Introduction. The Liberty of the Moderns Compared with Itself

Abstract

During the period from Benjamin Constants's discourse on The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns (1891) to Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty (1958) a reconstruction of the modern concept of liberty has been developed, based upon three theoretical pillars: individualism, commercial society, representative government. This concept has dominated the historiographical debate for a long time, as only in the last years the emergence of a neo-republican idea of liberty has questioned it; however, not even this neo-republican version has really undermined the conceptual frame of liberalism, thus becoming an internal variant of the “liberty of Moderns”. Therefore it is a very important task to address directly to some early-modern thinkers and theoretical contexts, in order to reopen the debate on the genesis of modern liberties, and more in general to consider political modernity as a non-pacified space, within which different visions confront and conflict with each other.