La constitution de l'intérêt général, entre droits et intérêts particuliers, dans le libéralisme politique (XVIIIème - XIXème siècle)

It has become all too common to sigh over the loss of a political ideal, aimed at the pursuit of the general interest and unifying enough to mobilise the members of a political and social community. Among the factors often deemed responsible for the crumbling of the political link and the waning of civic duties is liberal philosophy, the individualistic dimension of which would supposedly have made the sacrifice of individual interests in the name of the general interest utterly impossible. We intend to show in this study that, by setting out its definition of the common good, liberalism has brought in indecisiveness, which makes it difficult for people to refer to. Indeed as liberalism is understood as the means to further individual interests -since each and everyone has a right to achieve their own ends-liberalism can mean the achieving of these very ends as weIl as the protection of rights. If today this twofold point dissolves itself into the options one has between political liberalism and economic liberalism, we will see that it has already given ri se to a tension among the founders of liberalism, who hesitate between the establishment of laws setting the limits of legitimate interests on the one hand and the upholding of interests from which the legal system stems from on the other. The ambiguity between what lies in the general interest, the safeguard of rights, and the pursuit of the general interest based on the composition of individual interests thus compels us to define more precisely the nature of citizens' taking part in politics, especially in a democracy.