Matveev, S. R. The Concept of Sovereignty in Francois Guizot’s Political Philosophy

Abstract: Sovereignty is one of the most important problems in political philosophy because it makes us search for the answer to the most important questions of politics, ‘Who has the highest level of state authority?’. Do the people, representatives, monarch or God have sovereignty? Development of this topic is one of the most popular and fruitful directions in the political philosophy of the XIXth century. Studying sovereignty, Francois Guizot tried to fi nd answers to particular questions such as about the reasons of the decaying of revolution and death of the Napoleon empire, the fate and fortunes of the House of Bourbon and the vitality of the Charter of 1814. The analysis of the development of ideas and term has allowed to reconstruct Guizot’s concept of sovereignty and shows its relation to the intellectual and political environment of the Conservation epoch (1814–1830). By addressing to this topic, the author of the article has managed to restore a very important part of the political theory proposed by Guizot and to cast light on the philosophical sources of the French liberalism as well as to demonstrate the relation between this ideology and democracy. Thi has also allowed to understand the status of the problem of sovereignty in political practice.

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