Republican confusion and liberal clarification

Philosophy and Social Criticism

Volumn 34, Issue 7, 2008, Pages 799-824

  Rogers, Melvin L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Freedom; John Rawls; Liberalism; Philip Pettit; Quentin Skinner; Republicanism

Indexed keywords

EID: 49749094785     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: 1461734X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0191453708094728     Document Type: Review

References (161)

1. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969);
2. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975);
3. Quentin Skinner, 'Machiavelli on the Maintenance of Liberty', Politics 18 (1983): 3-15;
4. Quentin Skinner, 'The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives', in Philosophy in History, ed. Richard Rorty, Jerome Schneewind and Quentin Skinner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 193-221;
5. Quentin Skinner, 'The Paradoxes of Political Liberty', in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. III, ed. S. McMurrin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 225-50;
6. Quentin Skinner, 'The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty', in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 293-310;
7. Quentin Skinner, 'On Justice, the Common Good and the Priority of Liberty', in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 211-25;
8. Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
9. Quentin Skinner, 'Classical Liberty and the Coming of the English Civil War', in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. II, ed. Martin Van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 9-28;
10. Iseult Honohan, Civic Republicanism (New York: Routledge, 2002).
11. Adrian Oldfield, Citizenship and Community: Civic Republicanism and the Modern World (New York: Routledge, 1990), pts I and II;
12. Michael Sandel, Democracy's Discontents: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996);
13. Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
14. Maurizio Viroli, Republicanism (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002).
15. In this regard, Shelley Burtt points out that the attempt to make republicanism compatible with pluralism is characteristic of 'instrumental' rather than 'Aristotelian' republicanism; see Shelley Burtt, 'The Politics of Virtue Today: a Critique and a Proposal', American Political Science Review 87 (1993): 360-8 (360).
16. Isaiah Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty', in Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969[1958]), p. 122;
17. cf. Gerald MacCallum, 'Negative and Positive Liberty', in Liberty, ed. David Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 100-23 (102).
18. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, 1968[1651]), p. 261.
19. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 9.
20. ibid.
21. ibid, p. 81.
22. ibid, p. 80.
23. Viroli, Republicanism, pp. 6, 10, 61.
24. Skinner has developed and modified his account of republicanism in a number of different articles since the early 1980s. For the most part he has used the language of freedom as non-interference, arguing that liberals and republicans agree on what freedom is but disagree on what conditions are needed to maintain it (Skinner, 'Machiavelli', pp. 3-15;
25. Skinner, 'Negative Liberty', pp. 193-221).
26. This argument has been effectively challenged; see Alan Patten, 'The Republican Critique of Liberalism', British Journal of Political Science 26(1) (1996): 25-44.
27. Most recently, however, Skinner has argued, along with Pettit, that what is at issue between republicans and liberals is a completely different conception of freedom altogether (Skinner, Liberty, p. 70, n. 27, p. 37 n. 114;
28. Skinner, 'Classical Liberty', pp. 9-28). For that reason, it is safe to argue that Skinner's and Pettit's views are the same and any differences are of no important consequence for purposes of this article unless otherwise noted. For the most part I will refer to the most recent of Skinner's writings.
29. For those that have considered the distinction in passing see: Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 28;
30. Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 124, n. 3;
31. Duncan Ivison, The Self at Liberty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 77, 80;
32. Roger Boesche, 'Thinking About Freedom', Political Theory 26 (1998): 855-73 (861-5).
33. For those that question the viability of republicanism as an alternative to liberalism see: Jeffrey Isaac, 'Liberalism and Republicanism', History of Political Thought 9 (1988): 349-77;
34. John Charvet, 'Quentin Skinner on the Idea of Freedom', Studies in Political Thought 2 (1993): 5-16;
35. Patten, 'The Republican Critique', pp. 25-44.
36. In pursuing this line of inquiry, I bracket whether contemporary republicans have accurately described the tradition to which they belong from a historical perspective. For at least two recent accounts that cast doubt on the description of the tradition and whether it ought to be distinguished from liberalism see: Vickie B. Sullivan, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 1-27;
37. Annie Mitchell, 'A Liberal Republican "Cato"', American Journal of Political Science 48 (2004): 588-603.
