liberty
While it possessed important connotations in philosophical and theological discourses, the term liberty (and its frequent cognate, freedom) conveyed primarily social and political overtones in early modern Europe. Liberty formed a central organizing principle around which myriad transformations of communal life occurred, culminating in the program of the French Revolutionaries, who placed the demand for civil and legal freedom at the forefront of their movement.
Early modern Europe inherited several different ideas of liberty that were revised, refined, and sometimes rejected entirely. The ancient republicans of Rome prized liberty as a collective good, which betokened both freedom from foreign domination and the absence of internal oppression in the form of a king. Liberty was thus connected with civic self-rule of a populist (if not quite popular) character. This republican ideal was widely disseminated among, and often endorsed by, early modern thinkers.
Christianity contributed the doctrines of freedom of the will and evangelical liberty that added a personal dimension to human freedom. Created in God's image, humanity possessed a capacity to choose between good and evil and hence to accept or to turn away from the divine will. Of course, the objects between which one chooses are not of equal worth. Rejecting God by preferring one's own desires yields dissatisfaction and unhappiness in one's earthly life as well as the misery of eternal damnation. By contrast, submitting to God properly expresses one's divinely granted freedom; it is the correct use of the will with which human begins have been endowed. At the same time, the possibility of freely renouncing self-will in favor of embracing God's law—in sum, a conversional experience—remains always open up to the very moment of one's death.
Finally, medieval Europe added a legal dimension to liberty that, in a sense, synthesized the public and the private meanings conveyed by republicanism and Christianity respectively. Under the terms of feudal law, the person designated to hold a prerogative or privilege (such as the ability to exercise forms of justice or to collect certain types of revenues) was said to possess "a liberty." Feudal liberty, in this sense, was an exclusive, independent, and nonusurpable right to the application of power over people and property, granted under fixed conditions from a superior who was deemed to be its ultimate source and guarantor. In short, liberty reflected a sphere of authority within which no one could directly intercede or interfere with the exercise of specified rights. Yet it was not wholly private. The possessor of a liberty could protect it from erosion by appeal for assistance to the lord who granted it. Someone who claimed a liberty could also be charged with its misapplication by those subjected to it, and could even be challenged to demonstrate the warrant on the basis of which it was exercised.
Religion
Although these inherited concepts of liberty continued to circulate in early modern Europe, the language of freedom proliferated and diversified in the context of the vast cultural changes that marked the period. Crucial to this development was religion. The Reformation brought not only a challenge in practice to the unity of the Christian Church, but also transformation of important theological categories. Martin Luther (1483–1546) insisted upon the unique presence of God alone in the conscience of believers, with the implication that the faithful Christian is responsible directly and immediately to God. The consequence of this teaching—while perhaps recognized only fleetingly by Luther and his followers—was that salvation did not depend upon submission to the authority of the priesthood or the church. Nor did it fall to the secular power, to whom pertained the control of bodies and behavior, to discipline the souls of subjects. Thus, whether intentionally or not, Luther opened the door to claims of public respect for "liberty of conscience," and eventually freedom of worship.
In the generation after Luther, inferences about freedom of religion were drawn out by reforming thinkers. Sébastien Castellion (1515–1563) published pseudonymously a treatise entitled De Haereticis, an sint Persequendi (1554), in response to John Calvin's (1509–1564) organization of the burning of a fellow Christian theologian for heresy at Geneva. Castellion argued that coercion is an inappropriate tool for effecting a change of religious views since Christian belief must be held with sincere conviction. Hence, clerics and magistrates must refrain from persecution of convinced Christians who cling to doctrines that do not coincide with official teachings. While Castellion does not go so far as to license broad dissemination of heterodox theology, he maintains that a Christian's duties extend to forbearance of the free and honest faith of his fellows even in the face of disagreements of understanding and interpretation.
In the seventeenth century, the theme of religious liberty became more pronounced. For instance, the Levellers in England during the 1640s made freedom to dissent from the established religion a central plank of their political program. Major figures in European philosophy weighed in on the side of freedom of religion. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) claimed a broad application for a right to liberty of thought and belief without inference from a sovereign power's (or a church's) determination of the truth or falsity of one's ideas. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) boldly asserted that all forms of persecution (innocuous as well as harsh) of religious diversity encouraged hypocrisy and eroded social order. An erring conscience, if it be held in good faith, deserves as much protection as a correct one—a principle that Bayle extended even to atheists. John Locke (1632–1704) was unwilling to include atheism and other religious attitudes that he deemed dangerous to social trust and political obedience, but he, too, proposed liberty of conscience as justified in the case of most Christian (and perhaps some non-Christian) rites. The role of the magistrate, according to Locke, should be confined to the maintenance of public tranquillity and the defense of individual rights, rather than the care of the soul.
