Lecture Note 09: Liberal versus Civic Republicanism (4880 words)

Blueprints for a Free Society

In the 19th century, once science begins to work its engineering magic, and the Industrial
Revolution begins, and peasants start moving from the impoverished farmlands into cities to
work in factories, and scientists creating new theories every day, and radicals are trying to
improve society on the basis of those theories—once that happens, the modern age is no longer
simply the idea in the mind of a Descartes, a Kant, a Rousseau; but a living reality for more and
more people.

• From the point of view of most philosophers, this whole development was incredibly
positive; it was the fulfilment of the hope of the 18th century to create a society ruled not
by suspicion, superstition, tradition, custom, and fear, but rather a society governed by
science, reason, all in the context of individual freedom. England led the way economically,
scientifically, and philosophically.

• The Industrial Revolution, the rise of European imperialism, and Hegel’s theory and German
romanticism led to the 19th century’s great concern: history and progress. After Hegel,
many other thinkers created historical schemes to account for the development of the
modern world. The recognition that the world was rapidly changing created a self-
consciousness about modernity. Romanticism, strong in both Germany and England,
encouraged thinkers to examine the world in the context of grand evolutionary schemes.

• Intellectual thought was greatly influenced by the path breaking scientific discoveries of
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) the naturalist who invented the modern theory of the evolution
of species through natural selection published in On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859). It carried major implications for many of the traditional ideas in
Western culture, including biblical accounts of creation, Christian morality, and the belief in
the uniqueness of human beings. Although Darwin hesitated to draw social conclusions
from his biological theories, other writers quickly began to debate the possible significance
for human social life.

• Many late 19th century authors believed in Social Darwinism, or the theory that individual
human beings and human cultures faced a constant struggle for survival (like animals in the
natural world). Their emphasis on the ‘survival of the fittest’ contributed to new forms of
racism and helped to justify the expansion of European imperialism.

• Four philosophers attempting to chart the long-term political impact of the French
Revolution, made major contributions to political theory by examining the idea of freedom
or liberty. Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) was the first to distinguish ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’
concepts of liberty—hence, civic republicanism and liberalism—arguing that the former is
inapplicable to modern society. Hegel (1770–1831), who both admired and feared the
revolution, attempted to locate the individual in communitarian networks of ordered liberty.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) called attention to role of nonstate voluntary associations
in civil society for his analysis of the conflict between equality and liberty in America. John

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 Stuart Mill (1806–1873) provided the most enduring interpretation of liberal republicanism
deploying a flexible rendition of utilitarianism.

• One more aspect of the French Revolution’s legacy became clear to early 19th century
political thinkers: There are competing blueprints for a free and equal political society, the
two most prominent of which are the liberal republican and civic republican.

o After 1800, the term liberal was used to mean a radical form of republicanism that
maximized individual private liberty and minimized the power and purview of
government. This version was directly connected to capitalism and non-interference in
private property and the markets.

o Civic republican is the name given to the ancient form, formerly just called republican.
Minimally, it held that freedom means freedom to participate in politics or self-rule.

• Essentially, modern liberal republicanism evolved out of ancient civic republicanism.

Ownership of property became the substitute for martial honor. Subsequent civic
republicans tended to emphasize public spiritedness and political action over the freedom
to be left alone to pursue private profits, or liberalism.

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830)

Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss-French political activist and writer on politics and religion.

• The French political thinker Benjamin Constant was the first to argue explicitly that the
liberty of the ancient republics is not the same as the liberty of the modern republics.

o Modern liberty, Constant says, is the right to express one’s opinions, choose professions,
dispose of property, associate with others, and practice religion, plus the right to
exercise some influence on government officials, all subject only to law rather than to
those in power. It is sovereign or politically active “only in appearance.”

