THE CONCEPT OF NATION IN SIEYES

Abstract

Around the figure of Sieyes, history has written the epitaph of paradox. The enormous length of his life has been condensed in the short time span from the transformation of the States General into a National Assembly to 18 Brumaire, that is: from the opening of the Revolution to its closure by Napoleon; of his prolific work has been the silence, until recently, who has been in charge of editing, except for the two best-known pamphlets -the Essay on Privileges, and What is the Plain State? -, which spread the author’s cheerful name like wildfire through the mouths of his contemporaries; and those same pamphlets, two booklets born out of concrete situations intended to defend the interests of the Third State against those of the privileged orders, they possess, however, sufficient intellectual dignity to enrich the European constitutional heritage with the idea of an intrinsic unity between national sovereignty and representative government, and with the first express manifestation of the Constituent Power theory