Pragmatic as well as principled considerations led to the acceptance of some measure of freedom of religion throughout much of Europe over the course of the early modern period. Wars of religion undermined peace and sapped public enthusiasm for persecution. The free practice of differing confessions (usually limited to Christianity, and sometimes only to reformed Christianity) became an enshrined feature of many European states by the late eighteenth century. Where this did not occur (with certain exceptions, such as in Spain and parts of the Italian peninsula), it posed a continuing source of conflict into later times, as Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) predicted it would in his Politica Methodice Digesta (1603; 3rd ed., 1614). Thus, freedom of religion constituted one of the main changes sought in France during the Revolution, as expressed in the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen."
Republicanism and Liberalism
The evolving acceptance of liberty of confession paralleled changes in other European cultural, social, and political practices and attitudes. The invention of the printing press and movable type immeasurably enhanced the ability of individuals to disseminate their ideas and for a larger public to have access to the written word. Demands were heard for freedom of the press (literally and figuratively) from censorship by clerical and secular authorities alike.
Of course, the tradition of republican liberty, inspired by the Romans, had not disappeared from the intellectual landscape. From Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) and the more conventional humanists of Renaissance Italy through the thinkers and practitioners of Dutch republicanism like Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) to advocates of republican rule in England such as James Harrington (1611–1677) and Algernon Sidney (1623–1683), the praise of liberty as a distinctive feature of republican government was voiced. In the cities of Italy and of Holland, commercial vitality and strong civic loyalty, not to mention considerations of scale, rendered collective self-government a feasible option. Political practice could approach, even if never quite attain, the heights of theory.
In larger territorial states, such communally based republican liberty resonated less clearly. Indeed, republicans who spoke of their version of liberty too loudly found themselves at odds with authorities, hence Sidney's execution in England for espousal of and action upon his republican proclivities. Political liberty in more geographically extensive regimes with monarchic institutions tended to be conceived in terms of individual freedom rather than civic populism. Hence, it is at this time and place that we locate the origins of the doctrines that came to be labeled liberalism.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) is generally identified as the most important direct antecedent of the modern individualist theory of liberty. In his Leviathan (1651), Hobbes ascribes to all human beings natural liberty (as well as equality) on the basis of which they are licensed to undertake whatever actions are necessary in order to preserve themselves from their fellow creatures. Hobbes believed that the exercise of such natural liberty logically leads to unceasing conflict and unremitting fear, so long as no single sovereign ruler exists to maintain peace. The exchange of chaotic natural freedom for government-imposed order requires renunciation of all freedoms that humans possess by nature (except, of course, for the sake of self-preservation itself) and voluntary submission to any dictate imposed by the sovereign. Yet, even under the terms of Hobbes's absolute sovereignty, the subject is deemed to remain at liberty to choose for himself concerning any and all matters about which the ruler has not explicitly legislated.
Locke begins his mature political theory in the Second Treatise of Government (1690) with the postulation of the divinely granted liberty of all individuals, understood in terms of the absolute right to preserve one's life and to claim the goods one requires for survival. Arguing against the patriarchal doctrine of Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), Locke insists that no natural basis—neither paternity nor descent—justifies the submission of one man to another. In contrast with Hobbes, Locke maintains that the condition of liberty does not represent a state of war, but instead can be maintained tranquilly because human beings are deemed sufficiently rational that they can and do generally constrain their free action under the terms of the laws of nature. Hence, should people choose to enter into formal bonds of civil society and to authorize a government in order to avoid the "inconveniences" and inefficiency of the precivil world, the only rulership worthy of consent is that which strictly upholds and protects the liberty possessed by nature. According to Locke, any government that systematically denies to its subjects the exercise of their God-given liberty (as Hobbes's sovereign would do) is tyrannical and cannot expect obedience.
