Freedom An unruly history

Utrecht University historian de Dijn (French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville) explores how the concept of political freedom evolved from ancient Greece through the Cold War in this thought-provoking work of scholarship. Complicating the recent history of European and American politicians and commentators who define freedom as the limited role of government in an individual's life, de Dijn reveals that ancient Greek and Romans writers explored the notion of freedom in terms of democratic self-rule. Their ideas were revived by Renaissance thinkers including Petrarch and Machiavelli, and eventually instigated a series of 18th-century revolutions in the Americas and Europe. According to de Dijn, backlash to those revolutions helped shift the concept of freedom in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as German philosopher Johann August Eberhard differentiated between civil and political liberty, and Swiss-French intellectual Benjamin Constant furthered that distinction as one between ancient and modern sensibilities. De Dijn's deep-dive into this abstract concept helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning. Dense yet accessible, this deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization. (Aug.)

An authoritative history of changing Western ideas of freedom. In this sweeping narrative, which covers more than two millennia, Utrecht University historian de Dijn advances two central arguments, each persuasive and clearly backed by impressive scholarship. The first is that the original Western understanding of freedom, born with the Greeks, was what we call popular government, or rule by the people. Yet gradually and more decisively, since the American and French revolutions, freedom has come to be seen as the condition of being left alone by government, a condition embodying another, distinct kind of liberty: inner freedom and freedom of conscience. The author's second argument, the freshest and likely to be the most influential, is that this shift--a "dramatic rupture" and "backlash"--owes itself not to liberal thinkers but rather to conservative, counterrevolutionary opponents of democracy who feared government in the people's hands. Nevertheless, within the context of the Cold War, this ideal of freedom, originating with the anti-revolutionary right, "ultimately came to be reimagined as the key value of Western civilization." Yet because of the expansion of political and other rights to women, workers, and minorities, what's today taken to be the "liberal understanding of freedom"--freedom from government--can actually be seen in many quarters as "a thinly veiled defense of elite interests rather than an appealing political idea," as it was in earlier times. A narrative exposition rather than a critique of others' interpretations, the book is unusually easygoing for a scholarly work on an elusive subject. The author's main strength is her clarifying directness. Analytical rather than argumentative, she shows how in our time, political freedom--"freedom for," that is, control by the people--has given way to private freedom--"freedom from," a moral ideal with antidemocratic implications. Thus endures the tension between collective and individual freedoms. A brilliantly crafted, compelling, and deeply relevant history for our times. (29 photos) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.