The Conception of Liberty Through the Ages

History of European Ideas, 2018

The Sacred Fire of Liberty, 1998

Machiavelli took Livy not Cicero, as his primary model in the Discorsi, and his thinking reflected the concerns of a different era, but his basic conception of liberty remained very Roman. 1 Machiavelli hoped to revive the example of antiquity as a model for contemporary statesmen. 2 This meant above all the republic (republica), whose laws and discipline had maintained civic virtue (virtu) best. 3 But Machiavelli also praised Sparta and Venice for the stability of their laws. 4 Cicero himself had viewed Sparta and Carthage as republics, although he criticized them for their (elected) kings 5 and for originating the frenzy for agrarian legislation which eventually ruined Rome. 6 Machiavelli associated the conception of mixed government with Lycurgus, 7 but he concentrated primarily on Rome and the compatibility of Roman institutions with liberta after the ouster of the kings. Rome's perfect republic (republica perfetta) emerged only when the people (popoli) obtained a share of public power. 8 For Machiavelli, the important distinction between Rome and Sparta lay not in Sparta's superior equality (though Sparta was more equal in its universal poverty), 9 but in the better balance of Rome's constitution. 10 Sparta and Venice gave ultimate power to the senate, but sovereignty belonged to the people in Rome. Machiavelli considered the people to be better guardians of liberty (liberta), because they have less opportunity to usurp dominion for their own advantage, and only wish to remain free and avoid domination by others.U He attributed this insight to Cicero, who knew that the people (popoli) were ignorant, but believed them capable of perceiving truth when good men placed the truth before them. 12 Machiavelli identified the basis of Rome's freedom with the rule of law, government for the common good (commune utilita), and self-discipline in both public and private affairs. 13 All these depended on the balance in the constitution. Athens, whose government did not balance the power of the people, lost itself quickly in the license of the multitude and became a tyranny.l 4 Romans had the good sense to recognize human wickedness in the structure of their commonwealth. The balance between the people and the senate kept Romans honest, and their laws made them good. Machiavelli believed that where men are too free to choose their own course they will stray into license (licenza) and confusion. 15 Roman liberty

Providing an introduction to this special issue on the ancient notions of liberty and its modern perspectives, this essay contains, first, some reflections about the relation between the fields of ancient history and contemporary political theory. Building on the comments of the final roundtable with Kinch Hoekstra and Quentin Skinner, it then makes an attempt at extrapolating some theoretical understandings of liberty from a wide range of geographical and historical contexts covered in the contributions. Moving away from a strictly classical Graeco-Roman focus, these include investigations from the second millennium BCE polities in the Levant to the Byzantine empire in the fifth-century CE.

