Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Benjamin Constant 3; Freiheit der Alten (Teilnahme am Regieren - d. Modernen (Repräsentation, Glück im Privaten); Unschuld d. Alten - Unaufrichtigkeit d. modernen Leidenschaften (Saint-Just);

Kurzinhalt: The ancients found greater satisfaction in their public existence, and fewer in their private life; consequently, when they sacrificed individual to political liberty, they sacrificed less to gain more. Almost all the pleasures of the moderns lie in ...

Textausschnitt: 88b How does Constant present the contrast between the "liberty of the ancients" and the "liberty of the moderns"? Here is his characterization of the former:

In the republics of antiquity, the exiguous scale of the territory meant that each citizen had, politically speaking, a great personal importance. The exercise of the rights of citizenship represented the occupation and, so to speak, the amusement of all. The whole people contributed to the making of the laws, pronounced judgments, decided on war and peace. The share of the individual in national sovereignty was by no means, as it is now, an abstract supposition. The will of each individual had a real influence; the exercise of that will was a vivid and repeated pleasure. It followed from this that the ancients were prepared for the conservation of their political importance, and of their share in the administration of the state, to renounce their private independence. (Fs)

This renunciation was indeed necessary; since to enable a people to enjoy the widest possible political rights, that is that each citizen may have his share in sovereignty, it is necessary to have institutions which maintain equality, prevent the increase of fortunes, proscribe distinctions, and are set in opposition to the influence of wealth, talents and even virtue. Clearly all these institutions limit liberty and endanger individual security.1

88c And here is his characterization of the latter:

The advantage that liberty, as the ancients conceived it, brought people, was actually to belong to the ranks of the rulers; this was a real advantage, a pleasure at the same time flattering and solid. The advantage that liberty brings people amongst the moderns is that of being represented, and of contributing to that representation by one's choice. It is undoubtedly an advantage because it is a safeguard; but the immediate pleasure is less vivid; it does not include any of the enjoyments of power; it is a pleasure of reflection, while that of the ancients was one of action. It is clear that the former is less attractive; one could not exact from men as many sacrifices to win and maintain it. (Fs)
At the same time, these sacrifices would be much more painful: the progress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communication among the peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of individual happiness. To be happy, men need only to be left in perfect independence in all that concerns their occupations, their undertakings, their sphere of activity, their fantasies. (Fs)

The ancients found greater satisfaction in their public existence, and fewer in their private life; consequently, when they sacrificed individual to political liberty, they sacrificed less to gain more. Almost all the pleasures of the moderns lie in their private life. The immense majority, always excluded from power, necessarily take only a very passing interest in their public existence. Consequently, in imitating the ancients, the moderns would sacrifice more to obtain less.1

89a It is clear that Constant is in no way asserting the superiority of modern principles over those of the ancients. He is simply saying that in the ancient city-state, the social and political conditions of human happiness were radically different from what they are in modern states. By refusing to make a value judgment regarding these two versions of human happiness, he necessarily condemns attempts to impose on a given social and moral state any political institutions modeled on a radically different state. Constant is not asserting, as Montesquieu had clearly suggested, that modern liberty is friendlier to man's nature than was ancient liberty, or that ancient liberty is "inhuman," or brutalizes his nature. He is simply maintaining that the application of ancient politics to the modern social state makes men suffer terribly, because it makes them live in contradiction. One cannot put into "action" a political plan based on "reflection" without inflicting unheard-of suffering on individuals. (Fs)

89b Constant's idea of anachronism is extremely weak and extremely strong. It is weak because, if anachronism is the sole failing of ancient politics, nothing proves that this failing must last forever; nothing proves that it will never again become a reasonable politics. What contradicts our social state today will perhaps be adapted to it tomorrow if the social state changes, either spontaneously or thanks to our efforts. But what makes the idea of anachronism particularly strong is less the suggestion of history's irreversibility than the psychological analysis that supports it. The specific grandeur of ancient life rested on moral conditions that, once lost, could not return. They depended on a certain innocence which, by definition, could not be retrieved. (Fs)

The ancients were in the full youth of their moral life, we are in its maturity, perhaps its old age; we are always dragging behind us some sort of afterthought, which is born from experience, and which defeats enthusiasm. The first condition for enthusiasm is not to observe oneself too acutely. Yet we are so afraid of being fools, and above all of looking like fools, that we are always watching ourselves even in our most violent thoughts. The ancients had complete conviction in all matters; we have only a weak and fluctuating conviction about almost everything, to the inadequacy of which we seek in vain to make ourselves blind. (Fs)

The word illusion is to be found in no ancient language, because the word only comes into being when the thing has ceased to exist.1

90a Once man has grown accustomed to observing or reflecting on himself and life, once he has abandoned the habit of action, he can no longer find the ancients' candor. He can become proud, get worked up, even convince himself that he believes in patriotism or virtue. But the moment he sees himself as a "believer," he feels ridiculous and falls back into doubt. The most original and precious element of Constant's analysis of the Revolution and the Empire lies in this exposure of the insincerity of modern passions. This insincerity explains both the extremely cruel character of the Convention's despotism and its ultimate powerlessness: "The most insignificant saint, in the most obscure of villages, successfully resisted the entire national authority arrayed in battle order against him."2 I know of no more dazzling characteristic of this insincerity than Constant's remark on the oratorical style of Saint-Just: "Nothing is more curious to observe than the rhetoric of French demagogues. The most intelligent among them, Saint-Just, made all his speeches in short sentences, calculated to arouse tired minds. Thus while he seemed to suppose the nation capable of the most painful sacrifices, he acknowledged her, by his style, incapable even of paying attention."3 (Fs)