POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: French Revolution, Nuclear Family, Territorial Authorities Of New Zealand
Document Summary
Constant and the rise of liberalism: benjamin constant is an important thinker of the 19th century. Constant is a classic liberal who believes in individual freedom: is my freedom to do whatever i want free from your interference, constant had nothing to go by he was working fro scratch. The notion of self-government was what constant looked at first. Greece (that was the first to be self-governed: what the ancients meant by liberty was that: Direct- you were directly involved in the deliberation of the legislative process. Public not private liberty - what they meant was that your deliberations were not controlled by a higher party. It was a public freedom that stated that you would not participate in politics for your own private benefits, but for collective benefits for everybody. Freedom for the ancients was a collective concept, rather than an individual one. Dependent upon a class of people who didn"t engage in commerce or even work.