There are many insights into liberty in this book, a collection of ten essays on the evolution of Liberty over the last two millenia. The title, along with the cover picture of a lighthouse vaguely visible in high seas, suggests that liberty is not automatic and may disappear if not effectively and energetically defended. It is difficult to obtain and easy to lose. In his introduction (summarizing Fears' essay), McLean states that "the idea of liberty received its greatest impetus and universal appeal from Christianity, which breathed life into it by revealing its connection with the providence of God" (p. viii).
A recurrent theme of these essays, all by conservative thinkers, is that the Renaissance, beginning in the 16th century, and later the Enlightenment, beginning in the 17th century, "witnessed the emgergence of philosophies of liberty opposed to those found in antiquity and the Middle Ages" (p. ix). Timothy Fuller uses the phrase "the liberal political tradition" and claims it had its start at this time. The older understanding of liberty "requires men to act in conformance with the traditional, social, political and religious orders, which enable them to serve ends proper to their being," affirming liberty only within the context of authority. McInerny characterizes this type of liberty as "freedom to" pursue virtuous behavior. The newer version, in sharp contrast, was understood as "freedom from" any external restrain to one's own wishes. It was no longer important what such freedom would be used for, since that was strictly up to each individual. The pioneers of this newer understanding were Bacon, Hobbes and Locke in England, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau in France, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and Paine in America and Leibniz and Kant in Germany (Runes p. 92). The conservative claim is that this newer understanding of liberty is equivalent to relativism and is unsustainable. It has, they claim, led to 20th century totalitarianism, socialism, welfare statism and modern "liberalism."
In his essay Antiquity: The Example of Rome, J. Rufus Fears summarizes the Roman experiment with liberty. He recalls that from its founding in 763 B.C., Rome remained a monarchy for 254 years until 509 B.C., when L. Junius Brutus, the father of Roman Liberty, "rallied the Roman people to the battle standard to Liberty. In an act of revolutionary violence, the Roman People declared their independence, their republic, and their Liberty, dissolving those political bonds which had connected them to their lawful monarch" (p. 2). Thus began the age of Libertas Populi Romani - the Liberty of the Roman People. The achievements of the Roman Republic were many, including unchallenged military supremacy and unparalleled material affluence.
However, by the year 54 B.C., the defenders of this original republican form of Liberty were up against a serious challenge. These traditionalists included M. Junius Brutus, a descendant of the founder of the republic and director of the Roman mint, M. Porcius Cato and Cassius. Their chief opponents were M. Licinius Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius (surnamed the Great One) and C. Julius Caesar, who had been pushing for a move away from traditional republicanism and toward imperial monarchy. Fears reminds us that this political conflict was merely a symptom of the cancer (of indifference, complacency, narcissism, factionalism, spiritual malaise and unwillingness to sacrifice for the common good) eating away at the Roman republic. Although Brutus killed Caesar in an attempt to end this slide into empire, by 27 B.C., Caesar's son, Caesar Octavius (Augustus, the "santified one"), had consolodated his power and the transition had been accomplished. Although he claimed to have restored the republic, in fact "Rome had become and would remain throughout its history a hereditary military dictatorship" (p. 14).
Fears draws some interesting contrasts between the ideas of liberty that prevailed in the earlier republican and the later imperial eras of Rome. In the former, key concepts were the ideas of self-government and the rule of law, including especially equality before the law. The "Roman People, as a corporate entity, was its own master, free from internal domination by a monarch or by a political faction and free from subjection to any foreign power" (p. 7). They believed that unbridled democracy would lead to the breakdown of authority and leadership and end in dictatorship. Instead they sought a balance between popular sovereignty or the freedom of the people and the guidance from the Senate of those best suited to govern; the rich, the well-born and the able. This tempering of individual freedom was accomplished by the rule of law.
In addition to these republican traits which resonate even today as positive principles of freedom, other aspects of republican Rome grate against our modern sensibilities. Republican Liberty condoned slavery, denied political rights to women and favored a form of merit-based aristocracy. Liberty was not considered an innate faculty of man nor an inalienable right endowed by his creator. They believed that, although all men by nature strive for Liberty, few obtain it or are worthy of it. To them, this justified their conquest of weaker nations, since their own security depended on such conquest and subjection. Freedom of assembly was limited, neither freedom of speech nor of religion was guaranteed and the republic enforced an established civil religion. Finally, the republican government often interfered in the private lives of citizens in an attempt to supervise their morals, attempting (inevitably unsuccessfully) to limit, for example, the amount of money a citizen could spend on personal luxuries" (p. 11).
