{"title":"Revisiting ancient and modern liberty: On de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History","authors":"Lena Halldenius","doi":"10.1177/14748851211017103","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Annelien de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History is a rich and thought-provoking work in intellectual history, tracing thinking and debating about political freedom in the West from ancient Greece to our own times. The ancient notion of freedom as self-government (what Quentin Skinner calls neo-roman liberty) is referred to as the ‘democratic conception’. The argument is that this conception survived through the renaissance, the early-modern period and the 18th-century Atlantic revolutions only to be deliberately scrapped in the 19th century in favour of liberal freedom – absence of state interference – thus severing the ancient links between freedom and democracy and turning democracy into a threat to freedom. The book is an impressive achievement and the use of sources staggeringly wide. However, though the liberal turn is certainly a fact of history, I am not convinced that it was such a decisive break, nor that the relations between conceptions of freedom and attitudes to democracy are as clear-cut as de Dijn needs them to be. De Dijn claims, with regret, that the liberal view remains our view and is now an essential part of Western civilization, but I find that to be empirically under-substantiated. By using the liberal turn to define an age, de Dijn lets history play out through the lens of the elite.","PeriodicalId":46183,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/14748851211017103","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Political Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211017103","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Annelien de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History is a rich and thought-provoking work in intellectual history, tracing thinking and debating about political freedom in the West from ancient Greece to our own times. The ancient notion of freedom as self-government (what Quentin Skinner calls neo-roman liberty) is referred to as the ‘democratic conception’. The argument is that this conception survived through the renaissance, the early-modern period and the 18th-century Atlantic revolutions only to be deliberately scrapped in the 19th century in favour of liberal freedom – absence of state interference – thus severing the ancient links between freedom and democracy and turning democracy into a threat to freedom. The book is an impressive achievement and the use of sources staggeringly wide. However, though the liberal turn is certainly a fact of history, I am not convinced that it was such a decisive break, nor that the relations between conceptions of freedom and attitudes to democracy are as clear-cut as de Dijn needs them to be. De Dijn claims, with regret, that the liberal view remains our view and is now an essential part of Western civilization, but I find that to be empirically under-substantiated. By using the liberal turn to define an age, de Dijn lets history play out through the lens of the elite.
Annelien de Dijn的《自由:不羁的历史》是思想史上一部内容丰富、发人深省的著作,追溯了从古希腊到我们这个时代西方关于政治自由的思考和辩论。作为自治的古代自由概念(昆汀·斯金纳称之为新罗马自由)被称为“民主概念”。这种观点认为,这种观念在文艺复兴时期、近代早期和18世纪的大西洋革命中幸存下来,只是在19世纪被有意抛弃,转而支持自由主义自由——没有国家干预——从而切断了自由与民主之间的古老联系,把民主变成了对自由的威胁。这本书是一个令人印象深刻的成就,它使用了惊人的广泛的资料来源。然而,尽管自由主义的转向肯定是一个历史事实,但我不相信这是一个如此决定性的突破,也不相信自由概念和对民主的态度之间的关系像德·戴因所需要的那样明确。德·戴因遗憾地声称,自由主义观点仍然是我们的观点,现在是西方文明的一个重要组成部分,但我发现这在经验上没有得到充分证实。通过使用自由主义的转向来定义一个时代,德·戴因让历史通过精英的镜头展现出来。
期刊介绍:
The European Journal of Political Theory provides a high profile research forum. Broad in scope and international in readership, the Journal is named after its geographical location, but is committed to advancing original debates in political theory in the widest possible sense--geographical, historical, and ideological. The Journal publishes contributions in analytic political philosophy, political theory, comparative political thought, and the history of ideas of any tradition. Work that challenges orthodoxies and disrupts entrenched debates is particularly encouraged. All research articles are subject to triple-blind peer-review by internationally renowned scholars in order to ensure the highest standards of quality and impartiality.