Page - 60 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

61 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom “I wish to submit for your attention a few distinctions, still rather new, between two kinds of liberty: these differences have thus far remained unnoticed, or at least insufficiently remarked. The first is the liberty the exercise of which was so dear to the ancient peoples; the second the one the enjoyment of which is especially precious to the modern nations” (Constant 1998, 309). Constant’s speech is eminently political and must be read, against the background of the political climate of the Second Restoration in France, as a potential explanation of revolutionary terror. Constant defines it as “our happy revolution (I call it happy, despite its excesses, because I concentrate my attention on its results)” (Constant 1998, 309), thereby showing his adherence to the language and principles of the Enlightenment tradition. The first part of the speech is dedicated to the description of the two kinds of liberty and their comparison regarding the element the ancients and the moderns share, i.  e. a republican conception of the nature of sovereignty. Constant presents ancient liberty thusly: “The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgements; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community” (Constant 1998, 311). Constant interprets ancient liberty in light of the synthetic category of “collective sovereignty”, according to which each individual is fully sub- servient to the universal dimension of the community he belongs to. What is striking here is the image of the individual as a sovereign in the public and political domain and as a slave in the civil and private realm. The liberty the ancient peoples praised so much has nothing to do with civil rights and individual guarantees, but rather it concerns the possibility of being an ac- tive and substantial citizen of the polis. Hence, liberty amounts to the sub- jection of individuals to the collective body, which exerts an absolute power over their intimate lives. The absolute sovereignty in the political domain is paralleled by an equally absolute submission at the private level. One cannot deny that the moral and cultural constellation of Athens (es- pecially in the post-Periclean epoch) shows aspects that are different from