Fears makes the point often made by communitarian critics of America that republican Roman liberty imposed obligations as well as conferring rights. To be a Roman citizen "was to undertake a burden of political responsibility; to vote, to participate in the assembly of the Roman People, to serve in the army, and (if commensurate with one's ability and status) to hold public office. In short, the Liberty of the individual received its deepest meaning only within the larger context of the community as a whole" (p. 13).
After the transition to imperial monarchy, Caesar Augustus continued to insist throughout his lifetime that he had been the true defender of Liberty, rescuing it from civil war and the tyrannical excesses of a corrupt and self-serving oligarchy (i.e. Brutus, et. al.). The writer Sallust had, along with Livy, witnessed the last generation of the republic. His cynical comment seems appropriate: "only a very few men really want Liberty; what the vast majority want is a just master" (p. 20). To his credit, Caesar Augustus, unlike some later caesars, was "prudent, pragmatic, providential, in his career and character he is living refutation of Lord Acton's dictum that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Augustus improved with age. He died in 14 A.D. after a long and peaceful reign of 45 years, old and full of honors, truly loved and revered by his people, whom he had served so well" (p. 14). If Caesar Augustus refuted Acton's claim, it is apparent that the longer term history of Imperial Rome confirms it!
In his propaganda for the new order, Caesar understandably emphasized the importance of Peace in the new version of Liberty he was promoting. Many aspects of the former Liberty of the Roman People remained in force, including equality before the law, however these were now at the discretion of the princeps, or emperor. Caesar sold his idea in part by claiming this new arrangement released citizens of the obligation to participate in the collective decision-making process, leaving them free to pursue their own desires. As in every other case in history, what seemed like a good exchange at the time turned out in the long run to have been a colossal mistake for the citizens of Rome. It is significant that Augustus was bestowed the title "Father of the Fatherland," signifying the increasingly childlike status of imperial citizens, who were reduced to hoping their master would be just and good. Much later in human history, the German Kaisers (Caesars) would attempt to recreate a similar relationship between the Fatherland State and its citizens.
In Fears' view, the positive contribution of imperial Liberty was to broaden its vision from the "narrow and exclusive" one of the republican era, which applied only to Roman citizens, to one in which "Liberty and Equality came to be commonly regarded as the innate faculty and natural right of all mankind" (p. 25). "In the high tide of the imperial epoch, Roman jurists like Ulpian and Florentinus emphatically stated that slavery is a violation of natural law, for by nature all men are free and equal" (p. 27). Fears notes, however, that it is in the later Christian Fathers that we find the fullest development of this principle. Many of these saw Rome as God's way of preparing the way for the universal kingdom of Christ. Fears states, in his closing sentence, that "it was this more exalted, more inclusive version of Liberty which would be invoked so many centuries later by a bold group of men willing to justify revolution by an appeal to the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the inalienable right of Liberty" (p. 28).
Fears argues that "in a very real sense, the Roman People had abandoned the insecurity of republican Liberty for the security of imperial Liberty. By freely accepting servitude to the emporer, they enjoyed the fruit of material prosperity and found temporal salvation." He continues with the interesting observation that "this intellectual construct was not without its effect upon that most redoubtable Roman citizen, Saint Paul. For Paul, man's response to the divine gifts of Liberty and salvation, indeed, the very means of his receiving them, must be the free acceptance of servitude to God: 'But now being made free from sin and become servants unto God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end, everlasting life'" (p. 25).
In explaining that, for Romans, the goddess of Liberty was deified to form (along with other Roman deities, but especially Jupiter, the goddess of Community) the basis for government, Fears makes the interesting point that "the continuity of any government rests ultimately upon such a myth of supernatural character, upon a legitimization beyond military, economic, and socio-political bases of power" (p. 13). This insistence reflects a moral awareness by most people that 'might makes right' is an unacceptible basis of legitimate power.
Rather than blaming the collapse of Rome on too much "luxury and idleness," I'd lay the blame on what Albert Jay Nock termed "Epstean's Law" of human behavior, which states that "Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion" (quoted by Charles Hallberg in his foreword to The Libertarian Theology of Freedom by Rev. Edmund Opitz). Hallberg, after quoting Nock, goes on to say that collectivism, under all its names - socialism, fascism, nazism, communism and increasingly under the name of welfare-state democracy (we could add late Roman republican and imperial Liberty) - derives its support from this law of human behavior. After all, what could be easier than using government to force someone else to pay your bills. It is very tempting to use the power of the State to gain privileges. Hallberg goes on to explain that this is why well-intentioned government programs are abused and fail. It is why democratic governments become dictatorships as the masses vote against private property rights and for "free" services and benefits. On the other hand, it is also the driving force behind the invention of every labor saving device or machine since the invention of the wheel and therefore highly beneficial when directed by a competitive free-market economy based on the right of private property and equality before the law. This law of human nature explains exactly what happened in the later years of the Roman republic. As citizens lost the sense of discipline and appreciation for freedom which characterized the early republic, they increasingly looked to government to provide their wants and needs and increasingly didn't care how that was accomplished.