2023

Nowadays, the idea that man as such has rights is almost evident. It is also clear that these rights must not be infringed by others and above all by those who hold political authority. The contemporary debate concerns rather what these rights consist of or what their content is. Even autocratic regimes pay the kind of homage that vice pays to virtue by making hypocritical statements that they violate in practice. There is even a paradoxical correlation: the more declarations of human rights a regime subscribes to, the more likely it is that serious violations of these rights will occur. It is hard for us to imagine that man as such has not always been considered a subject of rights. The ancients, however, did not recognize the rights of man as a man, but only as a citizen. Medieval and even modern people throughout the Ancien Régime thought that rights depended on the body politic, the stance in office or “the corporation” to which one belonged; we can best describe them as “privileges.” Obviously, there are great difficulties in explaining the basis and even the nature of the actual rights that man has as a man, as it may seem that, in the absence of some basic social institutions or civic framework, their content cannot be specified. This is why some think that without a minimum of social context these human rights are as mythical as witches and unicorns. Even these thinkers, however, do not deny that men are holders of rights; they just uphold that rights presuppose a historical and political framework. How is it possible that, suddenly, man became an obvious subject of rights? To understand this, it is important to note that there was a radical shift in emphasis in seventeenth-century political philosophy. Before, citizens had, both in moral life and in civic life, certain natural duties, but from then onwards man was mostly the undeniable holder of certain rights. Natural duties were those precepts of natural law that had been identified by the medievals. For example, when Thomas Aquinas considers what the precepts of natural law are, he begins by saying that they are found when, through practical reasoning about what is good for us, we realize that it is good to live rather than to die, or develop our capabilities instead of not doing so. There is thus a natural precept about the preservation of life and there are also various precepts concerning what is necessary for our well-being as human beings, such as living in harmony with others in our community. This is different from saying that we have a natural right to live rather than die, or a natural right to seek our own well-being. It is, above all, very different from saying that the justification of political society is that political society safeguards our natural rights instead of merely allowing us – as social creatures by nature – to fulfill our natural duties to others and to God. This difference is inaccurately described by those who qualify modern rights as “subjectivist” or “individualist”, as they are concerned with emphasizing the freedoms and entitlements of the individual against the rival forces of authority, other individuals and, ultimately, man’s natural state. It is one possible way of describing the difference between the moderns and the ancients, but not the most accurate. Not everyone recognizes the novelty of rights. Some find the idea so self-evident that they find it difficult to admit that it is not very ancient, not to say eternal, and retrospectively discover man’s natural rights where we find above all natural duties arising from natural law. Indeed, there are at least three ways of blurring the difference between natural duties arising from natural law and the new modern natural rights. The first consists in confusing a natural right with what is permissible and not punishable in certain circumstances, such as taking what is necessary for subsistence, or resisting aggressive forces. A second way is to judge that certain moral injunctions, such as giving alms or the prohibition against murder, correspond to a natural right, like the right to assistance or to life. A third confusion is to see natural rights in what are natural obligations—for example, as if the duty to obey God before men was a right to rebellion. This shift occurred in the seventeenth century. However, rights and duties are very different and to better understand this difference we need, at the very least, a genealogy of the shift in emphasis from natural duties (which emerge from natural law) towards natural rights (which emerge from man’s natural state). When does this start? Was it already with the medievals, or even earlier, with the Roman jurists? Nothing is more difficult than dating a major change in ideas. Whatever the case, the shift in emphasis from natural duties to natural rights can be said to be consummated when the role of political authority becomes that of securing the natural rights of man. It is obvious that the change took place during this process. Currently, political discourse and even conversation among citizens proceed as if it was evident that human rights must be untouchable, or at least that they “trump” other considerations. We also assume that a political authority that systematically violates human rights is detestable and illegitimate and must be removed. Hobbes is perhaps the originator of this shift in emphasis from duties to rights, but Locke is the first to argue that the new natural rights that man has as such by his nature are not lost in civil life. If we never lose them, this imposes severe limits on the scope of governmental action. Locke is therefore the first theorist in the modern tradition of limited government and the inalienable rights of man.

Hobbes, it will analyze Machiavelli's confounding concept of liberty, its meaning, expression and attainment through the dual analysis of states and the populace. Hobbesian absolute monarchy is suitable for the conservation and utilization of his orderly " negative liberty " with the sole goal of securing peace and security for its subjects. Machiavelli's advocacy for the republic, as the only " free " form of government that provides the best political conditions for the exercise of freedom, is undermined and contradicted by his own account of human nature. This paper argues that Hobbes provides a more plausible definition of freedom, thus his argument for absolute monarchy is more consistent and convincing when juxtaposed to Machiavelli's account of republic, while both depart from the same pragmatic vision of human nature. This paper reveals Machiavelli's true intentions behind his advocacy for the deliberative assembly, the instrumental implementation of which promises the mobilization of support and resources for the state's imperial expansion. Machiavelli is less concerned with liberty for its sake, he is more captivated with its role in pursuing the end goals of state's expansion and maximization of state's power. This paper will conclude by illuminating the ambiguity of Machiavelli's perplexed inclinations towards " liberty of necessity " and " liberty of choice " for the states, thus unveiling the incompatibility of security and liberty as a dilemma in contemporary international politics.

