Os "privados dos reis" e as "pessoas particulares"

os conceitos de privado e particular no Antigo Regime português (sécs. XVII-XVIII)

Abstract

Historiography that deals with public/private discussion has
accustomed to analyze the pre-modern period from the logic
of absence. This means that one begins with the supposed separation
of public and private in modernity to affirm that in
the previous period they “did not separate” or “did not distinguish”.
The purpose of this text is to analyze the uses that were
made of the concepts of private and particular, based on the
political-juridical-theological theories of the Old Portuguese
Regime in the XVII century, to propose an alternative interpretation
to the dichotomous and antagonistic view of “public”
and “private”. In this way, I try to suggest that “private” and
“particular” were not understood as synonyms and that each
played a specific role in the political language of the period. It is
understood here that “public” was articulated with the concept
of “particular”, and this relation was based on an idea of integration,
not of opposition.