From individual to one of us

Rousseau’s social contract and the individualistic hidden prejudice

Abstract

In a previous work, we would have demonstrated that the implementation of an individualistic hidden prejudice (in the sense of Gadamer’s hermeneutics), would have distorted some crucial concepts of the Aristotelian political philosophy such as ἕκαστος ἡμῶν (each one of us equated to each individual), and also our vision of the classical Greece. Thereon, we submitted as additional evidence, the case of some institutions of classical Athens that would be much more understandable from the Aristotelian one of us than from our individual. However, given the importance of those conclusions, that demonstration would require further evidence to be definitively confirmed. Here, regarding that confirmation, we will defend that that implementation would have affected not only to what we have just pointed out, but also to the «history of effect» (again in the sense of Gadamer’s hermeneutics) of the Aristotelian political philosophy, i. e., to some posterior political theories and, especially, to the Rousseauian Du Contrat Social. This text, considered one of the most important works of political philosophy, has been interpreted in contradictory ways and even regarded as obscure and enigmatic, though it would be very clear since it proposes, precisely, the transformation of the individual into a one of us.