Lesson 40 (Part 1): The Difference Between the Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty of the Moderns

As Benjamin Constant penned in his The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns, we are “in danger of giving up modern liberty in favor of the ancient.”

In our modern society, we hold high values on freewill, and rightly so. In our liberty, we require freedom of speech, the right to own and use private property, to think what we want to think, to do what we want to do, and to associate with whom we desire to associate. We orient towards freewill and the individual to create a lovely society where people can thrive. This is how we see liberty.

However, the ancients did not see liberty like that at all. True, the Greeks had some privileges for the individual, but their liberty did not revolve around that. It revolved around the community as a whole. Living in liberty included the right to assemble and make decisions. Whether to go to war or have peace, form alliances, examine the magistrates, and call them to appear before the assembly and render judgment on them. Liberty was to participate in politics, have a voice in making laws, be capable of running for office, and participate in court. To have liberty, the city itself was free from outside interference. We include all this in our package of liberty, and it is pleasing, but it is an incomplete picture in our modern eyes.

Plus, because the city and not the individual were held higher, women were a lower class, and slavery existed. Ironically, without those slaves laboring, the citizens would never have found the time to gather together every day and utilize their liberties. Even a citizen, if seen as a future hindrance to the city, could be ostracized by his fellow citizens and banished for ten years to protect the city’s liberty. The ancients were very non-individualistic.

One reason the ancients might not have minded this diluted form of liberty is that commerce was not nearly as developed as it is now. When commerce occurs, citizens sell and buy what they prefer however they wish. People can become hostile towards government intervention in their private affairs, but with less commerce, there was less for the government to intervene in.

The vote the ancients held in such high regard is rather insignificant in our modern world. In ancient times, when the city-states were smaller and sparsely populated, a vote meant a lot! But in our more modern day, one teeny tinny vote out of millions is much more insignificant. A vote still has power, and they add up, but in our immense modern societies, that vote is not worth giving up individual liberties.

We find much lacking in ancient liberty when compared to modern.