A similar case of good/bad comes from the desire of people to better the condition of their less-fortunate fellow men. In both cases, the willingness to use the coercive power of government leads to injustice and tyranny. After all, if a man has sufficient wealth (which he has legally earned) to enjoy a measure of luxury and even idleness (if indeed a man of such ability could enjoy idleness), it is difficult to see how this would be detrimental to the community. He would, of course, be paying for the enjoyment of these things, thereby "giving his due" and supporting the economy by paying the fair price for these goods and/or services.
Rome was a perfect example of the dictum that "those who give up their liberty for security deserve (and will eventually have) neither."
The next essay is Medieval: The Grand Synthesis by Ralph McInerny. The author begins by discussing the difference between the modern idea of liberty as being "freedom from" any external constraints (almost regardless of to what end it is to be used) and the ancient and medieval idea of "freedom for" pursuing the proper ends of man. He says "there is a way in which the medieval conception will provide a kind of rationale for the libertarian, but not at the cost of denying that we are free for something" (p. 40).
He makes the point that significant human action is that which is reminiscent of our likeness to God, that is, deliberate and voluntary actions. Two things which render the actions of an individual less than human are ignorance of that individual and coercive violence against that individual. "The glory of the human agent is that, alone among cosmic creatures, he knowingly directs himself to a good. Man's relative autonomy, the fact that he can propose to himself a course of action and then pursue it or not as he wills, sets him apart, gives him mastery and dominion over his life" (p. 42).
Of course, regardless of external constraints, the individual's ability to do this is limited by things like talent, genes, opportunity, etc. The author makes the interesting point that "the Romantic Agony consists in an unquenchable nostalgia for all the things I cannot do or be. If I marry Fifi, I am no longer free not to marry Fifi - or to marry Conchita. I am free to cast a stone or not, but once I have acted I am no longer at the point where I was free to do either. The Romantic kicks against this goad; he does not want any use of freedom to diminish or forclose future possibilities definitively. The Romantic thinks he can always go back to Square One - so there he is, standing at the alter, 60 years old, marrying for the 5th time" (p. 43).
What the author is really concerned about is modern moral relativism, which says each individual is free to decide what is good for himself. This contrasts with the traditional view that there exists an objective good, defined by God, toward which man must struggle. In the older view, "man is not free to choose his end, his good, what is perfective of him. His freedom comes into play when it is a matter of selecting means to realizing this end...one is free to will the end or not to will it; but freedom does not extend to constituting something as the human ultimate end" (p. 45). The ancients described this proper end of man in terms of the virtues, the cardinal virtues being temperance, courage, justice and practical wisdom. They furthermore maintained that "human fulfillment cannot terminally consist of wealth or honors or pleasure or power. Getting such lesser goods into their proper, subservient, place in our lives, the acquisition of the virtues, is the moral task." To this Greek idea of virtue, the medievals adding the organizing principle that the will of God is the pinnacle of these virtues and our ultimate end is to properly respond to it.
The author then provides another way of viewing essentially the same divide, namely the contrast between the medieval view of natural law and the modern view of natural rights. In the older view, which speaks first of duties and only later of rights (required in order to perform those duties), "to be a human person is not to be an isolated, autonomous individual, but a member of a community." Because we grow up in families, in communities, this tradition understandes itself as being grounded "unabashedly in the way things are" (i.e. deriving theory from practice rather than vice versa) In contrast, the natural rights view begins by theorizing "autonomous human units that have needs and desires and imagines them as entering into concert with one another...the motive for such social union is that the individual is better able to achieve his own desires by cooperating with others than on his own...beneath this account, is a kind of calculation: how can I best achieve what I want? If I enter into a social arrangement it will be because I judge this to be in my own best interests." (p. 49).
The author closes the essay with a dire warning. "When pluralism becomes moral relativism, when tolerance is destructive of the society within which tolerance receives its meaning, when personal liberty is taken to be a blank that can be filled with any object whatsoever, we are light-years distant from the sense such terms had for the Founding Fathers" (p. 52) and in grave danger of losing true libery. In McClean's words in his introductory summary of McInerny's essay, "to embrace relativism is to bring about the end of liberty generally and of free society particularly," since "when these claimed rights conflict, force is the only resolution" (p. ix).
