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The origins of freedom: Antiquity

The invention of critical rationality by the Greeks

A Philosophical History of Freedom

The invention of critical rationality by the Greeks

  • The birth of politics with the city
  • The Idea of Freedom Under the Law
  • Political Freedom
  • The Quest for Truth and Pluralism
The experience of Athenian democracy has left a lasting mark on the history of political thought and continues to inspire ideals of democracy and citizen participation in today's world.
Athenian democracy was characterized by lively public debates on city affairs, which primarily took place in the agora, the city's marketplace. This mode of operation, based on reason and critical discussion, sharply contrasted with earlier practices where laws and customs were considered sacred and immutable, handed down by ancestors and protected by the gods.

The birth of politics with the city

Athenian democracy represents a significant departure from tradition. Indeed, in earlier societies, there could not be "politics" in the sense of a discussion about social rules, since these were imposed in a transcendent manner by myth.
Historian Jean-Pierre Vernant writes:
The emergence of the polis constitutes, in the history of Greek thought, a decisive event. Certainly, in terms of intellectual development and institutional development, its full consequences would only be realized in the long term; the polis would undergo multiple stages and various forms. However, from its advent, which can be placed between the 8th and 7th centuries, it marks a beginning, a true invention; through it, social life and relations among men take on a new form, the originality of which the Greeks would fully feel. (...) What the polis system implies, first and foremost, is an extraordinary preeminence of speech over all other instruments of power. It becomes the political tool par excellence, the key to all authority in the state, the means of command and domination over others. (...) A second characteristic of the polis is the nature of full publicity given to the most important manifestations of social life. One could even say that the polis exists only insofar as a public domain has emerged, in two different yet interconnected senses of the term: a sector of common interest, as opposed to private affairs, and open practices, established in broad daylight, as opposed to secret procedures. (...) Henceforth, discussion, argumentation, and controversy become the rules of both the intellectual and political games. The community exercises constant control over the creations of the mind, as well as over the state's magistracies. (Jean Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, Paris, P.U.F, 1962)
The Greek word "polis," which gives rise to the English word "politics," refers to a city-state. When Aristotle writes that "man is by nature a political animal," it does not mean he is made for power. By politics, he refers to the faculty that men have to deliberate in the public square to determine what is just and unjust.
This novelty is based on the fundamental distinction between two terms in the Greek language, "phusis" and "nomos," which designate two types of laws:
  • Phusis is the law of nature (which gives the word "physics" in French).
  • Nomos is human law (a term found in the word "autonomy," which means "to obey one's law"). The City emerges with the idea that the law (nomos) is of human origin, that it can be freely modified by humans, unlike nature, and can apply to all. The Greeks then became aware of the autonomy of the social and political order in relation to the natural order. This marks the appearance of politics: the ongoing discussion about the very rules of social life. From now on, problems will be resolved through concerted action, rather than by an immutable, sacred order.
And Jean-Pierre Vernant adds:
Greek reason is the one that, in a positive, reflective, methodical way, allows us to act upon men, not to transform nature. Within its limits, as in its innovations, it is the daughter of the city.

The Idea of Freedom Under the Law

The intentional action of the gods does not produce social harmony, but rather by the obedience of all citizens to the same impersonal law. Power is no longer the affair of priests. It has become an affair of all. Thus emerges the notion of equality before the law: "isonomia," but also rhetoric. Mastery of speech was essential to convince one's fellow citizens in assemblies and courts.
For Aristotle, tyranny is obedience to a man, and freedom is obedience to the law. He is credited with this quote:
To desire the rule of law is to expect the exclusive reign of reason. To choose instead the rule of a man is to add that of a wild beast, for desire and anger distort the judgment of rulers, even if they are the best of men.
According to him, laws, being impersonal and permanent, guarantee justice and equality for all citizens.
Cicero, the renowned Roman orator and philosopher of the 1st century BC, adopted this idea: "We are slaves of the laws so that we may be free" (De Republica, Book III, Chapter 13). In this passage, Cicero develops an argument in favor of a republic governed by laws, rather than by one man or a small group of men. The concept of the republic originates from Greek philosophy. It has often been contrasted with democracy, deemed too risky. Plato titled his main work of political philosophy: The Republic, and he judges democracy very harshly. When the people govern, there is a strong risk of imposing the law of their desires and confusing the good with the pleasant. Hence, the tragic death of Socrates, condemned to death by a popular jury, was manipulated by the sophists. Plato learned all the lessons from this.
Aristotle would use the term "republic" to designate a just constitution, one that aims for the common interest and treats citizens as free men. A true regime of freedom is one where the law is general, equal for all, anonymous, and not a personal command.
The concept of freedom under the law is also reflected in the Anglo-Saxon term "Rule of Law."