38. In a very different way, John McCormick encourages us to resist the revival of republicanism. As he writes in a passage worth quoting: 'Scholars of republican political thought associated with the Cambridge School . . . often use insights derived from their historical and theoretical research in an attempt to inform, enhance, and broaden contemporary political theory and practice. They admirably show us what contemporary liberal democracy, whatever commonalties it shares with republicanism, lacks in contrast with the latter tradition: for example, the expression of a non-xenophobic patriotism, attention to the common good, emphasis on duties as opposed to rights, and the importance of more substantive political participation. However, on the basis of what follows, I implore these scholars to desist in such endeavors. Because of the traditional oligarchic tendencies of republicanism I plead with them, and those influenced by them, to reconsider the use of the term and cease in the attempt to supplement contemporary democracy with insights from that tradition. I am convinced that republicanism, unless reconstructed almost beyond the point of recognition, can only reinforce what is worst about contemporary liberal democracy: the free hand that socioeconomic and political elites enjoy at the expense of the general populace'. See John McCormick, 'Machiavelli Against Republicanism: On the Cambridge School's "Guicciardinian Moments"', Political Theory 31 (2003): 615-43 (616-17). I am not willing to go this far with McCormick largely because it reifies republicanism in ways that ignore historical developments within the tradition.
39. Jeremy Waldron, 'Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism', Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1987): 127-50 (127).
40. Berlin, 'Two Concepts', pp. 121-2.
41. ibid., p. 131.
42. ibid., pp. 141-61.
43. He makes a similar point about negative liberty, although without extensive discussion. And to be fair to the characterization, Berlin's point is not that positive liberty is necessarily totalitarian or hostile to liberal politics, but rather that the theory has promoted ideals that have been put to ill-liberal ends. For a recent argument on the incoherence of positive liberty see: Eric Nelson, 'Liberty: One Concept Too Many', Political Theory 33 (2005): 58-78.
44. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 206.
45. Skinner, Liberty, p. x;
46. Skinner, 'Machiavelli', p. 4;
47. Skinner, 'Negative Liberty', p. 197;
48. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 19-22.
49. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 1, 130-5;
50. Skinner, Liberty, pp. 101-20.
51. Skinner, Liberty, p. 36;
52. Skinner, 'Classical Liberty', pp. 9-11;
53. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 31-5.
54. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 5;
55. Skinner, Liberty, p. 70.
56. Skinner, Liberty, p. 53.
57. James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, and a System of Politics, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992[1656]), p. 20.
58. ibid., pp. 20-1.
59. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 41, 63-4, 84.
60. ibid., pp. 50-7;
61. Skinner, 'Political Liberty', p. 84.
62. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 22.
63. ibid., pp. 5, 87.
64. Indeed, Viroli uses these examples, once again, to emphasize precisely the distinction between republicanism and liberalism he intended to reject. See Viroli, Republicanism, ch. 2.
65. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 9;
66. Skinner, Liberty, p. 119.
67. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 63.
68. Skinner, Liberty, p. 84;
69. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 85.
70. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 69-70, n. 6.
71. ibid., p. 85;
72. Skinner, Liberty, pp. 84-5.
73. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 85.
74. ibid.
75. ibid., pp. 65-6.
76. Skinner, 'Machiavelli', p. 4;
77. Skinner, 'Negative Liberty', p. 195;
78. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 50.
79. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 50;
80. Skinner, 'Machiavelli', pp. 11-12.
81. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 35-41, 84-5, 174-7, 290-2.
82. Here a difference emerges between Skinner and Pettit. Skinner argues that republicans do not 'wish to deny that the exercise of force or the coercive threat of it must be listed among the forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty'. He goes on to say that 'Pettit imputes to defenders of "republican" freedom the view that, since it is only arbitrary domination that limits individual liberty, the act of obeying a law to which you have given your consent is "entirely consistent with freedom." The writers I am discussing never deal in such paradoxes. For them the difference between the rule of law and government by personal prerogative is not that the former leaves you in full possession of your liberty while the latter does not; it is rather that the former only coerces you while the latter additionally leave you in a state of dependence' (Skinner, Liberty, p. 83, n. 54;
83. cf. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 66, 55, 56, n. 3).
84. However, in his essay, 'Machiavelli on the Maintenance of Liberty', Skinner says that for Machiavelli 'the law can - and must - be used to force us to be free' (Skinner, 'Machiavelli', p. 10).
85. This expresses agreement with Pettit in that the force of law is not a constraint on one's freedom but rather allows for freedom to exist; cf. Philip Pettit, 'Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a Difference with Quentin Skinner', Political Theory 30 (2002): 339-56. Perhaps this difference here has less to do with an evolution of Skinner's thoughts than with the differences between English republicans whom Skinner is primarily concerned with in the first text and Machiavelli who is central to the essay just cited.
86. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 35.
87. Waldron, 'Liberalism', p. 140.
88. In one of her classic works, Carole Pateman worries that 'contemporary consent theory presents our institutions as if they were actually as consent demands, as if they were actually constituted through the free agreement of equal persons': Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (New York: Blackwell, 1989), p. 83.
