By Paulin Ismard
Supposons un rapid que le dirigeant de l. a. Banque de France, le directeur de los angeles police et celui des records nationales soient des esclaves, propriétés à titre collectif du peuple français. Imaginons, en somme, une République dans laquelle certains des plus grands serviteurs de l'Etat seraient des esclaves. Ils étaient archivistes, policiers ou vérificateurs de los angeles monnaie : tous esclaves, quoique jouissant d'une situation privilégiée, ils furent les premiers fonctionnaires des cités grecques. En confiant à des esclaves de telles fonctions, qui requéraient une services dont les citoyens étaient bien souvent dénués, il s'agissait pour los angeles cité de placer hors du champ politique un convinced nombre de savoirs spécialisés, dont los angeles maîtrise ne devait légitimer los angeles détention d'aucun pouvoir. Surtout, l. a. démocratie directe, telle que l. a. concevaient les Grecs, impliquait que l'ensemble des prérogatives politiques soit entre les mains des citoyens. En rendant invisibles ceux qui avaient l. a. cost de son management, los angeles cité conjurait l'apparition d'un Etat qui puisse se constituer en example autonome et, le cas échéant, se retourner contre elle. Que l. a. démocratie se soit construite en son origine contre l. a. determine de l'expert gouvernant, mais aussi selon une belief de l'Etat qui nous est radicalement étrangère, voilà qui devrait nous intriguer.
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Extra info for La démocratie contre les experts : Les esclaves publics en Grèce ancienne
Sample text
What was the object of the debate? - The right of members of the Convention who have been arrested without its consent to justify their conduct before their peers. Implicitly, it touched upon the guarantees accorded to the representatives of the people. Robespierre is careful not to condemn those guarantees in principle, and does not even evoke the restrictions that may have to be placed upon liberty in revolutionary times; he exploits an allusion to the Mountain to praise the 'refuge of liberty' but, basing his argument upon the fact that Bazire, Chabot and Fabre d'Eglantine were recently denied a right which the accused Danton demanded on their behalf - and his interlocutors cannot have forgotten the fact - he expresses his surprise that a principle should have been abandoned.
Here, we must presumably imagine a pause, a sharp intake of breath or a change of tone. Suspicion now falls on the Assembly. ' The challenge is calculated to make his audicnce shudder. '), but that relates to his earlier argument. His next declaration introduces something new: 62 They want to make you fear (all veut vous faire craindre) abuses of power, of the national power you have exercised and which does not reside with only a few men. What have you done that you have not done freely, that has not saved the Republic, that has not been approved by the whole of France?
It is because he is not afraid of death that he is so serene. Others do not frighten him because death does not frighten him, because his life is not his: it belongs to the Fatherland. The transcript of the session tells us that this declaration was punctuated with applause. Indeed, but applause is probably not enough for Robespierre. He is probably alert to the danger of exposing himself to the accusations of presumption, for he ends this confession by slipping back into the bosom of nous. The speech now takes on a precious inflection: Robespierre is saying can ward off the possibility of a new torrent of accusations, the possibility that to day's heroes may be tomorrow's guilty men.
