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The new book from Larry Siedentop, acclaimed author of Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today

 

 

'Magisterial, timeless, beautifully written ... Siedentop has achieved something quite extraordinary. He has explained us to ourselves' Spectator

 

This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think. The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy.

 

 

There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are.

 

 

Contents

Prologue : what is the West about? -- The world of antiquity. The ancient family ; The ancient city ; The ancient cosmos -- A moral revolution. The world turned upside down : Paul ; The truth within : moral equality ; Heroism redefined ; A new form of association : monasticism ; The weakness of the will : Augustine -- Towards the idea of fundamental law. Shaping new attitudes and habits ; Distinguishing spiritual from temporal power ; Barbarian codes, Roman law and Christian intuitions ; The Carolingian compromise -- Europe acquires its identity. Why feudalism did not recreate ancient slavery ; Fostering the "Peace of God" ; The papal revolution : a constitution for Europe? ; Natural law and natural rights -- A new model of government. Centralization and the new sense of justice ; The democratizing of reason ; Steps towards the creation of nation-states ; Urban insurrections -- The birth pangs of modern liberty. Popular aspirations and the friars ; The defence of egalitarian moral intuitions ; God's freedom and human freedom joinded : Ockham ; Struggling for representative government in the church ; Dispensing with the Renaissance -- Epilogue : Christianity and secularism.

 

 

LARRY SIEDENTOP was appointed to the first post in intellectual history ever established in Britain, at Sussex University in the 1970's. From there he moved to Oxford, becoming Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought and a Fellow of Keble College. His writings include a study of Tocqueville, an edition of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, and Democracy in Europe, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Siedentop was made CBE in 2004.