“Rousseau sotto il letto” : la democrazia nel dibattito politico inglese tra le due guerre

The debate on the relationship between democracy, public opinion, and political representation began with the anti-Romantic polemic that emerged in the United States in the early twentieth century, spearheaded by Irving Babbitt. This culminated in the publication of Democracy and Leadership (1924), which focused on radically - and sometimes obsessively - challenging Rousseau's ideas. The debate then gradually extended to the British intellectual context, partly thanks to the influence of T.E. Hulme, a proponent of reactionary classicism with connections to Maurras. Against the backdrop of a crisis in the entire Western tradition involving Britain's various ideological movements, the British political debate on democracy in the 1930s and 1940s translates into an inquiry into the notion of democracy and its transformations. From this perspective, Rousseau emerges as a complex and multifaceted figure capable of illuminating the underlying tensions that characterised the conservative movement and the positions

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