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 o Ancient liberty is, by contrast, the direct collective exercise of sovereignty. It was
compatible with complete absence of freedom of opinion, religion, and personal
behavior— the “complete subjection of the individual to authority of the community.”

o Ancient liberty was fit for small slave-holding republics that were martial, requiring
constant participation in politics and substantive virtues on the part of citizens. Modern
liberty is characteristic of large commercial, pacific states, where “commerce replaces
war,” where all citizens work, there are no slaves, and none or few have leisure
(meaning equality rather than aristocracy).

o Rousseau’s ideas of the social contract and ‘general will’ are very similar to the ancient
conception of liberty, except that it is presented through the modern language of
freedom and equality in the Age of Enlightenment.

• According to Constant, “We can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients.” In fact, modern
mass commercial society makes ancient republicanism dangerous. It was the concept of
ancient or positive liberty that was applied, he believed, in the Terror.

The Two Liberties

Liberal Republican Civic Republican

Ancient Political Liberty

Modern Political Liberty (Constant)
(Constant)

Negative: “Freedom From” (Berlin) Positive: “Freedom To” (Berlin)

“Liberalism” “Republicanism”

• What Constant called ‘modern liberty’, Isaiah Berlin (1958) would in the 20th century call,
‘negative’ liberty, meaning, ‘freedom from’ something, or liberty as the absence of obstacles.
Constant’s ‘ancient liberty’ Berlin calls ‘positive’ liberty, that is, ‘freedom to’ do something,
which essentially means self-determination or the ability of the self to determine its own
future or destiny.

o ‘Negative’ liberty is necessary if liberalism is to prevail in a world, and both require a

world where the ‘unity of the Good’—of a single common good—cannot be honored.
There is not one all-encompassing Good in such a world; there are many competing
goods. Such a world requires that we have a pluralistic society, not a community
devoted to the pursuit of one Good.

o Democracy as a political ideal, in particular direct democracy applied in a small

community, can be associated with positive liberty, which means associated with civic

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 republicanism or the ancient notion of liberty. The ancient Greek philosophers had
reservations about democracy as the rule of the mob or by the passions.

We are still today debating the right mix of liberalism (Berlin’s negative liberty) and
republicanism (positive liberty).

F W Hegel (1770–1831)

• Hegel aimed to construct a metaphysics in which freedom was fundamental but ensconced
in reason. He produced a system of the Whole in the grand style of all reality, which for him
is historical and evolutionary. All reality is God, the absolute, pure spirit. But God is evolving,
and human beings, who embody that spirit, must go through historical stages in order to
reach the right perspective for understanding the Whole. Hegel believed the stage of full
development had been reached.

• This movement of spirit continues from our objective consciousness of things to human self-
consciousness. Hegel makes the important claim that human self-consciousness can be
achieved only in relation to another self-consciousness—in being acknowledged by another
human.

• Throughout most of human history, this achievement has been prevented from reaching its
proper point because of rigid inequality; for example, in the ancient world, the relationship
between aristocratic lord and slave or serf prevented this mutual recognition. For Hegel,
human freedom and equality means the end of the master and slave relationship.

• History is, in part, the story of the slave coming to recognize his free will by braving death
and the lord coming to recognize that he must work with the slave on equal footing, i.e.,
with another independent self. They come to realize their combined freedom in
dependence.

• Thus does the ancient world become Christian, in which life is recognized in service, work,
and obedience. It would take another 1,000 years, until the French Revolution, where
equality was proclaimed and the aristocracy abolished, to bring to completion the
unification and mutual respect of lord and slave.

• But Hegel argues that the concept of freedom utilized in the revolution was partial and
incomplete. He viewed the French–English notion of enlightened freedom (i.e., negative
liberty) is faulty. Such an ‘enlightened’ freedom regards all society and nature as nothing but
a limit on its freedom. It leads only to a self without limits that seeks to destroy the other.

• For Hegel, the state is an ethical organism, that whole into which the truly free individual is
integrated with his fellows in a moral community. Such a community has structure, order
and hierarchy.

• Hegel’s immediate political influence was conservative. The individual rationality and
freedom of the Enlightenment is a necessary but incomplete stage of consciousness.
Completion is the inclusion of the free individual in family, in community, and under state
law. The modern constitutional state is the embodiment of reason.

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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, Viscount de Tocqueville was a French diplomat, political scientist, and
historian.

