru/en/project/25-18-00108/).
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