History of European Ideas, 2023

In this article, we discuss Greek and Roman conceptions of liberty. The supposedly ‘neo-Roman’ view of liberty as non-domination is really derived from negative Greek models, we argue, while Roman authors devised an alternative understanding of liberty that rested on the equality of legal rights. In this ‘paleo-Roman’ model, as long as the law was the same for all, you were free; whether or not you participated in making the law was not a constitutive feature of liberty. In essence, this Roman theory was a theory of freedom as the rule of law and the guarantee of equal rights, especially due process rights. For this Roman concept of ‘legal liberty,’ as we call it, political participation was neither necessary nor sufficient. Theorized by Cicero and historicized by Livy, the Roman understanding of freedom flourished in early-modern times, proving important to paradigmatic republican authors such as Machiavelli and Rousseau as well as to Hobbes, whose work we discuss as a helpful point of comparison.

The Grammar of Politics: Wittgenstein and Political …

A diverse and wide-ranging semantics characterizes the understanding of liberty in Byzantium. A cursory glance at dictionaries and thesauri reveals that the words ἐλευθερία (the noun fr eedom) and ἐλεύθερος (the adjective fr ee) are part and parcel of the discursive repertory of secular and religious authors. Modern historians have traditionally paid attention to new and unusual connotations of freedom in Byzantium, mostly in documentary usage during the middle and late periods. 1 Th ere is, however, scope for much wider analysis. Scholars have yet to examine the cultural and historical signifi cance of the usages of the concept of freedom and the interplay of its different meanings. Such an investigation of Begriff sgeschichte and historical semiotics would be complex and interdisciplinary, pertaining to history and political thought as well as theology, law, literature, and the reception of the classics. Almost by necessity, therefore, my focus here is restricted thematically and chronologically: liberty as a political ideal from the twelft h through the fi ft eenth century. What I mean by "liberty as political ideal" is not merely its descriptive application to the social realities, such as governance and landed relations. Rather I am interested in cases and contexts where liberty was politicized to the degree of becoming an ideological credo and a catchword that encapsulated the interests of social groups and individuals. Here I discuss some patterns and in the process raise questions for further study, especially regarding earlier periods of Byzantine history.

2016

Study towards the notion of liberty remains relevant at any time since the idea of freedom remains a basis of the contemporary democracies and other modern liberal political regimes. This article traces the differences between the two theoretical approaches towards the liberty: of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato and the British economist and politician of the XIX century, John Stuart Mill. The research reveals common features of the concepts: while Plato can be considered to be a representative of the ancient philosophy with the peculiar comprehending of liberty notion, John Stuart Mill, adhering liberalist views, proposes the classical understanding of the concept. Moreover, the article will contribute to the distinguishing between the contemporary perception towards the freedom and the ideas of philosophers of the past. In addition, the research is based on the comparative analysis of the following criteria: the authors' attitude to the concept of liberty in general, view...

Brolly. Journal of Social Sciences , 2019

In the essay “What is Freedom?”, Hannah Arendt argues that freedom is the meaning, the “raison d’être” of politics and that political life from which it is absent is meaningless (Arendt 1977, 161). Hardly anyone denies the importance of freedom for any human or political society. It is no novelty either that freedom is a highly contested conception, the meaning of which is bound up with numerous controversies and disagreements. Yet, it is customary to distinguish between the “negative” and “positive” concepts of liberty in accordance with the dualistic framework presented by Isaiah Berlin in 1969. Notwithstanding its popularity, this categorization is at very least problematic. This paper elaborates on the Machiavellian understanding of freedom, which arguably cannot fit in Berlin’s categorization. Besides, it draws parallels with Hanna Arendt’s understanding of political freedom and argues that the complexity of her conception challenges the validity of Berlin’s framework.