as an integrative experience. Perhaps the best way to make this point is in terms of a distinction Dennis Thompson draws between Rousseau’s ‘patriotic’ and John Stuart Mill’s ‘enlightened’ conception of citizenship (Thompson, 1976: 43–50). For Rousseau’s austere republicanism, the true citizen puts the good of the community above all other considerations. Citizenship demands simplicity – a whole-hearted devotion to duty – rather than sophistication. For Mill’s liberal republicanism, however, good citizens are people who develop their faculties
through active engagement in public life.