Classical Republicanism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Classical republicanism is a political and philosophical orientation that emphasizes a notion of freedom opposed to that under which slaves operate—namely, that of having a master, of being owned or dominated by another. It is an orientation that draws heavily on the Roman idea of the res publica, the “public interest” that many Roman thinkers argued had to be collectively and actively attended to if human beings were to safeguard their lives and communities from tyrannical actions.

Between Individualism And Communitarianism

While identifying and attending to the public or common interest involves a level of moral education and civic virtue, the effort to prevent domination typically requires the advancement of certain key political priorities and policies. These include the rule of law, the balanced involvement of different social and economic classes in government, the strong resistance to favoritism and corruption, and the prevention of the “professionalization” of political life through elections or rotations among political authorities. This classical republican way of viewing freedom is, in some ways, highly communitarian in that it accepts that human flourishing requires some sort of membership or communal order and that the freedom sought is one that is premised on the existence of or need for such collective arrangements. However, classical republicanism also may be seen as involving a different orientation from that usually associated with either liberal or communitarian arguments. Nondomination is not the same thing as noninterference, which suggests that individual freedom is always in tension with any kind of law, nor the same as self-mastery, which suggests that individual freedom is a matter of aligning one’s capabilities with larger or more general goals. It may be that classical republicanism suggests an alternative to the individualist/modern/negative versus communitarian/ancient/positive scheme that, in different ways, both Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin made central to their political theories and that has been prevalent in much Western political philosophy since the nineteenth century.

Origins

Many scholars claim that classical republicanism has had a clear—or at least easily discernable—intellectual lineage, moving from the patriotic and agrarian writings of Roman thinkers, leaders, and landowners, through the humanist revival in Florence and other cities during the Italian Renaissance. It then continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries via the writings of James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, and so-called commonwealth men such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. However, others have suggested that modern usages of the label classical republicanism, like civic humanism, are at least partly products of historiographic reconstruction rather than actual history, with several distinct historical bodies of thought being assembled to suggest a single coherent perspective on freedom, community, virtue, economics, and citizenship. Aside from this debate, the classical republican label is commonly used to express a distinct approach toward various political goals.

In the United States, classical republicanism has had a much more specific and identifiable history, in that several early leaders of both the American Revolution (1775–1783) and America’s national government strongly identified with various classical republican ideas, such as civic virtue, land ownership, social and economic independence, the cyclically recurring threat of faction and corruption, and the necessity of making certain that all citizens stand equal before the law. It must be noted that the egalitarian aims of classical republican thought did not necessarily include liberal or individualistic notions of social or economic equality; the key point was that no person ought to be subject to arbitrary treatment or be dominated by forces in response to which they have no appeal or recourse. The ideal of freedom as nondominion does not mandate that all be able to equally resist any action by the state or society in their personal lives or choices, but rather than any such action be aligned with the common interest, or the respublica. As we are all, ideally, to be understood as equal members of the community, laws that serve the interests of all would presumably not stigmatize certain sections of the whole, discriminate in unprincipled ways, or take the form of an arbitrary, dominating force. This particular orientation underlines the U.S. Constitution’s various countermajoritarian elements, such the separation of powers, the Electoral College, and the guarantee of certain rights. While these and other elements of the American founding can be explained in classical liberal, social contract terms, there is an undercurrent of republicanism to them that has emerged in the historical scholarship of recent decades as an important explanatory insight into the motivations of early American leaders. The aim of these devotees to classical republicanism was to make certain that the power exercised by the national government could always be contested by those who would challenge it as not supporting the good of the nation.

Conclusion

However, the distinction between populist and republican appreciations of government is a contested one. Some classical republicanism scholars suggest that the pursuit of the common good must be connected to citizens’ active involvement in public life. If not, then citizens will not have the breadth of experiences necessary for them to learn what truly common goods entail, and private interests and arbitrary discriminations likely will creep back into the operations of government. On the other hand, other scholars argue that this participatory, even democratic, interpretation of republicanism partakes of a neo-Athenian reading of the republican legacy. The argument over to what extent popular democratic action, including organized majorities, should play in the development of civic virtue and the protection of republican freedom is central to the question of how classical republicanism may be ultimately related to classical liberal and communitarian ideas.

Bibliography:

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In Four Essays on Liberty, 118–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Dagger, Richard. Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Honohan, Iseult. Civic Republicanism. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Rahe, Paul A. Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Wartenberg,Thomas E. The Forms of Power: From Domination to Transformation. Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1990.
Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic: 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

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