Constant

ancient liberty

‘slaves in their private relations’ ‘sovereign in public affairs’

• no concept of individual liberty

  • no freedom of religion etc

• slavery is how people could spend time engaging in politics

critique of French Rev

argued the monarchy used power in arbitrary way and was corrupt and ostentatious

• he argues state should not have arbitrary power

what is representative govt?

‘an organisation by which a nation charges a few individuals to do what it cannot or does not wish to do herself’

to protect modern liberty, allowing those to live their lives how they choose

role of citizens in representative system

moderns must ‘exercise an active and constant surveillance over their representatives’

• danger is that ‘absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power to easily’

modern liberty

focuses on individual rights

• protection from arbitrary treatment, freedom to associate w others etc

  • basically negative liberty (though Dunn argues this is separate but helpful)

• detached from political activity

  • time and energy spent on politics means that individual was stripped from ability to pursue own interests

  • ‘individual existence is less absorbed in political existence’

Holmes argues that Constant constantly identifies modern liberty with the personal experience of security

• ‘individual rights include the certainty that one will not be treated arbitrarily’

how commerce has replaced war

‘commerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence’

• change in material world contributed to concept of modern liberty

  • encouraged individualism and desire to organise one’s life economically

no need for empire and conquest because economic resources can be cultivated by commerce between states

Holmes argued ‘commerce makes action of arbitrary power over our existence more oppressive than in the past, because it changes the nature of property’ making it impossible to seize

ancient democracies

Dunn said for Constant, ‘the freedom which ancient democracies sought was the collective solidarity in public agency of the citizenry as a body’

role of cognitive capacity

in modern politics nothing can be done to allow modern citizens to know about ‘the vast bulk of the factors which shape, constrain or endanger their lives’

• modern state = society’s brain, as humans can’t understand the world themselves, and this ability is not easily transferred

Dunn argues that ‘modern state are palpably in no condition to take up these awesome cognitive responsibilities’ and argues 20th century socialism is evidence of this

danger of power

‘error of those, who in good faith, in their love of liberty, have granted boundless power to the sovereignty of the people, derives from the way in which their political ideas were formed’

• power itself is the cause of tyranny

  • opposite of what Hobbes says about power and sovereigns