ABSTRACT
The French Jacobins derived their philosophical method in part from the most rationalistic modes of thought in the older Western tradition, but they also took them in a radically ahistorical direction of their own. The new Jacobins defined their own various stands in contradistinction to the moral, religious, and political traditions of the West. The idea of political right as involving the implementation of a blueprint of some sort is difficult to reconcile with popular government of the constitutional type, as it exists, for example, in the United States. Real political unity, as distinguished from regimentation, is indistinguishable from the kind of diversity that makes for a fuller, richer life. The pluralistic notion of moral universality that has been put forth here collides head-on with the Rousseauistic idea that virtuous politics abjures particular interests and social subdivisions. In Rousseau's majoritarian democracy all right is found on one side and only wrong is found on the other.
