THE COLLECTIVE LEGISLATOR IN CONDORCET'S PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the idea of who is responsible for making the laws in Condorcet's philosophy. According to the philosopher, citizens must participate in legislative activity together with their representatives. He believed that the right of sovereignty was directly related to the possibility for citizens to choose which laws they wanted to be submitted to. As they could not do so directly, they had to delegate some tasks related to the making of laws to their representatives, but keep others. By participating in the law-making process, citizens were free. Moreover, it prevented insurrections, since citizens had the right to express their opinions on politics in a peaceful and continuous manner.