http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5430/full HT: The Dish

But where do our ideas about the meaning of liberty come from? This is the topic addressed by Larry Siedentop in his erudite and elegantly-written Inventing the Individual. No doubt to the dismay of many, Siedentop’s thesis is that our modern understanding of human agency, and therefore of the liberty of the individual, has its roots deep in the moral intuitions of Christianity. 

Not only this, but at the core of both ancient thinking and ancient society was the assumption of natural inequality. Different levels of social status, Siedentop argues, reflected what were taken to be inherent differences of being. Crucially, it was this assumption of natural inequality that was to be overturned by the Pauline interpretation of the significance of the life of Christ. As Siedentop expresses it, Paul wagered on human equality and in doing so he set out a Christian understanding of community as “the free association of the wills of morally equal agents”.

But there is another aspect of his argument that is well worth dwelling upon. One of Siedentop’s key points is that the Christian belief in the equality of souls made it no longer possible to conceive of government primarily as rule over families, clans and castes. In short, the aristocratic character of the ancient city was destroyed. Henceforth, government would be seen as rule over individuals. Here is to be found the birth of the idea of the modern state. Yet, by making the individual, as opposed to the group, the object of rule, was there not the very high risk that the individual could become the bearer of equal subjection rather than of equal liberty? Could not the state as well as the church be an instrument of tyranny?