• One other distinctive contributor to civic republicanism was Alexis de Tocqueville, author of
Democracy in America (1835–1840). Tocqueville believed that the French and American
revolutions had shown that equality was the theme of the emerging age, but the Americans
had gone further; to understand the future, it was, therefore, necessary to understand
America.

• Tocqueville found that in America, virtually all traditional European institutions of inequality
were absent. Furthermore, social arrangements and culture were highly egalitarian
compared to Europe. Tocqueville found this equality on the whole admirable, but he also
famously wrote that it raises a danger: the ‘tyranny of the majority’.

• Psychologically, people in a democracy value equality more than liberty. People don’t want
to appear to believe that they are better than others, but they can’t tolerate others
appearing to believe they are better either. This is an enormous force in promoting
conformity.

• Aristocratic institutions defended privilege but it also protected individuality. They

preserved the ability to avoid being controlled by public opinion and the majority will. Those
traditional arrangements also connected people; the aristocrat and peasant had a duty to
abide by traditional mutual obligations.

• Equality and democracy put an end to all that. Democracy is actually isolating and
conformist at the same time. Citizens in a democracy are independent, free, and equal but,
therefore, alone. Such individuals are weak in the face of the overwhelming power of the
majority will and the state.

• Indeed, Tocqueville warns that democracy, however beneficial, threatens to create a new
despotism of a gentle, paternal state and ‘immense protective power’. With fewer places to

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 go for help, citizens will demand that government do for them what feudal and guild
institutions once did. Society will become thinner, tradition will be eliminated, and
connections will be reduced—all to make room for freedom and equality.

• For Tocqueville, Americans seem to have evolved a way of mitigating this danger—through
the ‘art of association’. Lacking hereditary institutions, they join, invent clubs, go to
meetings, and organize politically.

• We now have at least four competing ideas and structures: (1) the liberal commitment to
minimal government, (2) the civic republican and direct democratic commitment to funding
the community with political power to enhance political participation, (3) the conservative
state and moral community, and (4) the pluralistic, mostly voluntary associations of civil
society. Which would be definitive for free republican society?

• In the 19th century, liberalism (and pluralism) won over civic republicanism and, in most
cases, eventually over the conservative (or communitarian) state. This does not mean our
system today is not a mix of all four; it is. But the kind of republicanism that came to
dominate in the 19th century faced enormous challenges at the turn of the century. It
subsequently reformed itself successfully in the mid-20th century. But towards the end of
the 20th century, liberal republicanism is again less secure in the face of rising inequality
and populist backlash.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

English logician John Stuart Mill recognized that democracy brings with it the power of public opinion and
majority rule to enforce conformity.

The concept of utility or social benefit and the idea of sympathy had been prominent in British
moral philosophy since the early 18th century, notably with David Hume and Adam Smith.
Utilitarianism was invented by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and James Mill (1773–1836) in
England as a scientific morality.

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• Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy based on the principle that one ought to do what brings
about the most benefits and causes the least harm. It is a consequentialist theory of
morality. For utilitarians, happiness or pleasure is the ultimate good. We know this because
it is what all people actually value as the highest good.

• An act is right insofar as it is likely to increase pleasure or happiness. Thus, it is the

consequences of an act that make it right. That is what we value and praise in the acts of
others: not mere good intentions but the production of good effects. The ultimate moral
rule is, therefore, the greatest happiness principle: Act so as to maximize general happiness.

• The idea is not new, what makes it novel was Bentham’s claim that utility can be measured
scientifically and quantitatively. Each individual’s happiness, including one’s own, counts
equally in the calculation as to what act maximizes happiness. The notion of utility is
eminently practical, opposed to idealistic and theistic emphases on abstract rules and God’s
commandments.

• Not surprisingly, the concept was despised by the German philosophers, Kant, Hegel, and
Nietzsche among them. Kant’s deontological ethics, based on his principle of intrinsic
human rights and the concept of categorical imperative (絕對命令的概念), rejected
utilitarianism and the consequentialism of the Enlightenment.

