http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2014v13n2p303 ethic@ - Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil, v.13, n.2, p.303-314, jul./dez., 2014. CRISES AND REVOLUTIONS PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO THEIR INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE CLASSIC WORK OF ROUSSEAU, KANT, TOCQUEVILLE, CASSIRER AND ARENDT 1 ROBERTO R. ARAMAYO 2 (Institut of Philosophy CSIC, Spain) ABSTRACT It is the sole topic of conversation throughout Europe. An economic crisis with an underlying crisis of values is devastating everything, while politics has nothing to say. An attempt was made to base the European Unión on a single currency, and the resulting traders’ Europe prevented the desired political project from bearing fruit. Instead of comparing different legal systems before creating a constitution for citizens, we have seen the birth of a new “idolatry” that is connected with a perverse fatalism. Only macroeconomic figures are considered to be important, while citizens have to suffer because of the actions of a few unscrupulous people who worship profit as well as having legalised usury. Given this situation it is necessary to take all types of precaution, and that is why it is a good idea to see what classical authors have to say. The Enlightenment seems to be a failed project that urgently needs to be restarted. It may be enormously useful to re-read Rousseau, as Cassirer did during the rise of Nazism so that it could be fought on the basis of the history of ideas. His discourse on inequality could not be more relevant now. And the same consideration applies to the genealogical study of the French revolution by Tocqueville. That was the revolution par excellence which Kant described as a symbol of the moral progress of mankind. Keywords: Crisis. Revolution Philosophical. Rousseau. Kant. Tocqueville. Cassirer. Arendt. ‘Despotism […] takes away from citizens all common feeling, […] all occasion for common action. It walls them up inside their private lives. They already tend to keep themselves apart from one another: despotism isolates them; it chills their relations; it freezes them. In these kinds of societies, where nothing is fixed, everyone is constantly tormented by the fear of falling and by the ambition to rise. Money […] transform [s] the status of individuals, […] Thus, there is virtually no one who is not constantly compelled to make desperate efforts to keep it or to make it. The desire to enrich oneself at any price, the preference for business, the love of profit, the search for material pleasure and comfort are therefore the most widespread desires. [..] Despotism alone can furnish these passions with the secrecy and shadow which make greed feel at home, and let it reap its dishonest profits despite dishonour.’ (Alexis de Tocqueville, Preface to The Old Regime and the Revolution). Fritz Lang’s “Moloch” in his film “Metropoli and the perverse consequences of economic idolatry Despite being a great admirer of Adam Smith (whose celebrated “invisible hand” watches over the smooth running of the markets while everyone pursues their own interests), Immanuel Kant distrusted what he himself called the mercantile spirit. In the Anthropology he describes as something “unsociable in itself” (Anth, AA 07: 315n.), that same “mercantile spirit” which his third Critique declares not very favourable to civil rights, since “the mere