Liberty and Self in the political argument of republicanism, liberalism and postmodernism

415 Pages·2014·16.44 MB·English

Liberty and Self in the political argument of republicanism, liberalism
and postmodernism
Duncan Mackenzie Ivison
Presented for the degree of PhD
Government Department
London School of Economics and Political Science
April 1993.
UMI Number: U062724
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Abstract:
This thesis examines the relationship between the concepts of liberty and self in three
different contexts - republicanism, liberalism, and post-modernism - all of which are
products of particular historical traditions, and which present themselves as alternative
'languages' and practices in political argument today. I attempt to delineate the relation
between the self and the concept of liberty within which it operates in each context, and
more generally, questions concerning the relationship between personality and polity. The
tendency of much recent historical and analytical scholarship when looking at these
issues, has been to emphasize the radical differences between the traditions and their
conceptual foundations, especially between republicanism and liberalism. Without
minimizing the obvious differences, I have sought rather in this thesis to emphasize some
important similarities in the way each approaches the issues of agency, liberty, and the
role and justification of social arrangements. This entails a distinctive reading of some
aspects in the history of the development of republican and liberal political argument,
particularly in John Locke. An important theme here is the tension between assumptions of
natural liberty and autonomy, and the role of the community and government in
constructing, fostering, and disciplining the very autonomy that is presupposed. Arguing
that the differing accounts of the relation between liberty and self are, in important ways,
constitutive of the debate between 'communitarians' and 'proceduralists', I turn to
contemporary Rawlsian liberal political theory to see if we can't stand back from this
conventional way of looking at the problem and re-think the relations. [Towards this end I
make some remarks on the relation between the history of political thought and (so-
called) 'analytical' political theory.] I argue that liberal political theory must be
'perfectionist', though not in the way that communitarians argue, and not in the way that
liberals fear. Indeed it must be so if it is to have any chance for success, though
'perfectionism' is a particularly inappropriate way of talking here, and has been taken up
too easily and uncritically in the literature. Civic republican practices have something to
teach us in this context, though not simply the way they respect the 'negative liberty' of
individuals within a scheme of mutually enforcing rights and duties. This leads me in
part, to consider how liberalism tries to make transparent elements of not only state
coercion, but institutional, social, and non-juridical forms of power which work on, or
through, citizens of modem democracies, and how these power relations manifest
themselves in modem concepts of liberty, and conceptions of the self. Finally, I consider
some aspects of the work of Michel Foucault, particularly a series of lectures and papers he
gave on liberalism and 'neo-liberalism' to see if he offers a vantage point (if anything)
from which to evaluate our conventional ways of talking about, and acting on, our concepts
of liberty and self.
Ackno wle dgements
It was Charles Taylor and James Tully who first inspired and
encouraged me to carry on in political theory, and (for better or worse),
I am indebted to them for it. James Tully has been of particular help:
always interested and supportive, he has remained an important
influence ever since I left Montreal. At the LSE my greatest debt has
been to John Charvet. He has supervised me from the beginning, and
his careful, patient, and meticulous readings and supervisions have
never been less than excellent. Brian Barry has cast a critical eye and
ear to various drafts and presentations, and gave me the opportunity
to expound on my vague formulations in his seminars, with great
patience and generosity. I am grateful to he and Anni Parker for their
many kindnesses. Janet Coleman was an enthusiastic discussant, and
patient listener, when I was struggling to find my way. I am also
greatly indebted to all my fellow graduate students, who endured my
seminar ramblings and inchoate papers with good humour and sharp,
critical acumen. I am especially grateful to Russell Bentley, Robert
Dickinson (who also provided superb last minute help), Matt
Matravers, Tim Stainton, and James Willson, for reading, or
discussing with me, most of what is here: I always learned from them.
I would like to acknowledge how much I am indebted to various
presentations I have heard, or discussions I have had, in the course of
writing this thesis, with Richard Aschraft, John Dunn, Stephen
Mulhall, Pasquale Pasquino. Richard Rorty, and Richard Tuck. Robert
Dickinson, Tim Stainton, Brendan and Caroline O'Duffy, Dave
Powell, Ashley Taggart, and Paula Grasdal, deserve special mention,
for all the good times and good friendship. Diana Irving literally saved
me, and though she came in near the end, has made it all seem
worthwhile. It would not have been possible without her. My greatest
debt is to my mother and father (and Deb and Rob too), and not only
for all the usual reasons. Their contribution has been such that I find
it hard to express just how much they have been part of these past few
years, even though I've been on the other side of the ocean. The thesis
is dedicated to them, with love.
Whatever is of worth herein is almost entirely due to all these good
people.
Table of Contents
Preface...........................................................................................i
Part 1 (Ad fontes)...................................................................6
Introduction..................................................................................7
Chapter 1: Ciceronian Themes..................................................20
1.0 Introduction
1.1 A system of libertas.
1.2 Ad exterioribus ad interior a
1.3 What am I now?
1.4 To stylize a freedom
Chapter 2: Humanism's change of heart.................................59
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Forms of Ciceronianism
2.2 Change of heart: Christian Humanism and the self
Chapter 3: Machiavelli and Liberty..........................................89
3.0 Introduction
3.1 A Machiavellian world-picture
3.2 Moral personality and virtuous action
3.3 Machiavelli and modernity
Chapter 4: Liberty and virtue.....................................................127
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Virtuous structures: Rome, Athens, or Jerusalem?
