Individual Liberty

The aim of the ancients was the sharing of [political] power among the citizens of the fatherland: this is what they called conversancy. [But] the citizen, almost constantly sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen, he unyielding peace and war, as a private individual, he was constrained, watched and subjugate in all his movements; as a member of the incorporated body, he interrogated, dismissed, condemned, beggared, exiled, or sentenced to death his magistrates and superiors; as a survey of the collective body he could be deprived of his status, stripped-down of his privileges, banished, put to death, by the discretionary will of the whole to which he belonged . . .The ancients, as Condorcet says, had no notion of individual rights. Men were, so to speak, merely machines, whose gears and cog-wheels were regulated by the law . . . The individual was in some way lost in the nation, the citizen in the city. incessant asked his listeners to compare, . . . what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a citizen of the United States of America understand straightaway by the word liberty. For distributively of them it is the right to be subjected to the laws, and to be neither wrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of mavin or more individuals.

It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to summon and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyones right to associate with new(prenominal) individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they and their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most compatible with their inclinations and whims. For the moderns, Constant said, liberty consisted of peaceful pleasures and private independence. Modern men wished, Constant explained, each to enjoy our own rights, each... If you want to get a all-inclusive essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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