An Invitation to History of Freedom and Liberty

Dear Sir,

Impressed by your institute. Please feel free to drop in on this tentatively created blog

http://fountofliberty.blogsource.com/

Thanks.

Blessings,

Promise Hsu

A warm welcome to the quest for the origins of freedom and liberty. Here’s my proposed question for now. Please help keep this discussion alive by pubishing your perspectives.

Why were freedom and liberty first institutionalized in the West and why have they survived there as nowhere else?

Recently, I have asked at least three experts in ancient Greek law for opinions on the part of ancient Greece. They are Professor Edward Harris of Durham University, Professor Martin Ostwald of Swarthmore College, and Professor Michael Gagarin of the University of Texas at Austin. All gave me kind and swift replies. Professor Harris says that he believes the ideal of the rule of law was closely linked to the Greek opposition to tyranny, that is, the rule of one person who was not accountable to the people and ignored the will of the gods. Professor Ostwald says he thinks the problem of “the rule of law” was first raised and discovered by the Greeks in their struggle with the Persian Empire from the late fifth century B.C.E. on. But both stopped short of pinpointing exactly what made ancient Greeks do so. Professor Gagarin’s view is that Professor Harris’ answer is in the right direction. But he goes on to point out that he would broaden it out to a broader view of Greek society, which from the very beginning (long before the tyrants) relied on some sort of larger advisory group (like a Council) even when there may have been a single ruler. He notes that when laws were first written in ancient Greece, they were not written by one ruler, but by a larger group, and many of the earliest Greek laws regulate and even punish magistrates. Professor Gagarin also quotes the view of Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd that the reason the Greeks developed their unusual ideas and methods in science and philosophy is related to their system of open political debate. He holds that this led to open intellectual debate where people regularly criticized and questioned past thinkers rather than always following traditional views.

In reading these views on the origins of the rule of law in ancient Greece, I couldn’t help asking again why the world’s other ancient societies were not able to develop the legal and political cultures like ancient Greeks. Absolute monarchs appear inevitable in these societies where the authoritarian or totalitarian rule has always been the only effective way possible to maintain peace and order however unsuccessful it was in many occasions. Yet it does not mean they had no political debate at all. At least in traditional China, with which I’m most familiar, some sorts of political debate were recorded in history. But all these had no chance to create a political environment as open as in ancient Greece. For me, the reason may be this. In whatever dynasties, the mainstream of the ancient Chinese way of thinking does not hold belief that there exist some rules that are free from the existence of human beings. What it believes in is everything about the human existence itself such as human wisdom and brute force. Even in aspects concerning the natural world, what it cares about most is how humans get used to these complex and mysterious surroundings. So, ancient China is no short of rough science. But it fails to generate a kind of scientific way of thinking, which is about the nature of the world and is independent of the human existence. What it generates instead is an idea that rough science itself is but another piece of evidence that humans are the pride of the world. And according to this way of logic, the ablest one in humans will be the most superior, or a superman. When this idea is added to the not so confident attitude toward the human relations as well as the natural world, a superman is likely to turn out to be a god, or the son of God. In other words, he has the favor of the most powerful being of the whole universe, although people can’t be sure of its existence. But the superman’s ability is real. Thus, the superman’s offspring is the child of the divine, too. In the world full of uncertainties, it’s naturally enough for people to accept such a family to assume the leadership and protect them, which will be reinforced by his growing supporters if he is able enough to continue to win hearts and minds of more people. Then, the laws will be gradually made in order to maintain the rule of the god-like man. But as the time goes by, his next generation may not be as able as him. And the most fatally important thing is the fact that the son of God proves to be a mortal one. Therefore, the divinity of the ruler is not absolute at all. And so is the ruler’s law. In the end, some who may be like today’s intellectuals conclude from these hard facts that the law has always been changed with the changeover of power. No one has been able to rule forever. The law is no more than the will or sometime rather the whim of the rulers. In this context, there’s no reason for people to hold any belief in something called the rule of law. For them, what matters the most is, sadly, the inevitable rule of the power itself. People are born either to rule or to be ruled. Accordingly, there’s no space for any alternative like the pattern of law and liberty to survive. People may have become skeptical about the legitimacy of the elite. However, the result is often that not only they are accustomed to this skepticism but also the elite themselves. It comes no surprise that a usual extreme of such an attitude is no more than cynicism. Then it is not surprising either that even early ancient Chinese literature did not write much about the divine or the relationship between man and god. Rather, it’s mainly about humans, their views, feelings and experiences. By comparison with this, the gods figured prominently in ancient Greek tragedy. Even with the rise of Sophists, it seems that the man-gods dimension was not removed entirely from ancient Greeks’ consciousness. In my view, the existence of this dimension itself offers a certain tension or room for people to struggle between what is man-made and what is natural or rather what is mortal and what is immortal. Under these circumstances, it’s possible for the idea of the rule of law to survive. People may have lost confidence in the law of a particular ruler or a ruling class. But this would not necessarily lead to the loss of the law itself. People could challenge the ruler’s man-made law with what they claim the divine law. I assume this way of thinking goes in the direction for the idea of the rule of law, which perhaps involves the conception that the world is not a product of human existence; on the contrary, human existence is a product of the world. In this regard, I suppose the ancient Greek example has some parallels in the medieval Europe where monarchs were mostly unable to grow powerful enough as their Chinese counterparts given the fact that there were the continuing tensions between church and state, which paves the way for the modern constitutional government. Of course, the two are largely different in other aspects.

Those are but my crude hypotheses that I have been developing so far in my mind as a result of reading and translating. At the beginning, I had felt reluctant to write them down. But on second thoughts, perhaps it’s high time for me to “cast a piece of brick to elicit a piece of jade” (a Chinese idiom, meaning to offer a few preliminary thoughts in hoping to elicit more refined and profound ideas)…

Thank you so much for your recommendation, which I have already had a look. It’s excellent indeed. I’d be much obliged to receive more instructions from you.