89. Pateman makes this point by highlighting that 'even a fairly cursory reflection on the empirical evidence about voting behavior casts immediate doubt on the simple identification of consent with liberal-democratic voting' (Pateman, Disorder, p. 65).
90. The problem with Pateman's criticism is that she misunderstands the relationship between theory and practice. The point Waldron is making along with other contemporary consent theorists, as I will highlight, is not whether consent actually happens through voting or some other mechanism, but whether the laws that organize society can be represented as laws to which rational agents would agree. When framed in this light, liberal regimes provide ground for contesting 'arrangements or institutions inasmuch as one can show that it has not secured, or perhaps could not secure, the consent of the people': Waldron, 'Liberalism', p. 140.
91. For more on this distinction see the following works: William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 22-34, 198;
92. cf. Stephen Toulmin and Kurt Baier, 'On Describing', in Ordinary Language, ed. Charles Caton (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1953), pp. 20-46.
93. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 189.
94. Of course, in chapter 21 of Leviathan, Hobbes has a discussion of the 'Liberty of Subjects' in which agents retain certain self-defense rights against the sovereign. However, this is an issue that is never taken into prominent consideration when republicans connect Hobbes' views of freedom to liberalism; Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 261-74.
95. For a good discussion of Hobbes' notion of the liberty of the subjects see Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 198-207, 239-55.
96. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 227, 262.
97. Berlin, 'Two Concepts', p. 129.
98. Charles Taylor, 'What's Wrong With Negative Liberty', in Liberty, ed. David Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 141-62.
99. Holmes, Passion and Constraint, p. 16.
100. Judith Shklar, 'Liberalism of Fear', in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 24;
101. cf. Holmes, Passion and Constraint, pp. 3, 69.
102. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 10, n. 4.
103. J. W. Gough, The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 140, 182-3.
104. S. I. Benn and W. L. Weinstein, 'Being Free to Act, and Being a Free Man', Mind 80 (1971): 194-211;
105. cf. David Miller, 'Constraints on Freedom', Ethics 94 (1983): 66-86 (70).
106. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003[1690]), pp. 171-5;
107. Benjamin Constant, 'The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns', in Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988[1819]), pp. 326-7;
108. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, in Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988 [1927])
109. and 'Democracy and Educational Administration', in Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 11, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991[1937]), p. 220;
110. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 11.
111. Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. 287;
112. Dewey, 'Democracy', pp. 224-5.
113. Constant, 'Liberty of the Ancients', p. 310.
114. Charles Larmore, 'The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism', The Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 599-625 (611).
115. This is precisely why, pace Raymond Geuss, the idealization is relevant; it implies that there is no permanent closure on institutional arrangements, laws and policies that govern us. At the existential level, this orients citizens to their political world in a way that differs from those living under authoritarian regimes; cf. Raymond Geuss, 'Liberalism and Its Discontents', Political Theory 30 (2002): 320-38 (329).
116. Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. 326.
117. Obviously, Dewey parts company with Dworkin's conflict-aversion thesis - a claim that does not take seriously the ways in which freedom and equality may conflict. See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), ch. 3.
118. Rawls, Theory of Justice, pp. 177-82.
119. ibid., pp. 55-66 (emphasis added); cf. 580-1.
120. Locke, Two Treatises, pp. 149-51;
121. Immanuel Kant, 'An Answer to the Question: "What Is Enlightenment?"', in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. N. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970[1784]), pp. 55-6;
122. Dewey, Public and Its Problems, chs 1-3.
123. Indeed, Larmore provides further clarification in that a commitment to transparency generates two additional constitutive principles - namely, the value of dialogue and equal respect; see Larmore, Morals of Modernity, pp. 134-44,
124. and 'Political Liberalism', pp. 599-625.
125. Rawls, Theory of Justice, pp. 177-6.
126. ibid., pp. 177-83.
127. Locke, Two Treatises, p. 149.
128. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 235.
129. ibid., p. 246 (emphasis added).
130. Cf. Ronald Dworkin, 'Liberalism', in Public and Private Morality, ed. Stuart Hampshire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 113-43 especially p. 116, n. 1.
131. Thus Rawls writes: '[W]hen the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them'; Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 177.
132. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 205 (emphasis added).
133. ibid., p. 205, cf. n. 37.
134. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 5.
135. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Stefan Collini (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989[1859]), p. 103.
136. Cf. Larmore, 'Political Liberalism', p. 607.
137. Mill, On Liberty, p. 105 (emphasis added).
