A discussion has broken out about the end of liberalism and emergence of the age of the tyrant. Our political term ‘liberalism’ refers to civil liberties, constitutional government, free trade and so on. It used to mean something very different.
‘Liberalism’ comes from the Latin word līber, ‘free’ (nothing to do with liber, short i, ‘book’). The noun lībertās carried the full range of words relating to the idea of ‘freedom’. But the adjective līberālis referred to the status of a human being in the full meaning of that word, who was not a slave, a non-person, without rights of any sort, but gentlemanly, well educated, noble, magnanimous, munificent, lavish. Cicero also thought of the concept in terms of beneficentia, especially gift-giving, and warned that such ‘kindness’ should not be beyond our means, nor hurtful to anyone, but in proportion to the worthiness of the recipient, and ‘subject to judgment and mature consideration… in accordance with the principles of fellowship and society that have been established among men’.
Seneca, an adviser to the Emperor Nero, composed a whole treatise on the subject. ‘The giving of benefits is the chief bond of human society; for, in the first place, if you take away this practice, no house or city can stand… how else do we live in security, if it is not that we help each other by an exchange of good offices? It is only through the interchange of benefits that life becomes in some measure equipped and fortified against sudden disasters. Take us singly and what are we?’
But when it came to the universal distribution of largesse from central government, Seneca argued that this did not make him a debtor in the normal sense of the word but was still ‘an act that laid him under an obligation’, which demanded a response. Such līberālitās from the political centre, seen to temper self-interest and support a culture of mutual dependence, came to be a principle regularly used as a guide to good government. What happy days those must have been… yes, Sir Ed?
The charity Classics for All is seeking a new chair to succeed Jimmy Mulville: www.peridotpartners.co.uk/jobs/chair-classics-for-all
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