But the problem remains; even if we disagree with the relativists and agree that there is an objective moral standard of right and wrong, how can we resolve substantive differences of opinion about the specifics of this moral standard?
However, McInerny leaves it unclear why ongoing disagreement as to the proper ends of man must lead to the loss of freedom, other than his vague reference to tolerance being destructive of the society that granted it. As against the claim that "force is the only resolution," why not fall back on the libertarian solution of granting individuals latitude until and unless it begins to conflict with others' equal latitude? More convincing is M. Stanton Evans' demonstration that Enlightenment values, contrary to their stated intent, actually lead to tyranny. In theory, the reason seems to be that, once a person rejects Christianity, they increasingly tend to view opponents as lacking dignity or rights, that might should and does make right and that morality is merely a social construct. Eventually they fall back into the pagan model of unending struggle among competing groups and the "rightness" and necessity of totalitarian control by whoever can pull it off (hopefully themselves).
The next essay, Sixteenth-Century Search by George B. Martin further considers the differences between the traditional and Renaissance understandings of liberty and also suggests the sources for these newer understandings. Being a student of literature and not a historian or political philosopher, Martin sees the age through the feelings of its authors. Martin opens with the story of his father-in-law, a simple man born in poverty who managed to fashion a well-lived life through thrift, industry and faith. "He had what the old Romans called 'virtu,' the quality of character that overcomes 'fortuna' and enables a man to feel that his life is his own creation." Martin sees the importance of this story in its illustration of self-mastery, societal respect for virtue and a religious belief that requires a reasonable amount of charity but also says that a man should use his God-given abilities to be self-sufficient.
Martin then turns his attention to the first of two crucial and representative figures of the era; William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a conservative who sensed the threat to the established order by the new revolutionary ideas and warned against it. His "primary interest in the history plays is the preservation of authority - as opposed to violence and persuasion - as the primary form of power" (p. 57). Traditional views such as this one were being challenged by the Renaissance idea that man can and should be "liberated from superstitions and unnatural social constraints, which would allow him to recover the lost image of God within himself." These moderns "rejected the idea that liberty was to be used by men to accommodate themselves to a higher order. Rather, liberty allowed individuals to pursue their desires absent objective external measures of rightness or purpose" (from McLean's introduction p. x). Martin cites Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on Man" as representative of the Renaissance spirit of humanistic enthusiasm that everything was within reach of modern man. This apparently benign and optimistic attitude, however, could and did develop in various ways. Erasmus took what was "potentially very radical in Pico's humanism" and "reexpressed it in terms consistent with traditional Christianity" (p. 59). Thomas More and Elyot followed this lead, attempting to use the new humanism to "shore up the old medieval order" (p. 60).
In contrast to this tradition-friendly interpretation of Renassance humanism, another strain developed, which "was as much a reaction against the corruption of the Church as the Reformation was. These humanists railed against the abuses and attacked or ridiculed scholastic theology as violently as did Luther or Calvin. They became, in increasing numbers, what Luther had despised so in Erasmus: religious skeptics. That skepticism, allied with the nominalism that was so much in the air, undercut all notions of universal and natural law. They began to deny the essential dogmas of the Church and the immortality of the soul as superstitions that ill befit an educated and enlightened man" (p. 61). Along this strain developed the not so tradition-friendly ideas of liberty expressed by Rabelais, Mill and Machiavelli, the latter of whom represents "the more permanent and ultimately pervasive expression of this frequently atheistic humanism." Machiavelli's idea of virtue (Roman 'virtu' or Greek 'arete') broke with traditional ideas of cooperative, corporate action ("the organic mutually reciprocal nature of the human community") and seemed (then and now) to advocate "malicious ambition" in leaders and substitute "immoral advantage through ruthless behavior" for liberty in civil society. Machiavelli's ideal man is one "for whom the law of nature is the survival of the strongest and for whom virtue means ruthless strength to overcome the conditions that fortune presents him" (p. 63). Although Shakespeare feared this new type of man, he could see that things were moving in that direction in his time. He believed this was due to the disappearance of the traditional virtue of the people, a common theme in his work.
