How to concieve republic: Four visions

The work points to irreconcilable differences and internal tensions that under the term ?republic? are inherited, primarily, by the eighteenth century, which was favorable to it. Those disagreements and ambivalences, which determine modern theory to a good extent, are presented, respectively, through understandings of the republic in the Enlightenment, romanticism, republicanism and in the tradition of the ?republic of letters?. It is concluded that the emancipatory potential that is invested in the republic, if it has the same or a similar point of resistance - for example: monarchy, church domination of social life, what was once called the concise catchphrase ?throne and altar?, the abolition of privatized and/or particular decision-making monopolies and all misconceptions, prejudices, and the authorities that legitimize them - did not have at all the same or a similar vision of the desirable state after the coup has taken place, that is, in the name of what the republic should be established.