While Hobbesian and Lockean lines of thought persisted into the eighteenth century alongside republican doctrines, occasional attempts were made to transcend, or at any rate to synthesize, the lessons of republicanism and nascent liberalism concerning liberty. The writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) afford an illustration of this. On the one hand, Rousseau held that Hobbes and Locke each captured an important facet of human liberty. Hobbes realized that the only way to create a truly sovereign authority—one capable of commanding the obedience of those subject to it—was the renunciation of all the liberty that one enjoyed by nature. Locke recognized that the sole reason any free person would consent to enter into a formalized social arrangement would be to protect his liberty. Hence, Rousseau concludes, the surrender of one's natural liberty must be matched by the return to each person of an amount of civil liberty (which he terms "moral liberty") that is greater than what has been given up. In other words, in a properly organized political system, every citizen enjoys more freedom than if he had remained in a precivil condition with his natural liberty intact.
From this marriage of Hobbesian and Lockean conceptions of liberty issues a set of republican conclusions. For Rousseau, sovereignty cannot be exercised by any authority external to the body of citizens whose liberty is at stake. Hence, no matter what constitutional form of government is appointed—and he contends that kingship, aristocracy, and democracy may each be appropriate, depending on the scale of the territory to be governed—it remains only the executive of the general will of the community. Freedom reposes strictly and exclusively in the communal order in which the moral liberty of each person assumes the equal moral liberty of every person, guaranteed under the terms of the law and protected by the magistrates. Hence, Rousseau's free state is guided by the collective determinations of the people about how they wish to live—a clear statement of a system of popular sovereignty.
Natural Liberty
The concept of natural liberty is also one that came to the fore in the economic doctrines of the eighteenth century. Adam Smith (1723–1790) founded his principal doctrines upon the notion of natural liberty, by which he meant simply that if every person acts freely as he sees fit in his own interests, then the welfare of the whole society will be served best. For Smith, the system of natural liberty constitutes a sort of automatic or homeostatic mechanism of self-adjustment (which he sometimes calls the "invisible hand"), so that any attempt (on the part of government or some other agent) to interfere in its operation will lead to greater inefficiency and hence less total welfare. The sources for Smith's insight about maximized individual liberty, unconstrained by coercive externalities, have been debated. Certainly, the French economic theorists known collectively as the Physiocrats may have played a role in the formulation of this idea, as may have the political theorists whose views have already been surveyed. Smith applied this discovery, however, not only to the operation of the marketplace but to all aspects of society, including its educational, religious, and judicial institutions. He narrowly confines the role of government to those functions consistent with natural liberty: foreign defense, regulation of criminal activity, and provision of "public goods" too expensive for any single segment of the private economy to undertake.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the concept of liberty had pervaded the religious, social, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of European life. Yet it remained a controversial idea for (and against) which people would continue to fight and die. Moreover, the application of principles of freedom remained in many ways incomplete. Slavery had been by no means entirely eradicated from the regions over which European nations exercised control, even if it was largely passé within Europe itself. Women occupied almost exactly the same social, political, and economic position in 1789 as in 1450, and the extent of their personal and group liberty was largely determined by their class status. Despite occasional agitation for universal manhood suffrage, such as occurred during the earliest stages of the English Civil War, the unpropertied also experienced little improvement in their effective freedom between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Finally, the diffusion of ideas and practices of religious liberty was limited almost entirely to Christian sects, although deists and advocates of natural religion seem generally to have been left alone; freedom to worship occupied a far more precarious position for Jews and members of other non-Christian confessions (for example, Turks) who made their way to Europe.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis, 1994.
Locke, John. A Letter concerning Toleration, in Focus. Edited by John P. Horton and Susan Mendus. London, 1991.
——. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge, U.K., 1988.
Luther, Martin, and John Calvin. Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Edited and translated by Harro Höpfl. Cambridge, U.K., 1991.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Basic Political Writings. Edited and translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, 1987.
Secondary Sources
Davis, R. W. The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West. Stanford, 1995.
Fitzgibbons, Athol. Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of The Wealth of Nations. Oxford, 1995.
Laursen, John Christian, and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment. Philadelphia, 1998.
Pelczynski, Zbigniew A., and John Gray, eds. Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy. London, 1984.
Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics. 3 vols. Cambridge, U.K., 2002.
Van Gelderen, Martin, and Quentin Skinner, eds. Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., 2002
—CARY J. NEDERMAN