En torno al concepto de «pueblo». De las diversas encarnaciones de la colectividad como sujeto político en la cultura política española contemporánea

Abstract

This article's basic idea is that modern Spanish political culture shows a persistent tendency to ground political rights in collective entities, instead of grounding them in individual human beings or a social body understood as an aggre gate of individuals. This precedents of this idea go back to medieval scholastic philosophy, reformulated by Spanish thinkers in the early modern period. There is an analysis in this paper of the different phases or «incarnations» of this idea throughout the modern period, from the Liberal concept of the «people» to the «nation» (be it Spain or the alternative Catalan or Basque nations), the Marxist or anarchist «proletariat» and the «race». That supreme reference for the legitimacy of political power has been understood, according to the different moments and schools of thought, as an ideal essence, a material reality or even a biological organism, but in all cases as an external entity, superior to its individual com ponents.