***** Quentin Skinner, "The Paradoxes of Political Liberty," the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at Harvard University, October 24 and 25, 1984
...Within the classical republican tradition, the discussion of political liberty was generally embedded in an analysis of what it means to speak of living in a 'free state'. This approach was largely derived from Roman moral philosophy, and especially from those writers whose greatest admiration had been reserved for the doomed Roman republic: Livy, Sallust, and above all Cicero. Within modern political theory, their line of argument was first taken up in Renaissance Italy as a means of defending the traditional liberties of the city-republics against the rising tyranny of the _signori_ and the secular powers of the Church. Many theorists espoused the republican cause at this formative stage in its development, but perhaps the greatest among those who did so was Machiavelli in his _Discorsi_ on the first ten books of Livy's History of Rome. Later we find a similar defence of 'free states' being mounted -- with acknowledgements to Machiavelli's influence -- by James Harrington, John Milton, and other English republicans as a means of challenging the alleged despotism of the Stuarts in the middle years of the seventeenth century. Still later, we find something of the same outlook -- again owing much to Machiavelli's inspiration -- among the opponents of absolutism in eighteenth-century France, above all in Montesquieu's account of republican virtue in _De L'esprit des Lois_.
By this time, however, the ideals of classical republicanism had largely been swallowed up by the rising tide of contractarian political thought. If we wish to investigate the heyday of classical republicanism, accordingly, we need to turn back to the period before the concept of individual rights attained that hegemony which it has never subsequently lost. This means turning back to the moral and political philosophy of the Renaissance, as well as to the Roman republican writers on whom the Renaissance theorists placed such overwhelming weight. It is from these sources, therefore, that I shall mainly draw my picture of the republican idea of liberty, and it is from Machiavelli's _Discorsi_ -- perhaps the most compelling presentation of the case -- that I shall mainly cite....
I have said that the classical republicans were mainly concerned to celebrate what Nedham, in a resounding title, called the excellency of a free state. It will be best to begin, therefore, by asking what they had in mind when they predicated liberty of entire communities. To grasp the answer, we need only recall that these writers take the metaphor of the body politic as seriously as possible, A political body, no less than a natural one, is said to be at liberty if and only if it is not subject to external constraint. Like a free person, a free state is one that is able to act according to its own will, in pursuit of its own chosen ends. It is a community, that is, in which the will of the citizens, the general will of the body-politic, chooses and determines whatever ends are pursued by the community as a whole. As Machiavelli expresses the point at the beginning of his _Discorsi_, free states are those 'which are far from all external servitude, and are able to govern themselves according to their own will'. 34
There are two principal benefits, according to these theorists, which we can only hope to enjoy with any degree of assurance if we live as members of free states. One is civic greatness and wealth....But there is another and even greater gift that free states are alone capable of bequeathing with any confidence to their citizens. This is personal liberty, understood in the ordinary sense to mean that each citizen remains free from any elements of constraint (especially those which arise from personal dependence and servitude) and in consequence remains free to pursue his own chosen ends. As Machiavelli insists in a highly emphatic passage at the start of Book II of the _Discorsi_, it is only 'in lands and provinces which live as free states' that individual citizens can hope 'to live without fear that their patrimony will be taken away from them, knowing not merely that they are born as free citizens and not as slaves, but that they can hope to rise by their abilities to become leaders of their communities'. 36
It is important to add that, by contrast with the Aristotelian assumptions about _eudaimonia_ that pervade scholastic political philosophy, the writers I am considering never suggest that there are certain specific goals we need to realise in order to count as being fully or truly in possession of our liberty. Rather they emphasise that different classes of people will always have varying dispositions, and will in consequence value their liberty as the means to attain varying ends, As Machiavelli explains, some people place a high value on the pursuit of honour, glory, and power: 'they will want their liberty in order to be able to dominate others'. 37 But other people merely want to be left to their own devices, free to pursue their own family and professional lives: 'they want liberty in order to be able to live in security'. 38 To be free, in short, is simply to be unconstrained from pursuing whatever goals we may happen to set ourselves.
How then can we hope to set up and maintain a free state, thereby preventing our own individual liberty from degenerating into servitude? This is clearly the pivotal question, and by way of answering it the writers I am considering advance the distinctive claim that entitles them to be treated as a separate school of thought. A free state, they argue, must constitutionally speaking be what Livy and Sallust and Cicero had all described and celebrated as a _res publica_.
We need to exercise some care in assessing what this means, however, for it would certainly be an oversimplification to suppose that what they have in mind is necessarily a republic in the modern sense. When the classical republican theorists speak of a _res publica_, what they take themselves to be describing is any set of constitutional arrangements under which it might justifiably be claimed that the _res_ (the government) genuinely reflects the will and promotes the good of the _publica_ (the community as a whole). Whether a _res publica_ has to take the form of a self-governing republic is not therefore an empty definitional question, as modern usage suggests, but rather a matter for earnest enquiry and debate. It is true, however, that most of the writers I have cited remain sceptical about the possibility that an individual or even a governing class could ever hope to remain sufficiently disinterested to equate their own will with the general will, and thereby act to promote the good of the community at all times. So they generally conclude that, if we wish to set up a _res publica_, it will be best to set up a republic as opposed to any kind of principality or monarchical rule.