• Utilitarianism was, however, perfectly suited to the increasingly commercial society of 19th
century Western Europe. Its most prominent defender was J S Mill, the outstanding British
philosopher of the century. His father James Mill had raised him on a very strict diet of the
classics, of mathematics, of foreign languages, and was probably one of the best educated
teenagers of his time. Mill was a precocious genius who was pushed so hard by his father
that he suffered a nervous breakdown as a young man. This convinced him of the supreme
importance of individual happiness

• J S Mill was a thoroughgoing empiricist, following in the footsteps of David Hume. He was an
accomplished logician, and his book on logic dominated the study of the subject for years.
He was an accomplished social thinker, an economist who followed Adam Smith and an
outspoken defender of individual liberty. Mill was also an early defender of women’s rights
and the author of On the Subjection of Women.

• In moral philosophy, utilitarianism remains to the present day one of the most influential
theories of ethics. J S Mill defended utilitarianism, but rejected Bentham’s quantitative
calculus. He held up two principles: the principle of utility and the principle of equality. The
principle of utility says that one should act for “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
The principle of equality says that each person counts for one and only for one.

• One problem with utilitarianism is that the philosophy seems to make it morally acceptable
or even obligatory to harm a minority or an individual if doing so benefits the majority. The
issue is addressed by J S Mill in his book On Liberty (1859), one of the classic texts in
defense of liberty in a republican society, not only from intrusive government but also from
the tyranny of majority rule in a democratic society.

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• In a free society, what are the rightful limits on individual freedom? J S Mill attempts to
protect the rights of the individual against claims of a larger utility on the part of the
majority. He answered with the principle of liberty, also known as the harm principle: No
one should interfere with a person who is causing no harm to others. Society may interfere
with the liberty of a member only for self-protection. This is an early formulation of the
theory of human rights.

• J S Mill believed that thought and discussion must never be restricted. He asks us to imagine
a minority opinion hated by the majority. Now imagine that the minority is right. Should
their expression be sanctioned? No, because truth improves society. But suppose the
minority is wrong. He argues that even then, their expression of the wrong view is an
improvement to society, by encouraging the correct majority to refine its understanding.
The conflict of ideas improves discussion.

• For more or less the first time in Western history, social diversity of opinion is claimed as a
good. J S Mill accepts that “the free development of individuality is the most important work
of man.” His defense of individual rights provided a generally optimistic summary of how
liberal principles and institutions could ensure social and political progress.

• Questions of fairness is about how happiness is to be distributed. J S Mill has a theory of

justice that follows from his utilitarianism. Justice ultimately serves utility. What ultimately
gives pleasure, then, is the sense that one is a good person. He could be understood as an
Aristotelian, defending an ethics of virtue and social awareness, and also as adopting Hume
or Smith’s theory of moral sentiments. J S Mill’s theory of justice is not derived from
Bentham’s quantitative calculus.

Mill and Socialism

• Is there an apparent contradiction between J S Mill’s utilitarianism and his political

liberalism and laissez faire economic philosophy?

• Sometimes, the happiness of the majority might be increased by limiting the liberty of
minorities or individuals. J S Mill’s solution is simple and empirical: He is convinced that the
society that allows the most experiments of individual freedom will yield the greatest
happiness for the greatest number. Utilitarianism, therefore, supports the principle of
liberty.

• The harm principle, the love of individuality, and the fear of conformity are libertarian
concerns of those who want minimal government, the lowest possible taxes, and maximum
individual liberty.

• But then in his Autobiography, J S Mill wrote that as his beliefs had evolved, he could be
classed “under the general designation of Socialists!” This is reflected in the later editions of
his Principles of Political Economy. How can Mill be a socialist and a libertarian at the same
time? The clarification comes in an unfinished work titled “Chapters on Socialism” published
after his death by his stepdaughter.

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• J S Mill had always been upset that English life was dominated by “bequests” or inherited
wealth, which he thought unjust. He argued that property rights were historically highly
variable and should be decided by social utility. He believed that the problem of production
had been solved by the market economy but not the problem of distribution, and
government action was necessary for redistribution, especially in education (for children
born in poverty) and old-age pensions (against uncertainties of life expectancy).

