O círculo e a linha: da «liberdade dos antigos» à «liberdade dos modernos» na teoria republicana dos direitos fundamentais

Abstract

This essay’s main design is to establish whether or not there was an autonomous theory of the Fundamental Rights in the Republican Thought in general and in Portuguese republicanism in particular. The thesis bring that the Republican theory of Fundamental Rights doesn’t lead back to either the «freedom of the moderns» — in the sense of a liberal theory of rights — nor to the «freedom of the ancients» — in the cosmological and anthropological sense, from Greek Philosophy. The third way, simply sketched in this essay is based on the idea that the republicans got their subjective lines of thought from The Rights of Man but simultaneously searched for a way to an inter-subjective theory in which the dimentions of solidarity, participation, equality and democratization of which the liberal doctrine had been progressively emptied — could be included.