Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism

Abstract

This is a formidable and important book. Siedentop, a lecturer in political thought and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, is horrified by the way in which Liberalismthe idea of the secular individual -seems to have lost the understanding of its roots in Christian history, and of the intrinsic relationship between liberal secularism and Christianity. 'If we in the West', he writes, 'do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?' (p. 363).Most of us learned at school to think of 'liberalism' as an eighteenth-century idea, associated with names like Locke, Kant and Rousseau, born of struggles between the Enlightenment and the obscurantism of the (Roman Catholic) Church. Siedentop will have none of this. For him, what distinguishes the Western tradition, with its characteristic emphasis on freedom, equality and (ultimately) democracy is its Christian heritage.No non-Western political theory -Confucian, Hindu, Islamic etc. -has moved in this direction: indeed, most have remained actively hostile to individualism. Moreover, the usual secular 'explanations' of European individualism -economic and political -are themselves, he argues, the product of Christianity. The development of Western political thought, economics and, above all, even the idea of 'secularity' itself, are all logical developments of the Christian theological tradition. At its centre Siedentop traces a line of thought from Paul to Augustine, to Abelard and the Franciscan tradition epitomized in Ockham. The Pauline emphasis on 'freedom in Christ', initially freedom from Jewish law, moves logically towards general moral freedom, and then, inevitably, towards economic and political freedom and the notion of secularity. The moral attack on slavery (begun as far back as the fourth century by, among others, Gregory of Nyassa), though it may have taken centuries to take effect, is without parallel in other civilizations. Similarly, as early as the sixth century we find the Christian Visigothic King Chilperic defending the rights of women on scriptural grounds: 'A long-standing and wicked custom of our people denies sisters a share with their brothers in their father's land; but I consider it wrong, since my children came equally from God . . . ' (p. 143). The democracy of the monastery and the universal claims of Canon Law gradually undermine the attractions of local custom and eventually even those of absolute monarchy itself. Such a movement rests on a not-always-explicit, but deeply New Testament tradition, of progressive revelation: that the teachings

Transcendence, faith and poetry: towards an ontology of the Spirit

“…In order to do so, Paul ceases to think of that will as an external, coercive agency. 10 Siedentop adds that this new agency has as its purpose the well-being of all other agents. 'Faith in the Christ requires seeing oneself in others and others in oneself, the point of view which truly moralizes human agents.'…”

The Rule of Law, Comprehensive Doctrines, Overlapping Consensus, and the Future of Europe

“…The most basic defining element of the human condition is diversity. While for several centuries now, at least in the West, it has been well established that humans partake of an identical humanity, at the same time each and every individual, to the extent possible, fulfils her humanity in her own individual, distinct way (Siedentop 2014). The social world of humans is consequently marked by plurality, which is a social fact of the actually existing naturally and socially induced differences among individuals and among the wider social concentric circles they form.…”