AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE DEBATES OVER THE CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION

The article seeks to investigate the difference between the concepts of revolution from the events of the two revolutions that were responsible for the emergence of the modern concept and the political use of the term, namely, the French and American revolutions. For this, we discuss the term's history (its use outside the political spectrum), Hannah Arendt's definitions of revolution and the implications of revolutionary processes in America and France on the formation of these countries' modern democratic institutions. If the American Revolution, for instance, focused on the establishment of enduring and lifelong institutions based on the experience of practical men involved in political affairs, the French Revolution reflected on the attempt to put into practice abstract ideals previously conceived by the French intellectual class and the Enlightenment philosophers.