Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Montesquieu 4; Grundlagen d. Liberalismus: Repräsentation - Gewaltenteilung; Paradox d. R.: Zuwachs an staatl. Gewalt, Erosion d. sozialen Gewebes; ind. Freiheit durch Negation d. Kompromisses; Ambivalenz demokr. Gesellschaften; Bourgeois - Bürger?

Kurzinhalt: The modern idea of representation leads naturally to a continuous increase of the state's power over society, because it continuously erodes the intrasocial powers that ensure the independence and solidity of this society.

Textausschnitt: 62c Fully constituted liberalism, which is fully constituted doctrinally only with Montesquieu, is based on two ideas: the idea of representation and the idea of separation of powers. The idea of representation postulates that the only legitimate power is founded on the consent of those subject to power. In such a regime, all powers within civil society born from the spontaneous interplay of economic and social life or from traditions come to seem essentially illegitimate since they are not representative. Hence they are slowly but surely eroded. All legitimate power is concentrated at the summit, in the political institution, in the state which alone represents members of society. The modern idea of representation leads naturally to a continuous increase of the state's power over society, because it continuously erodes the intrasocial powers that ensure the independence and solidity of this society. This is the paradox of representation: representative power tends necessarily to dominate the civil society that it claims to represent. In this sense, those who deplore society's growing dependence on the state are right. (Fs; tblStw: Politik) (notabene)

63a But, simultaneously, because this representative state is divided between majority and opposition, its acts tend no less necessarily to be generally favorable to individual liberty. As I have tried to show, the compromise between the two powers is reached much more easily in the negative mode than in the positive: each power tends to exercise its power by preventing the other from obtaining what it wants. Thus what are sometimes called the citizen's "realms of freedom" inevitably grow. In this sense, those who celebrate the progress of individual liberty, the growing emancipation of individuals, are right. (Fs)

63b Hence there is an essential ambivalence in the internal movements of democratic societies. It leads some people to describe them as totalitarianisms in disguise; others, as the most satisfying societies in human history, where each free and sovereign person uses the talents and satisfies the tastes nature has granted him. Both groups are both wrong and right. The reason is that today we are governed more exclusively by a state that governs us less. Insofar as we are less governed, we are, in a way, living more in a state of nature. And because this state of nature is still not a state of war, but offers us acceptable security and prosperity, we have no motive for leaving this state. We have thus fulfilled the original program of liberalism by reversing the order of the factors. The representative regime initially was the ingenious device making it possible to leave a state of nature that was essentially (Hobbes) if not even necessarily (Locke) unbearable; it became the ingenious device making it possible to live in an essentially satisfying state of nature. This diagnosis can hardly be contested even by those who denounce the benign "totalitarianism" of liberal societies. What makes them indignant about our societies is precisely this state of satisfaction: the quarrels and rebellions, the audacities and subversions, are all absorbed and recuperated by the system, to our general satisfaction. (Fs) (notabene)

63c A slight doubt can still, however, undermine this satisfaction. After all, an artificial or instituted state of nature that is still political is a contradiction in terms. Montesquieu himself discreetly suggested the difficulty when he said of the English that they were "confederates rather than fellow citizens." This alternative can and will be formulated as questions. Is each person primarily an independent member of "civil society" or a subject of the "state," a bourgeois or a citizen, a homo oeconomicus or a homo politicus? Does he belong first to the transnational or worldwide space of the "market" or rather to the territory of the "nation"? He belongs to both, it will be answered. But such an answer signifies that in spite of the reconciliation between the state of nature and the civil state by means of a free regime, we remain radically divided: the dividing line between the natural man and the citizen is now within us. To describe this division, to denounce the misfortune and corruption that it brings about, to seek to overcome it, will be the task of Montesquieu's—and liberalism's—most profound critic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Fs)