• Still, he utterly rejected state-centralized socialism as an economic ‘chimera’. Production

requires a division of labor; competition and differential wages or rewards are just and
necessary as incentives. Taking away the capitalist’s profits or return on interest would do
little for the worker and would destroy production. He continued to argue against state
paternalism.

• For J S Mill, socialism likely implied the progressive ideas that would be advocated over a
century later by John Rawls (1921-2002) in A Theory of Justice (1971). And he emphasized its
experimental, empirical character, whose outcomes would have to be judged over time. He
believed that ‘revolutionary’ socialism would be a disaster for all.

Rethinking Liberal Theory: J S Mill and Tocqueville Again

• The 19th century social and political campaigns for individual human rights often drew on
what might be called the ‘liberal interpretation’ of the French Revolution.

• This view of the revolutionary events at the end of the 18th century usually argued that the
Revolution had been a valuable challenge to the noble privileges and monarchy of the old
regime. The Revolution had advanced the cause of freedom, at least in the beginning, and
most 19th century liberals praised this achievement.

• Yet the Revolution had also shown that despotism could come from below, as well as from
above; the masses could be tyrants, too. This suggests the theoretical and political position
of liberal writers throughout the 19th century: They were located in the theoretical center
or political “middle” of European societies and cultures.

• This middle position meant that from the time of the French Revolution itself and
throughout most of the 19th century, liberals were regularly criticized by both conservatives
and radicals. Conservatives found them too disrespectful of inherited traditions and social
hierarchies; radicals always found them too cautious about implementing the social reforms
that would create egalitarian societies.

• This middle position can be seen in most liberal theorists. Liberals were looking for ways to
defend their conceptions of individual liberty, but the new economy, nation-states, and
political parties all posed challenges for the liberal belief in autonomous individuals.

• Both J S Mill and Tocqueville favored a social and political system in which individual rights
and liberties would be strongly protected. They worried that neither old aristocrats, nor
middle-class merchants, nor most workers understood the true nature of liberty. J S Mill did
not really embrace the strong state-centered themes that were important in the French
revolutionary tradition.

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• Both worried also that 19th century European societies were threatened by an obsession
with money making, a social pattern that (like tyranny from above or below) ultimately
threatened human liberty.

• J S Mill’s classic defense of liberty broke new ground. His book made an argument for the
social advantage that results when each individual is free to pursue his or her own
development; personal liberty should not be impeded by the state.

• He stressed that people must have the right to express even the most unpopular ideas or
opinions and that repression was bad for society. Truth emerges and social progress
continues through the free expression of every idea; stifling ideas, by contrast, hurts
everyone. “We can never be sure,” he explained, “that the opinion we…stifle is a false
opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”

• J S Mill had confidence that the free exchange of ideas could ensure social progress and the
growth of freedom—liberty would produce yet more liberty, but he also worried that social
forces in his own society threatened the creative individual. This worry linked J S Mill to
Tocqueville and, in some ways, to the Romantic belief in the value of the creative self. J S
Mill was a liberal who drew on both the utilitarian and Romantic traditions to defend the
individual against the modern mass society and the dangers of an overbearing civil power.

• Tocqueville was also anxious about the fate of liberty in the modern world. He believed, like
Montesquieu, that the modern development of democratic societies threatened individual
liberty. Tocqueville was fascinated by the history of the French Revolution and by the early
history of the United States. He believed that the American and French Revolutions
launched the modern history of democracy, which Tocqueville saw as a movement toward
social equality; he thought this equality would destroy liberty.

• Tocqueville was concerned with a central liberal problem: How can modern societies
reconcile liberty and equality? He thought that democracy engenders this conflict because a
leveling tendency in democracy threatens liberty, and the majority overwhelms the
individual; he said that modern people preferred equality over liberty.

• Tocqueville saw America showed the extreme leveling tendency in modern history, but it
also showed that democracy could be stable. At the same time, the American system
showed the dangers of the tyranny of the majority because America discouraged eccentric
or exceptional behavior.

