ABSTRACT It is fruitless to interpret Constant's modern liberty from the binary perspective of either the negative/positive freedom opposition or the liberal/republican freedom opposition. Both oppositional perspectives reduce the relationally complex nature of modern liberty to one or another component of the relation. Such reduction inevitably results in an incomplete and, therefore, inadequate interpretation of Constant's modern liberty. Consequently, either of these binary frames of interpretation obscures rather than illuminates the full nature of Constant's modern liberty. Boxed into their irreconcilably (...) opposed alternatives, both binary perspectives fail to appreciate that Constant's conception of modern liberty is a complex achievement irreducible without loss to either liberal negative liberty as non-interference or republican freedom as non-domination. Nor does combining liberal negative freedom and positive freedom (in the sense of ancient liberty), as Holmes well establishes, adequately tells the whole story of Constant's modern liberty. As a complex achievement, Constant's conception of modern liberty, I shall argue, blends negative freedom as associated with neo-Roman republican freedom as non-subjection to arbitrary power, negative freedom as non-interference, associated with the liberal tradition, positive freedom in the sense of inner self-development, and positive freedom as collective self-government or civic republican freedom. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores how our thinking about time shapes epistemological and ontological understandings of the world. It considers the idea of modernity as constituted by the ancient/modern binary through an examination of Montesquieu’s and Benjamin Constant’s development of this binary in relation to their understandings of commerce, the law of nations and conquest, political rule and freedom in the context of European colonial empire. Modernity demarcates a break in (historical) time between a past and a present that extends into (...) a future. This rupture plays a role in distinctions between modern European and pre-modern non-European societies. The ancient/modern binary underpins conceptions of collective and individual liberty. It associates modernity with individual liberty, progress, reason and science. I analyse how this binary operated across space to categorise various societies as not modern, pre-modern or less developed according to levels of scientific, technological, political and economic progress in Montesquieu’s thought and through Constant’s silences. This article develops an innovative reading of the ancient/modern binary in French political thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper challenges the general perception that the positive–negative freedom discourse privileges negative liberty. It demonstrates that Constant and Berlin’s dual freedom conceptual scheme contains the blueprint of a modern concept of positive freedom and it reveals the nature of negative freedom in an entirely new light. Constant’s ancient and modern liberties have many similarities with Berlin’s two concepts of freedom – positive and negative. The paper shows that these similarities warrant a parallel study and allow us to examine (...) the relation between the two sides of the freedom dichotomy by using the compound terms modern/negative and ancient/positive freedom. It is argued that understanding the relation between the two freedoms depends on accepting ancient/positive liberty as practiced by the participants of modern revolutions. Then we can see why this freedom can both violate and complement modern/negative freedom. The paper argues that the combined tension and mutual dependency of the two freedoms can be explained by tapping into a metaphysical study of human agency, where metaphysics is understood as conceptualisation of moral experience. This helps demonstrate why Constant’s modern liberty and Berlin’s negative liberty rely on satisfaction as a key category reflecting individuals’ capacity for subjective judgement. (shrink)