Ecos do pensamento de Rousseau nos projetos panamericano e anfictiônico de Bolívar

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine certain aspects of the presence of Rousseau in the life and writings of Simón Bolívar. We begin by focusing on the influence of Rousseauian pedagogy on Bolívar’s education, whether through the role of Simón Rodríguez or directly through his reading of the Émile. Although this trajectory has already been analyzed by several readers of Rousseau and Bolívar, we consider it essential to revisit it, so as to advance, in a second moment, toward reflecting on the presence of Rousseau’s ideas in Bolívar’s political and internationalist conceptions. At the end of the Émile, a work read and carefully meditated upon by El Libertador, Rousseau, when addressing the formation of his imaginary pupil on the threshold of entering civic life, examines elements concerning the internal organization of a legitimate nation-state and then moves on to the sphere of interstate relations. After criticizing the theories of Grotius and Hobbes, Rousseau briefly considers federalist ideas and their limits, drawing on the Project for Perpetual Peace by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre. It is noteworthy that Bolívar, when formulating his own amphictyonic project, in addition to drawing on the ancient Greek thinkers, also examined modern federalist projects, among which Saint-Pierre’s stands out, as cited in the Jamaica Letter of 1815. In formulating his critique of the utopianism inherent in the abbé’s project, Bolívar in fact repeats Rousseau’s own critique, contained in the Abstract or Summary of the Project for Perpetual Peace in Europe, the text that was responsible for disseminating and making known Saint-Pierre’s federalist and pacifist ideas even more than the author’s original work itself. In this regard, our analysis will focus especially on Bolívar’s thought on international relations, emphasizing the presence of Rousseau in this domain, and highlighting the idea that Bolívar both transcends and revitalizes European federalist projects, adapting them to Latin American and global concerns.