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4.0 out of 5 stars
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Tocqueville, August 8, 2010
This review is from: An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Paperback)
This book gives a practical summary of the origins of classical liberalism, as opposed to the contemporary American usage of the word "liberal". As an intellectual history Pierre Manent's concisely written book shows the evolution of ideas over time and anchors the main ideas to a few central thinkers, but gives no historical information (dates, characters, circumstances). What is the fundamental natural state of man, and what does this imply about rights and governance? How are the roles of civil society and state to be defined? How did liberalism come to suggest itself as an alternative to Europe's three original models: empires, monarchies and city-states? How does the liberal thinking of the Enlightenment compare to ancient Greek political theory? How were competing social interests to be reconciled after the French Revolution against the ancienne régime? The book indicates how influential French thinking and the French Revolution was for liberalism, but covers less about other influencers such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill who in some ways responded to the French influence. Manent's book is a stimulating and bracing reconsideration of the cultural and political matrix that gives form to modern life. The reader is naturally reminded of the self-satisfaction of contemporary politicians and parties, who pretend to be intellectual descendents carrying the torch of great thinkers.
One central thesis of the author is that liberalism originates in the struggle to be free from religion in governance. This was not only necessary to confront the despotism of the Catholic Church but also to ensure a stable and therefore pluralistic foundation in the face of crumbling religious unity after Luther. Although liberty and equality are commonly thought to be biblical values, the new freedom of liberalism--rights of man, freedom of conscience, sovereignty of the people--only "came about just after the Christian religion had been totally stripped of all political power for the first time", and that which belonged to Caesar returned to Caesar.
In the foreword, Jerrold Seigel discusses Manent's thesis, that liberalism need not pretend to any higher end. At a generic level, says Manent, we moderns do not enter into relations with others in order to realize some good or higher purpose inherent in human nature; if we do, we each have such wildly different ideas about what is good that it is meaningless and susceptible to be seized on by religion, arguing that religious good is greater than any merely natural good. Siegel suggests a slightly different perspective, that liberalism was a rebellious and at the same time restorative response to religious, scientific and economic conditions that were already undermining the Church. Siegel's alternative also requires no moral source outside the self, where people have the task of giving meaning to the individual and society. These non-moral approaches avoid the problem of classical Greek theory, that supposed inherent human goodness as a basis for governance, because any admission that a higher end existed could be seized on and manipulated by the Church.
This concludes my review. The following is a (rather long) summary of the author's explanation of his topic. Manent focuses on ideas and their interplay, so the reader does not always get a clear and exact attribution of ideas and arguments to their first authors.
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It is unusual to include Machiavelli and Hobbes in the lineage of the founders of classical liberalism, but the author shows that they were on the forefront because they constructed modern theories in reaction to modern situations. The two certainly show that liberal political theory vacillates between exalting the state as the only means to assure the survival of individuals and defending against the state, alternating between idealized and demonized visions of society and human nature.
The modern situation to which Machiavelli reacted was the follow-up to the French invasion of 1494. Manent writes, "It is, in my view, the history of political philosophy that sheds the most light on the unfolding of our [modern] history"; this only began in the time of Machiavelli. In his history, Thucydides does not devote a single page to what we would call the "intellectual" or "cultural" life of the period. (Ibn Khaldun (b. 1332, Tunis) came close to this politico-historical perspective, being the first to view history from the perspective of society and civilisation.) "The great literary assertions of the solidity, independence, and the nobility of the secular world were born in Italy: those of Dante, Marsilius of Padua, Boccaccio. The Florentine tradition was then taken up, radically transformed, and made operational for the offensive against the Church launched by that great enemy of Christianity, Machiavelli." Machiavelli taught evil: how to take and keep power by ruse and force, how to carry through a successful conspiracy, how not to threaten or insult an enemy but to kill him when the time is right. Machiavelli taught that ordinary periods of peace ("goodness") can only arise and be maintained, by "extraordinary morals" of violence and injustice. Thus "good" is founded on and is only possible thanks to "evil" (indeed it is impossible to be perfectly fair, such as in the allocation of land); evil is politically more significant, more substantial, more real than "good". Machiavelli forces us to lose our innocence and to doubt the "good", "the smile of superiority and mockery". This contradicted the Aristotelian ideal political framework, the practice of civic and moral virtues that permitted man to demonstrate his excellence. For Machiavelli, from the moment the citizen's identification of his instinct for self-preservation is uncoupled from the instinct for the preservation of the city-state, the motivating force of civic life and morality is fatally weakened. "The public good can only be brought about by the power of violence and fear... To assert the necessity and fecundity of evil is now to assert the self-sufficiency of the earthly, secular order. " Whether or not Machiavelli was correct, the powerful could use his reasoning to justify anything.
The modern situation faced by Hobbes was the collapse of English political unity of the 1640s caused by classical studies glorifying freedom (Republicanism) and Protestantism. From the English Civil War, Hobbes drew the conclusions that people have incompatible notions of good (thus leading to the all-out war between Christians) but everyone knows what is evil; and that mankind cannot be united by grace or nature but can only be united from a political convention based on the fear of death. Unlike "goodness", the fear of death is invulnerable to a conflict of opinions. For Hobbes, the natural condition of mankind is the permanent presence of fear, distrust and aggression. Unlike the Greek ideal, real society is dominated by pride, conceit and vainglory. Our dominant, primordial desire is for power. For Hobbes, the natural condition of mankind is unbearable (the war of all against all, in which each person's life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short"), people are equal in their powerlessness, and people's actions are unlimited, legitimate self-defence. Good and evil only have meaning when this natural state has been surmounted by public authorities. Human reason, observing the absurdity of this war, is going to seek a means for peace. If individuals wish to be satisfied, they are constrained to be intelligent. The individuals therefore consent to transfer their unlimited natural right of self-defence to the sovereign, the Leviathan, on the condition that this sovereign will promulgate the laws necessary for peace and guarantee that they are obeyed, by force if necessary. At the moment of transfer, the individual's aristocratic/master behaviour (seeking power, honour, prestige) loses out to bourgeois/slave behaviour (seeking security, stability).
Thus Hobbes deduces absolutism, contrary to Aristotle's society governed by a merit-based hierarchy. Men are not guided by morality but by the right of the individual that is born from the necessity of fleeing evil. The transfer of this right means recognizing that the sovereign is my chosen representative and that all of his or her actions are mine. Absolute power is no longer God's representative but mankind's. This abolishes the Church's political power. There is no need for power other than civil power. As long as the law is obeyed, individuals are free. "Hobbes can be called the founder of liberalism because he elaborated the liberal interpretation of the law."
Locke modifies Hobbes by attributing intrinsic rights to the individual in the state of nature and by limiting the rights of the sovereign, for example, sanctioning civil disobedience for self preservation. Locke points out that the original threat to life in the state of nature is not war but hunger; people's actions caused by hunger can lead to war. The individual in the state of nature is hungry and has the right to gather fruit for self preservation. This right is independent of the consent of others. Since the individual appropriated the fruit from the common domain legitimately, ownership is acquired through the labour of the individual. Property enters the world through labour, and the right to property is prior to the institution of society or political law. Property is natural, not conventional. The relationship of man to nature is defined by labour; man labours in order to own (and hence to survive). I am naturally the legitimate owner of the land I cultivate with my labour. Since tilling the land increases productivity, I add to the common good by appropriating a portion of land (from the common domain) through labour. The author does not...
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