• For Tocqueville, the key to freedom was to maintain strong intermediary groups or
associations between the individual and the central government. He said that the tendency
of modern governments was to be more and more centralized; this was already the case in
France before the Revolution. In this respect, the Revolution merely confirmed what the old
regime in France had already begun; it further centralized power.

• But for liberty to survive (and liberty was always Tocqueville’s goal), groups must exist to
mediate between individuals and the central power. Such intermediary groups existed in

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 older societies in the Church and aristocracy or noble law courts; such institutions or
secondary associations protected exceptional individuals and their liberty.

• Such groups also allowed nonconformity to flourish, unlike the situation in both
authoritarian states and egalitarian democracies. Aristocratic societies have less equality
than democracies but also less despotism (though only some are free in such situations).

• Because Tocqueville believed that the old aristocratic world was gone, he decided that
liberal societies must create more secondary institutions to protect individuals from the
power of the state; only institutions could do this. Like other 19th century liberals,
Tocqueville wanted to avoid abstractions; he attacked the philosophes for being too
abstract.

• Tocqueville himself felt the situation was urgent because of the events of the Revolution of
1848. He was appalled by the radical, egalitarian, and socialist tendencies of the Parisian
crowds. Because he believed that liberty was threatened by equality, he wanted to go back
to the historical process whereby the aristocratic tradition broke down.

• This was the point of his The Old Regime and the Revolution, a text in which Tocqueville
argued that love of freedom was the highest ideal, more valuable than any economic gain or
abstract equality. “What has made so many men […] stake their all on liberty,” he wrote, “is
its intrinsic glamour, a fascination it has in itself, apart from all ‘practical’ considerations.”

• Tocqueville has often been compared to Montesquieu; both came from the nobility, both
were interested in the deep structures of society, and both wanted to protect liberty
through strong, intermediary institutions that resisted centralizing powers. Tocqueville died
in 1859 before he could finish a planned second volume on the meaning of the French
Revolution.

• The modern nation-state (as many older liberals perceived it) was becoming the political
embodiment of a new mass society of high density living and economic connectivity; neither
the new radicals nor the old aristocrats offered liberals had found a way to protect
individual liberty in this modern situation. The social contract theory invented by Hobbes
had envisioned individuals agreeing freely and equally to form an institutional arrangement
for state-citizen relations based on liberal principles. But the new state was not always able
to check tyranny, preserve stability, and protect liberty in periods after the French
Revolution.

• This was clearly evident throughout the 19th century during the period of the First Industrial
Revolution, where rapid economic development occurred amidst rising economic inequality
and growing political equality. In retrospect, change started gradually only after the onset of
the Second Industrial Revolution, but not before the convulsion brought about by the two
World Wars and the Great Depression. The nature of technological progress changed
between the First and Second Industrial Revolutions and this most probably was the single
most important factor affecting the conduct and outcome of economic, social and political
life—and the success of liberal versus civic republicanism.

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Readings
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to That of the Moderns.”
Hegel, “The Priority of the State over the Individual.”
J S Mill, “Chapters on Socialism.”
J S Mill, On Liberty, pp. 5–82 (chapters 1–3).
J S Mill, Utilitarianism.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, pp. 83–107, 195–247 (preface, books
1 and 3).

Questions
1. Can you accept utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number, everyone to count
for one and only one) as a standard for all human behavior? Do domains of human behavior
exist that do not seem to meet this standard?
2. If an entire society would prosper at the severe disadvantage of a small number of citizens
(for example, if the sacrifice of one innocent child would bring a great harvest to a farming
community), how would a utilitarian deal with such a situation?
3. Can utilitarianism be saved from condemning an innocent man in order to save 10 others?
4. What is Mill’s ultimate principle of liberty, how does he justify it, and how do we apply it?
5. What is more central to a “free” society, private liberty or political self-rule?
6. What are the dangers of private liberty, on the one hand, and widespread equality, on the
other?
7. Would the ideas of Mill and Tocqueville be called “liberal” in contemporary political cultures?
8. What do you think is the relation between freedom and equality? Did Tocqueville overstate
the conflict between these two ideals?

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