Page - 63 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

64 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom duty: binding all men, what reason dictates must be realized with intention towards human unity and sociality as well as the order of the whole uni- verse. In this sense, liberty is that which cements a group ensuring its self- preservation, since each of its members belongs to it not on the basis of a property principle but rather based on a system of duties and mutual debts (the word communitas includes the idea of munus3), i.  e. a system of bonds and belonging within which the individual emerges against the background of a real sociality. It is not by chance that, precisely during the Hellenistic period, when independent democracies lose weight and value within the vastness of the Macedonian empire, philosophers start elaborating forms of life more responsive to the quest for inner peace and the desire of with- drawing from the turmoil of the external world. Epicureans and Stoics lay the groundwork for the construction of an “inner citadel” (Marcus Aure- lius) that could protect from the chaos and abuses of power of the external world, thereby defending an intimate space of subjective autonomy and freedom. If it is true that this philosophical trajectory – what Pierre Hadot defines as an ensemble of authentic spiritual exercises – is the prerogative of an intellectual and well-off élite, it is possible to show an actual cor- respondence between the “care of the self” and the decline of the ancient democracy, or, for similar reasons, of the Roman republic. Such an emphasis on a shared ethos as the ground for the cultivation and preservation of liberty is the hallmark of the ancients: in this respect, an- cient liberty also goes by the name of positive liberty (of freedom to) as the concrete possibility of autonomously living and planning one’s private and public life within a democratic context. Ancient liberty is “positive” be- cause it makes reference to the possibility of determining one’s own will towards an end beyond any kind of subjection, just as freedom is “nega- tive” when it underlines the absence of constraints or despotic authorities that determine an individual’s action in a heteronomous way. Anyway, lib- erty in antiquity is liberty within the polis, within the community, and not freedom from the polis or from community, whereby one can speak of “a socialized freedom, a freedom that results from the security of belonging in many places” (Murray 1995, 242). It is this security that undergoes a major transformation in the course of modernity. Ancient liberty goes by the name of positive liberty as the concrete possibility of autonomously living within the community. 3 Roberto Esposito shows that the term communitas connects the affec- tive tone of gift [munus] with the an- onymous burden of duty and honour [onus]. Originally, munus refers to the gift understood as a duty, as an obligation towards others, whereby it stands for what is not one’s own, what begins where the sphere of one’s possessions ends: “the munus that the communitas shares isn’t a property or a possession [apparte- nenza]. It isn’t having, but on the contrary, is a debt, a pledge, a gift