The other crucial figure was (Anglican) Bishop Richard Hooker, whom Martin credits with authoring the "first major document in the history of conservative thought" (i.e. Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity). Hooker sought to "preserve what he thought Western civilization in general and England in particular had obtained in the way of religious, social and political order (he was one of the last men who could think of such things as being aspects of each other)" (p. 65). His saw his role as using his learning (which was vast) to defend the existing order against newer thinkers wanting to overthrow it. "He was the first thinker of note to understand the nature of Puritanism and its dangers. Calvinism, he recognized, had opened the laws that had traditionally governed man and insured his liberty up to the scrutiny and criticism of the ignorant, with the result that rational discourse about matters of religion and politics was becoming almost impossible. Puritan zeal, religious enthusiasm in the literal sense of the term, born of one's experience with the scriptures, threatened to all but shove reason out as a basis of reconciliation disagreeing but well-meaning men. The absolute confidence the radical Protestant had in his beliefs derived, he believed, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the reading of the Scriptures, would brook no disagreement. 'Reason,' Luther had said, 'is the devil's whore.' To the suggestion that statements in Scripture might be metaphorical, he replied, 'If my God tells me to eat dung, I'll eat dung.'" (pp. 65-66).
Along with Hooker, the Christian humanists of the day (e.g. Erasmus) still viewed liberty as a means for man to fulfill his proper ends, the latter to be understood in light of tradition and religion. "They accepted as paramount the Middle Age's division between authority, which resided with the Church, and power, which resided with the Monarch" (p. 66). Both Luther and Calvin challenged the old thinking by insisting on "the individuality of conscience and the self-determination of the right exercise of liberty" (from McLean's introduction p. x). Perceiving the deep corruption of even the Church (which, until that time, had been assumed to be an effective hedge against corruption of the state), they removed authority from both Church and State and placed it squarely in the individual's experience of the Scriptures (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit), elevating the status of the individual to fully modern heights. One result of instilling this kind of confidence in each man's opinion of the good and right according to Scripture is to "create men who cannot live peacefully together except under conditions of religious freedom or tyranny" (p. 68).
Luther focused on the personal side of reformation, asserting in his treatise 'On Christian Liberty' that his central idea of justification by faith alone excludes neither free will nor good works, both being aspects of a life of worship. He never fully developed the social and political aspects of his ideas. He "admitted the [earlier Middle Ages] idea of Christian liberty and even moved later, under the influence of Melanchton, toward essential agreement with Erasmus" (p. 69) in support of the older order. In contrast, other reformers (Zwingli, then Calvin and the Anabaptists) more fully developed the social and political outworkings of Luther's shift in ultimate authority. Zwingli's desire to apply Scripture to all aspects of life "led him to introduce into Protestant thought the idea of the 'watchman' or 'overseer,' who is to keep the 'mischievous goats under control.' This as a function of the clergy is not in Luther, but it appears as an important aspect of Oecolapadius, Bucer and Calvin, and it leads to the creation of a class of clerics who feel authorized by Scripture and their relationship with Christ to dominate all phases of human society" (p. 69). Calvin developed this idea more fully. For him, God was sovereign, man totally depraved and alienated from God and others. Although God had permitted man freedom in the garden of Eden, man had no freedom after the fall, after which "he was a prisoner of his own conceit, and [his desire for] personal liberty was only an illusion that revealed how ignorant he was of his true condition" (p. 70). God accomplishes his will regardless of what man wants (i.e. Providence), so man may as well learn to accept it.
"If Shakespeare was frightened by the Machiavellians and the implications of Machiavellism, Hooker was frightened by the "Geneva men" (i.e. the Puritans) and the implications of Calvinism" (p. 70). He saw in Calvinist Puritanism a danger to liberty. Like Shakespeare, Hooker had deep trust in English laws and insitutions for preservation of individual liberty and saw this new type of revolutionary scriptural absolutism as a threat to that tradition. "To attempt to organize society along purely biblical lines...was to ignore the role that reason played in the discovery of laws and experience has played in their enactment and maintenance" (p. 71). Although he distinguished between the eternal and unchanging Law of God and positive enacted law, which varies from society to society, he insisted that men must view the latter as the best available reflection of the former (for their particular society) in order to "preserve the continuity and authority that society requires to maintain liberty and develop virtue among its people" (p. 71).
In his conclusion, Martin stresses that "with the exception of a few 'advanced thinkers' like Rabelais, no one thought of liberty as being a good in itself. Although many saw that liberty was necessary to virtue - that it was derived from and obtained through right reason - no one thought a free life was necessarily a good life" (p. 71). Both Shakespeare and Hooker appealed to authority to maintain liberty, the former in the form of familial monarchy and the latter in the form of positive human law. They resisted, respectively, the pure opportunism of Machiavelli and the "inner voice" of the Puritans. Both men "laid the basis from which future conservatives would resist the reformer's radical transformations of society. Liberty, Yes, both men would affirm, but liberty within the context of authority" (p. 72).
In his essay Seventeenth Century: Thomas Hobbes and Emergent Modernity, Timothy Fuller shows us 2 keys ideas developed by Hobbes.
...to be continued