Page - 66 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

67 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does his will impress it- self upon the wall; nothing confirms in his eyes his own cooperation. The exercise of political rights, therefore, offers us but a part of the pleas- ures that the ancients found in it, while at the same time the progress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communication amongst peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of per- sonal happiness. It follows that we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual independence. For the ancients when they sac- rificed that independence to their political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more, while in making the same sacrifice, we would give more to obtain less” (Constant 1988, 316–317). The growth of the private individual’s importance is directly proportion- al to the decline of his political relevance and of the “vivid and repeated pleasure” resulting from the collective recognition that came with it. Lost amidst the anonymous body of the multitude and in the “commercial ten- dency of the age”, the modern subject finds a new secure ground in the search for self and the attachment to his own individual independence. As a replacement of the lost politeia, the modern individual asserts its nega- tive liberty, which is understood as the search for one’s personal security relieved from any common obligation. “The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citi- zens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security in private pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures” (Constant 1988, 317). In this passage, Constant offers us a clear and effective definition of mod- ern liberty: the latter denotes the peaceful enjoyment of private autonomy. Freedom undergoes a process of individualization and immunization from the collective body. Employing the interpretative apparatus of the politi- cal philosopher Roberto Esposito, one could say that the community is no longer communitas but immunitas, or, more precisely, the community comes to correspond to the paradox of a communitas grounded in an im- munitas, i.  e. to a self-contradictory and self-suppressing movement (see Esposito 2011). Being opposed to one another, immunity drains the com- mon of all its potentialities, wearing out its connective tissue to the point of undermining its supporting structure. Negative freedom as a replacement of the lost politeia