Political Freedom

It can be said that the Greeks invented the concept of political freedom as a counter to tyrannical domination. The Greeks of that era considered slavery to be a natural institution, and that slaves did not have the same status as citizens. This may seem contradictory to the idea of freedom, but for them, freedom was linked to citizenship and not to the absence of slavery.
Herodotus, in his Historia, and Aeschylus, in his tragedy The Persians, brilliantly illustrate the contrast between the absolute and tyrannical monarchy of Xerxes and the spirit of freedom among the Greeks. These people, characterized by the absence of masters and the refusal to submit to slavery by barbarians, no matter how numerous, find their strength in the law, the "nomos," their true master that guarantees their freedom. And this law emanates from the will of all.
According to Jacqueline de Romilly: The Greeks themselves have measured this originality and became aware of it at the beginning of the 5th century, in the shock that opposed them to the Persian invaders. And the first fact that struck them was that there was a political difference between them and their adversaries, which commanded everything else. The Persians obeyed an absolute sovereign, who was their master, whom they feared, and before whom they prostrated themselves; these practices were not common in Greece. There is an astonishing dialogue in Herodotus, which opposes Xerxes to a former king of Sparta. This king announces to Xerxes that the Greeks will not yield because Greece always fights against enslavement to a master. It will fight, no matter the number of its adversaries. For, if the Greeks are free, "they are not free in everything: they have a master, the law, which they fear even more than your subjects fear you."
(Ancient Greece at the Discovery of Freedom, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 1989)
Herodotus is convinced that a people of free men is a people who obeys a law and not a master, as in the Persian empire, where only one man is free and all the others are slaves. This is true for Athens, a democracy, but it is also true for Sparta. The king does not create the law. He does not impose his will. He ensures the respect of the law, he is at its service, and he dies, if necessary, to defend it.

The Quest for Truth and Pluralism

Moving away from mythological thought, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and later Democritus and Empedocles were the first to seek to understand phusis (nature) through reason, rather than through supernatural entities.
The fundamental principle posited by these early Pre-Socratic philosophers is that the elements of the kosmos (the universe) hold in place because they are all equally subject to the same "law of nature" (phusis) that can be stated universally and necessarily. The universe is rational; it constitutes a structured whole, which man can discover with his reason (the "logos" as opposed to the "mutos", the myth).
According to Karl Popper, we owe the invention of critical rationalism, the Western tradition of critical discussion, and the source of scientific thought and pluralism to the philosophers of ancient Greece, particularly the Pre-Socratics. He explains this in a chapter of Conjectures and Refutations titled "Return to the Pre-Socratics": Regarding the first signs of the existence of a critical attitude, of a new freedom of thought, they appear in Anaximander's critique of Thales. This is quite a singular phenomenon; the thinker whom Anaximander criticises is his master, his compatriot, one of the Seven Sages, the one who founded the Ionian School. According to tradition, Anaximander was only fourteen years younger than Thales, and he likely formulated his critiques and presented his new concepts during his master's lifetime, as they died, it seems, a few years apart. However, no evidence of dissent, quarrel, or schism is found in the sources.
These elements, according to him, indicate that Thales originated this new tradition of freedom, based on an original relationship between master and disciple. Thales was able to tolerate criticism, and he established the tradition of acknowledging it. Popper identifies a break here from the dogmatic tradition, which allows only a single school doctrine, and replaces it with pluralism and fallibilism.
Our attempts to grasp and discover the truth are not definitive. Still, they are capable of improvement; our knowledge and our body of doctrine are conjectural, comprising assumptions and hypotheses rather than certain and final truths.
The only means we have to approach the truth are criticism and discussion. From ancient Greece, therefore, comes this tradition:
Which consists of formulating bold conjectures and exercising free criticism, a tradition that was at the origin of the rational and scientific approach and, consequently, of this Western culture that is ours and the only one that is founded on science, even if, obviously, this is not its only basis.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
What is the difference between phusis and nomos?