4.2 The juridical
4.3 John Locke, republicanism, and the juridical mode of government
Chapter 5: John Locke and the government of men............197
5.0 Juris-prudence
5.1 Foundations
5.2 Be not conformed...
5.3 Civic liberalism
Interlude..........................................................................................248
Part 2.................................................................................................261
Chapter 6: Michel Foucault: Early and
late modern arts of government.........................262
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Anxious questions and the enlightenment
6.2 Foucault on power - 1
6.3 Foucault on power - II
6.4 Liberal discipline
Chapter 7: Liberal conduct............................................................319
7.0 Introduction
7.1 Natural foundations
7.2 The personal is political?
7.3 Liberal circumstances
7.4 Perfecting liberal autonomy
Conclusion........................................................................................365
Bibliography.....................................................................................381
The passage from the state of nature to the dvil state produces a truly remarkable
change in the individual. It substitutes justice for instinct in his behaviour, and gives
his actions a moral basis which formerly was lacking/
Jean Jacques Rousseau, (The Social Contract).
1 don't believe in the old dirges about decadence, the lack of good writers, the sterility
of thought, the bleak and foreboding horizon ahead of us. I believe, on the contrary,
that our problem is one of overabundance; not that we are suffering from an emptiness,
but that we lack adequate means to think all that is happening/
Michel Foucault, (1980).
Preface
In the last paragraphs of his speech to the Athenee Royal in 1819,
Benjamin Constant, after having spent the bulk of his time carefully
distinguishing between the liberty of the ancients' and the 'liberty of
the moderns', a distinction which would become a horizon (if not a
spectre) hovering over the political theory of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, moved to summarize his argument:
Therefore, Sirs, far from renouncing either of the two sorts of freedom which I have
described to you, it is necessary, as I have shown, to learn to combine the two
together...The work of the legislator is not complete when he has simply brought peace
to the people. Even when the people are satisfied, there is much left to do. Institutions
must achieve the moral education of the citizens. By respecting their individual
rights, securing their independence, refraining from troubling their work, they must
nevertheless consecrate their influence over public affairs, call them to contribute by
their votes to the exercise of power, grant them a right of control and supervision by
expressing their opinions; and by forming them through practices for these elevated
functions, give them both the desire and the right to discharge these.1
For the most part, we have concentrated on Constant's distinctions
when trying to understand our own concepts and conceptions of
liberty, and this plea for the reconstruction of the two sensitivities - in
the full glare of the modem condition and not in some blinkered
'appeal to an appeal' of an ancient polis - has tended to be ignored, if
not ruled out of the conceptual court. Isaiah Berlin's seminal re­
statement of the main thrust of Constant's speech in his distinction
between 'negative' and 'positive' freedom has nothing of the
sociological edge of Constant's observations, nor does it take up the
ambiguous tension Constant established between the ancient and
modem world-pictures, or even the concern for the juridical
framework of modem liberty.2 Constant's plea was not for an
1 Benjamin Constant, ‘The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the modems*, in B.
Fontana ed. Benjamin Constant: The Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, 1988,
pp. 309-328, at p. 328.
2 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, 1969. As is well known, it
has been subject to a vast critical literature: see for example, John Gray, ‘On negative and
positive liberty’, Political Studies, 28,1980, pp. 507-26; Charles Taylor, ‘What’s wrong
with negative liberty’, in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2,
Cambridge University Press, 1985; Gerard MacCallum, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’,
The Philosophical Review, 76,1967,312-34. On the importance of constitutional issues for
Constant, especially the structure of representative government, see Pasquale Pasquino,
‘Emmanuel Sieyes, Benjamin Constant et le ‘Gouvemement des Modemes’, Revue Francaise
abjuration of government in favour of the unchallengeable primacy of
individual right, or the endless pursuit of private interest, but rather to
understand the nature of the times, and the need for greater respect for
'customs...affections [and] the independence of individuals', i.e. for a
new 'art of government' suited to the 'progress of civilization';
'[government's] must handle all these issues with a lighter and more
prudent hand'.3 But it would be too harsh to say that, strictly speaking,
Berlin got anything wrong in his defence of the relation between
pluralism and negative liberty, for there is no doubt that he too caught
a significant sense of Vesprit de Vage, though one we might sense that
is now beginning to pass, or at least mutate into something quite
different.4
However it is not my goal here, nor will it be in the pages that follow,
to pursue the debate over the concept of liberty in terms of choosing
one concept over another, nor will I try to isolate some linguistically
pristine formulation which answers to its 'real' value-free status.5
Rather, my interest lies in situating the concept of liberty in three
specific forms of political argument - republicanism, liberalism, and
postmodernism - all of which are elements of our contemporary
discourse as a whole, though each providing a distinct approach and
purchase on that discourse from different historical and analytical
vantage points.6 My other interest lies in the relation between
conceptions of liberty and conceptions of self, which as Berlin (and
de Science Politique, 37,1987,214-22.
3 Constant 1988, pp. 324, 327; see B. Fontana’s helpful ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-42.
4 Though Berlin saw fit to make certain adjustments to his claims in different contexts; the
1969 edition speaks of the dangers of negative liberty fostering ‘great and lasting social evils’
such as ‘economic individualism and unrestrained capitalist competition’, though in the end
these dangers were always less pressing than those he identified with positive liberty (pp. xlv-
xlvi).
5 For that, see for example, Felix Oppenheim, Political Concepts: A Reconstruction, Oxford,
Basil Blackwell, 1981; cf. Hillel Steiner, ‘Individual Liberty’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 1974/5. See the essays in David Miller ed., Liberty, Oxford University Press, 1991.
6 Cf. Donald R. Kelley, ‘The Private Life of Liberty’, in J. Klaits M. Haltzel (eds.),
LibertyILiberte: The American and French Experiences, Baltimore and London, The Woodrow
Wilson Centre Press/ Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991,11-20: ‘true “enlightenment”
needs memory as well as reason, and “liberty” is serious and complicated enough to deserve
critical historical examination as well as political commemoration’ (p. 19).