Origins and development of liberal thought

John Locke

The focus on liberty as an essential right of people within the polity has been repeatedly asserted throughout history. These include are the conflicts between the plebeians and patricians in ancient Rome and the struggles of Italian city states against the Papal States. The republics of Florence and Venice had forms of elections, the rule of law, and pursuit of free enterprise through much of the 1400s until domination by outside powers in the 16th century. Other precursors to liberalism include certain aspects of the Magna Carta and medieval Islamic ethics.

The modern ideology of liberalism can be traced back to the humanism which challenged the authority of the established church during the Renaissance, and the Whigs of the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain, whose assertion of their right to choose their king can be seen as a precursor to claims of popular sovereignty. However, movements generally labeled as truly "liberal" date from the Enlightenment, particularly the Whig party in Britain, the philosophes in France, and the movement towards self-government in colonial America. These movements opposed absolute monarchy, mercantilism, and various kinds of religious orthodoxy and clericalism. They were also the first to formulate the concepts of individual rights under the rule of law, as well as the importance of self-government through elected representatives.

The definitive break with the past was the conception that free individuals could form the foundation for a stable society. This idea is generally dated from the work of John Locke (1632-1704), whose Two Treatises on Government established two fundamental liberal ideas: economic liberty, meaning the right to have and use property, and intellectual liberty, including freedom of conscience, which he expounded in A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Locke developed further the earlier idea of natural rights, which he saw as "life, liberty and property". His "natural rights theory" was the distant forerunner of the modern conception of human rights. However, to Locke, property was more important than the right to participate in government and public decision-making: he did not endorse democracy, because he feared that giving power to the people would erode the sanctity of private property. Nevertheless, the idea of natural rights played a key role in providing the ideological justification for the American revolution and the French revolution.

The late French enlightenment saw two figures who would have tremendous influence on later liberal thought: Voltaire who argued that the French should adopt constitutional monarchy, and disestablish the Second Estate, and Rousseau who argued for a natural freedom for mankind. Both argued, in different forms, for changes in political and social arrangements based around the idea that society can restrain a natural human liberty, but not obliterate its nature. For Voltaire the concept was more intellectual, for Rousseau, it was related to intrinsic natural rights. Rousseau also argued the importance of a concept that appears repeatedly in the history of liberal thought, namely, the social contract. He rooted this in the nature of the individual and asserted that each person knows their own interest best. His assertion that man is born free, but that education was sufficient to restrain him within society, rocked the monarchical society of his age.

Another group of thinkers whose work would become considered part of liberalism are those associated with the "Scottish Enlightenment", including the writers David Hume and Adam Smith, and the German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Adam Smith

The Scotsman Adam Smith (1723–1790) is the most famous of the economic liberal thinkers. He formulated the theory that individuals could structure both moral and economic life without direction from the state, and that nations would be strongest when their citizens were free to follow their own initiative. He advocated an end to feudal and mercantile regulations, to state-granted monopolies and patents, and he promulgated "laissez-faire" government. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, he developed a theory of motivation that tried to reconcile human self-interest and an unregulated social order. In The Wealth of Nations, 1776, he argued that the market, under certain conditions, would naturally regulate itself and would produce more than the heavily restricted markets that were the norm at the time. He assigned to government the role of taking on tasks which could not be entrusted to the profit motive, such as preventing individuals from using force or fraud to disrupt competition, trade, or production.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant’s most important contributions to liberal thinking are in the realm of ethics, particularly his assertion of the categorical imperative.

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams would be instrumental in persuading their fellow Americans to revolt in the name of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, echoing Locke, but with one important change (opposed by Alexander Hamilton). Jefferson replaced Locke's word "property" by "the pursuit of happiness". The "American Experiment" would be in favor of democratic government and individual liberty. James Madison was prominent among the next generation of political theorists in America, arguing that in a republic self-government depended on setting "interest against interest", thus providing protection for the rights of minorities, particularly economic minorities. The American constitution instituted a system of checks and balances: federal government balanced against states' rights; executive, legislative, and judicial branches; and a bicameral legislature. The goal was to insure liberty by preventing the concentration of power in the hands of any one man. Standing armies were held in suspicion, and the belief was that the militia would be enough for defense, along with a navy maintained by the government for the purpose of trade.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

The French Revolution overthrew monarch, aristocratic social order, and an established Roman Catholic Church And would go farther than the American Revolution in establishing liberal ideals with such policies as universal male suffrage, national citizenship, and a far reaching "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen", paralleling the American Bill of Rights. One of the side-effects of Napoleon's military campaigns was to carry these ideas throughout Europe.

The examples of United States and France were followed in many other countries. The usurpation of the Spanish monarchy by Napoleon's forces in 1808 led to autonomist and independence movements across Latin America, which often turned to liberal ideas as alternatives to the monarchical-clerical corporatism of the colonial era. Movements such as that led by Simón Bolívar in the Andean countries aspired to constitutional government, individual rights, and free trade. The struggle between liberals and corporatist conservatives continued for the rest of the century in Latin America, with anti-clerical liberals like Benito Juárez of Mexico attacking the traditional role of the Roman Catholic Church.

The transition to liberal society in Europe sometimes came through revolutionaryor secessionist violence, and there were repeated explicitly liberal revolutions and revolts throughout Europe in the first half of the 19th century. However, in Britain and many other nations, the process was driven more by politics than revolution, even if the process was not entirely tranquil. The anti-clerical violence during the French Revolution was seen by opponents at the time, and for most of the 19th century, as explicitly liberal in origin. At the same time many French liberals too were victim of the Jacobin terror.

With the coming of romanticism, liberal notions moved from being proposals for reform of existing governments, to demands for change. The American Revolution and the French Revolution would add "democracy" to the list of values which liberal thought promoted. The idea, that the people were sovereign, and capable of making all necessary laws and enforcing them, went beyond the conceptions of the Enlightenment. Instead of merely asserting the rights of individuals within the state, all of the state's powers were derived from the nature of man (natural law), given by God (supernatural law), or by contract ("the just consent of the governed".) This made compromise with previously autocratic orders far less likely, and the resulting violence was justified, in the minds of monarchists, to restore order.

The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Gradually, the liberal tradition introduced the idea that voluntary consent and voluntary agreement were the basis for legitimate government and law. This view was further advanced by Rousseau with his notion of a social contract.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1001