The central contention of the theory I am examining is thus that a self-governing republic is the only type of regime under which a community can hope to attain greatness at the same time as guaranteeing its citizens their individual liberty. This is Machiavelli's usual view, Harrington's consistent view, and the view that Milton eventually came to accept. 39 But if this is so, we very much need to know how this particular form of government can in practice be established and kept in existence. For it turns out that each one of us has a strong personal interest in understanding how this can best be done.
The writers I am considering all respond, in effect, with a one-word answer. A self-governing republic can only be kept in being, they reply, if its citizens cultivate that crucial quality which Cicero had described as _virtus_, which the Italian theorists later rendered as _virtu_, and which the English republicans translated as civic virtue or public-spiritedness. The term is thus used to denote the range of capacities that each one of us as a citizen most needs to possess: the capacities that enable us willingly to serve the common good, thereby to uphold the freedom of our community, and in consequence to ensure its rise to greatness as well as our own individual liberty.
But what are these capacities? First of all, we need to possess the courage and determination to defend our community against the threat of conquest and enslavement by external enemies. A body-politic, no less than a natural body, which entrusts itself to be defended by someone else is exposing itself gratuitously to the loss of its liberty and even its life. For no one else can be expected to care as much for our own life and liberty as we care ourselves. Once we are conquered, moreover, we shall find ourselves serving the ends of our new masters rather than being able to pursue our own purposes. It follows that a willingness to cultivate the martial virtues, and to place them in the service of our community, must be indispensable to the preservation of our own individual liberty as well as the independence of our native land. 40
We also need to have enough prudence and other civic qualities to play an active and effective role in public life. To allow the political decisions of a body-politic to be determined by the will of anyone other than the entire membership of the body itself is, as in the case of a natural body, to run the gratuitous risk that the behaviour of the body in question will be directed to the attainment not of its own ends, but merely the ends of those who have managed to gain control of it. It follows that, in order to avoid such servitude, and hence to ensure our own individual liberty, we must all cultivate the political virtues and devote ourselves whole-heartedly to a life of public service. 41
This strenuous view of citizenship gives rise to a grave difficulty, however, as the classical republican theorists readily admit. Each of us needs courage to help defend our community and prudence to take part in its government. But no one can be relied on consistently to display these cardinal virtues. On the contrary, as Machiavelli repeatedly emphasises, we are generally reluctant to cultivate the qualities that enable us to serve the common good. Rather we tend to be 'corrupt', a term of art the republican theorists habitually use to denote our natural tendency to ignore the claims of our community as soon as they seem to conflict with the pursuit of our own immediate advantage. 42
To be corrupt, however, is to forget -- or fail to grasp -- something which it is profoundly in our interests to remember: that if we wish to enjoy as much freedom as we can hope to attain within political society, there is good reason for us to act in the first instance as virtuous citizens, placing the common good above the pursuit of any individual or factional ends....And the consequence of our habitual tendency to forget or misunderstand this vital piece of practical reasoning is therefore that we regularly tend to defeat our own purposes. As Machiavelli puts it, we often think we are acting to maximize our own liberty when we are really shouting Long live our own ruin. 43
For the republican writers, accordingly, the deepest question of statecraft is one that recent theorists of liberty have supposed it pointless to ask. Contemporary theories of social freedom, analysing the concept of individual liberty in terms of 'back-ground' rights, have come to rely heavily on the doctrine of the invisible hand. If we all pursue our own enlightened self-interest, we are assured, the outcome will in fact be the greatest good of the community as a whole.44 From the point of view of the republican tradition, however, this is simply another way of describing corruption, the overcoming of which is said to be a necessary condition of maximising our own individual liberty. For the republican writers, accordingly, the deepest and most troubling question still remains: how can naturally self-interested citizens be persuaded to act virtuously, such that they can hope to maximise a freedom which, left to themselves, they will infallibly throw away?...
... Contemporary liberalism, especially in its so-called libertarian form, is in danger of sweeping the public arena bare of any concepts save those of self-interest and individual rights. Moralists who have protested against this impoverishment -- such as Hannah Arendt, and more recently Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre and others 52 -- have generally assumed in turn that the only alternative is to adopt an 'exercise' concept of liberty, or else to seek by some unexplained means to slip back into the womb of the polis. I have tried to show that the dichotomy here -- either a theory of rights or an 'exercise' theory of liberty -- is a false one. The Aristotelian and Thomist assumption that a healthy public life must be founded on a conception of _eudaimonia_ is by no means the only alternative tradition available to us if we wish to recapture a vision of politics based not merely on fair procedures but on common meanings and purposes. It is also open to us to meditate on the potential relevance of a theory which tells us that, if we wish to maximise our own individual liberty, we must cease to put our trust in princes, and instead take charge of the public arena ourselves....
<http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/skinner86.pdf> ***** -- Yoshie
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