This is the first of a three-part series looking at the philosophy behind the concept of liberalism and the history that gave rise to it. The series is based on a section of my recently completed MPhil project.*
Michael Freeden, a British academic and expert on ideology, describes the origins of liberalism thus: “Liberalism began, broadly speaking, as a movement to release people from the social and political shackles that constrained and frequently exploited them.”
Liberalism emerged from the political, social and intellectual currents that had their origins in the sixteenth century, which challenged established ideas of religion, of social order and hierarchy and of ideas. These were the European Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism, the Enlightenment and the growth of science and rationalism, and the economic transformation associated with seaborne trade and the beginnings of industrialisation.
Drawing on the ferment created by the Reformation and the theological work of such figures as Martin Luther, appeals to freedom of individual conscience were increasingly heard.
The renowned seventeenth century poet, John Milton, protested censorship and promoted the free flow of religious ideas in his work Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
It was also the time of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, who reflected on the brutal nature of life and the necessity of a strong sovereign to make a functioning society possible, and John Locke, whose writings called for religious tolerance and liberty, and who examined the nature and legitimacy of state power and the corresponding institutional relationships. As Christopher Dawson wrote in his 1954 essay “The Historic Origins of Liberalism”: “There grew up by the end of the seventeenth century a common tradition of liberal thought to which the partisans of a new social order could appeal in their struggle with authority.”
This would be followed in the eighteenth century by the thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau on questions of the moral corrosion of human nature through misdirected political and social structures and how they could be remedied through a social contract that would secure freedom for all, as well as levelling the inequalities that had emerged. The Baron de Montesquieu later advocated the protection of liberty through the application of enlightened laws and the separation of powers.
In the English-speaking world, Thomas Paine articulated thinking about governance, rights and citizenship, and how political systems might be organised to excise tyranny. Abusive government, he wrote, produced pathologies recognisable to societies which were ungoverned: “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
These ideas – in the context of contemporaneous political and socio-economic developments and their associated grievances – were highly influential in the American and French Revolutions.
The history sketched out here, and the thinkers who contributed to it, is far from comprehensive and should not suggest that the ideas touched on constitute a coherent body of thought. Rather, it embodies a number of important themes that would be recognisable as components of liberalism: liberty, the centrality of the individual, restraints on power. This might be termed the precursors to liberalism, or “proto-liberalism”[1]
Interestingly, at this time liberalism as a political descriptor did not exist. As a word, it implied generous and enlightened. The word was employed in France in the 1790s in reference to a defence of the French Revolution, while rejecting its excesses – according to one account, it “meant supporting the rule of law and civil equality, constitutional and representative government, and a number of rights, primary among which were freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Beyond that, what liberal principles meant was somewhat vague and debatable.”
Liberal as a term denoting a distinct type of political thought appears first to have been employed in Spain in 1810, in reference to the posture taken by the Cortes of Cadiz, a legislative body that claimed sovereignty over the Spanish Empire in the wake of the invasion by France and the abdication of the king.
In the 19th century, the idea of liberalism lived in the shadow of the French Revolution. While supporting its (nominal) objectives, liberals were wary of the damaging forces it had unleashed. Thus, while committed to a new type of political order – even a new type of society – their view was to bring this about in an orderly manner with respect to both means and ends, drawing on the boundless possibilities of science and rational thought.
In the words of Alan Kahan: “This Utopia was only to be attained by measured reform. Liberals were sustained on their long march by a great faith in progress, although their faith was tempered by experience of past revolutions and fear of future ones. Liberals’ fear of despotism or anarchy alternated with confidence in rational progress in shaping their attitudes towards the future.”
In this period, liberalism came to be a serious political factor in Europe and in European offshoot societies. In the 19th century, liberalism adapted and responded to the conditions of the societies in which its adherents found themselves. In Britain, it was marked by concerns around or prompted by trade, commerce and industrialisation; in France, by thinking around politics and constitutionalism; and in Germany, by intellectual reflection.
*The second of this three-part series will be published next Monday.
[Image: From Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830), The Louvre]
[1] Michael Freeden and Marc Stears write: “Liberalism came decisively into its own in the course of the nineteenth century, both as a humanist creed and in institutional form as a political party capable of capturing state power. But its origins as a way of thinking about individuals in society emanate from preceding and diverse ideational sources that gradually merged to form a strong and influential current. We might then speak of proto-liberalisms, each of which supplied their particular themes, such as the early-modern resistance to tyranny and absolutism and to specific doctrines such as the divine right of kings, which opened up a path to constitutional and restricted government. These were followed by seventeenth century natural rights theories that emphasized voluntarism, contract, and the inviolability of agency and its prerequisites as the bases for organized society. In its most celebrated form in the American revolution, this early liberalism was also clearly accompanied by a significant commitment to social equality, the strong notion that all individuals (or, more specifically, all individuals of particular races and genders) were equal in standing to one another and were deserving of no higher or lower respect as a result of their class or heritage. Liberalism hence became a doctrine that focused on the emancipation of individuals, and that also percolated into many other manifestations of radicalism—utilitarian, anarchist, and Marxist—in addition to the specific theories of the individual with which it was directly associated (Freeden and Stears, 2013).”