138. Berlin was thus inaccurate when he said that for Mill, 'The despot who leaves his subjects a wide area of liberty may be unjust, or encourage the wildest inequalities, care little for order, or virtue, or knowledge; but provided he does not curb their liberty, or at least curbs it less than many other regimes, he meets with Mill's specification' (Berlin, 'Two Concepts', p. 129). Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the subordination of women was not historically defended under the banner of liberal principles. Indeed, republican principles share a similar history. But the point is whether or not liberalism has, as part of its commitment to freedom as non-interference, the ability to address the battered-wife example proffered by republicans.
139. Larmore says that Mill does not fit into this category and that he expresses a view of freedom that 'goes back through Bentham to Hobbes' (Larmore, Morals of Modernity, p. 124, n. 2).
140. This view misunderstands Mill's principle of liberty. As Mill writes in Utilitarianism: 'The interest involved is that of security, to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests. Nearly all other earthly benefits are needed by one person, not needed by another; and many of them can, if necessary, be cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something else; but security no human being can possibly do without; on it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and for the whole value of all and every good, beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the gratification of the instance could be of any worth to us, if we could be deprived of anything the next instant by whoever was momentarily stronger than ourselves'; John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. H. B. Acton (New York: Dent, 1972[1863]), p. 56.
141. John Gray rightly notes of this passage that, 'Mill conceives of security primarily in terms of reliability of established expectations. Violation of one's legal rights . . . the kind of uncertainty which accompanies both arbitrary despotism and weak government - all these are circumstances in which expectations are subject to unpredictable disappointments which in Mill's view amount to an insecurity of freedom';
142. John Gray, Mill On Liberty: A Defense (New York: Routledge, 1983), ch. 3, pp. 53-4.
143. Waldron, 'Liberalism', p. 133.
144. Thus William Connolly observes that 'the notion of a constraint, then, involves the idea of a normal range of conduct people can be expected to undertake or forgo when doing so restricts the options of others' (Connolly, Terms, p. 165).
145. Locke, Two Treatises, p. 102.
146. As Locke writes on just this point: '[F]or law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation, as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish. . . . So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, "where there is no law, there is no freedom"; for liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others: which cannot be where there is not law: but freedom is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man to do what he lists" (for who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose and order as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own'; Locke, Two Treatises, pp. 123-4 (emphasis added).
147. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 302.
148. ibid., p. 241.
149. To be sure, Rawls does refer to 'Hobbes' thesis' in the section where he takes up the relationship between rule of law and liberty. However, on closer inspection, Rawls' reference is to Hobbes' insight concerning the tendency of agents to lack confidence in each other regarding compliance to the laws, and not to Hobbes' conception of freedom as Skinner believes. Thus, Rawls writes, 'the suspicion that others are not honoring their duties and obligation is increased by the fact that, in the absence of the authoritative interpretation and enforcement of the rules, it is particularly easy to find excuses for breaking them. . . . This proposition we may think of as Hobbes' thesis'; Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 240.
150. Cf. Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 61-80;
151. cf. Sullivan, Liberal Republicanism, Introduction, ch. 7.
152. Waldron, 'Liberalism', p. 134;
153. cf. Larmore, 'Political Liberalism'.
154. John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000[1935]), ch. 1.
155. Berlin, 'Two Concepts', pp. 147-78, 152-3.
156. Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizens, Virtues and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
157. William Galston, Liberal Purposes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
158. Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
159. All three thinkers are clear that liberalism has its own distinct virtues, but for them, especially Macedo and Galston, it will often be the case that we must appeal to extra-liberal institutions or a pre-liberal ethos to ensure that those virtues are consistently generated (Macedo, Liberal Virtues, p. 285;
160. cf. Galston, Liberal Purposes, pp. 257-89).
161. Of course the immediate question to ask, which I hope this article anticipates, is the following: who are these supposed liberals that Skinner and Pettit want to criticize? Perhaps, as Colin Bird suggested to me, they have the doctrine of economic liberalism in mind that is regularly employed in public discourse and the conventional ideology of corporate capitalism. The basic claim here is that freedom means leaving people to their own devices and limiting the right of the state to intrude in the private transactions of 'consenting adults'. The worry over discretionary power usually has as its target not the liberal state as such, but rather the corporations whose dominating practices might receive excessive protection under a regime that affirms a vision of negative liberty. I am inclined to say that none of the thinkers with whom I am concerned, especially Rawls, is a friend of this position. Indeed, we lump them in this category at the risk of simply getting them wrong.