Vol. 9 No. 6 (June 1999) pp. 280-282.
THE SACRED FIRE OF LIBERTY: REPUBLICANISM, LIBERALISM, AND THE LAW by M.N.S. Sellers. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 201 pp.
Reviewed by Mark Kessler, Department of Political Science, Bates College.
For the past thirty years or so, scholars in a variety of disciplines have challenged the thesis of Louis Hartz (1955) that the political culture of the United States has been based historically on a hegemonic liberal consensus emphasizing individual liberty, equal rights, and government by consent. Research and writing in history, American political thought, and legal studies highlights the significance at the time of the American revolution and perhaps later of an alternative republican political tradition, emphasizing active citizenship, the public good, popular sovereignty, and civic virtue. Some, such as J.G.A. Pocock (1975), argued that the discovery of this republican tradition constituted a paradigm shift, replacing the Hartzian description of an individualistic liberal consensus with a more communal republican consensus. Others, such as the historian Gordon Wood (1969), argued that the republicanism shaping the revolutionary period gave way after the adoption of the Constitution to a more liberal political culture that thereafter guided political practice. Numerous historians have challenged Wood’s argument, suggesting that republican principles had a longer life in the United States, persisting into the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
In recent years, scholars have begun to criticize the view that either republicanism or liberalism alone describes American political culture at any point in time. Instead, these works seek to synthesize the two major ideological strands (e.g., Ackerman, 1991) or suggest that several ideologies circulate simultaneously throughout history and constitute multiple political traditions (e.g., Smith, 1997). Sellers’ book, THE SACRED FIRE OF LIBERTY, focuses its attention solely on liberalism and republicanism, viewing them as mutually reinforcing ideologies that operate together throughout history and throughout the history of the United States.
The book’s major thesis is that the meaning of the concepts "liberty" and "republic" evolved together, beginning in ancient Rome in the writings of Cicero and Livy. They continued to be understood as concepts that were compatible until liberals eventually questioned the utility of popular control after witnessing abuses in Europe associated with events like the French Revolution. Sellers puts it like this:
"The words ‘liberty’ and ‘republic’ developed together throughout most of their history, and almost always appeared in tandem. ‘Republic’ meant a state that pursued the common good of its citizens, ‘liberty’ the status of citizens in a republic, whom no one restricted, except to serve the common good. At a very early period republicans concluded that there could be no liberty or common good without popular sovereignty, constrained by a senate and other restraints on majority despotism. ‘Liberty’ and ‘republicanism’ diverged only when liberals lost faith in popular sovereignty, following Cromwell’s ‘commonwealth’ and the French revolution" (p. 3).
Sellers’ suggests that, since its origins in Rome, republicanism’s emphasis on balanced government, popular sovereignty, and the rule of law provided the ideological underpinnings and institutional structures needed to promote liberty. "Republican structures of government," he writes. "supply the authority needed to support liberal assertions of universal rights and justice" (p. Ix). Writing in opposition to libertarian conceptions of liberty, Sellers argues throughout the book that true republican liberty is impossible without law.
The book is divided into four parts. The first section examines the historical context of republican liberty, tracing its origins in Rome through its reemergence in Italy, England, France, and the United States. A second section elaborates conceptions of liberty developed by leading republican theorists. Individual chapters focus on the writings of Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington, Sidney, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adams, and Madison. Innovations in thinking about liberty in the writings of Hobbes, Coke, Locke, and Blackstone are featured in chapters composing a third section. A final section compares republican conceptions of liberty, based on political structures and institutions that protect individuals from actions of others and the state, with a modern liberalism that abandons or, at least, deemphasizes these institutional structures.
The book has two stated purposes: "to demonstrate and explain the origins of liberty in republican doctrine" and "to revive republican ideals in modern liberalism, through a return to first principles" (p. 2). Although students of American political and legal culture will find much that is suggestive, provocative, and useful in this work, the book is much too brief to fully achieve either purpose.
Sellers does an adequate job of showing how one might argue that "liberty" plays an important role in republican thought. But the book ranges broadly over many theorists and topics so that none are treated in any depth. The chapters of this book (not including notes, bibliography, and index) constitute only 130 pages of writing. These pages are divided into 35 chapters, with individual chapters extending only a few pages each. These chapters are so brief that the author is unable to provide much context or depth or provide much critical commentary. In Chapter 3, for example, Sellers’ discusses five important figures in Italian Renaissance republican politics--Bruni, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Savonarola, and Giannotti--in five pages. The political theory of Montesquieu is covered in six paragraphs in Chapter 12; Chapter 13 consists of seven paragraphs on Rousseau; James Madison is covered in seven paragraphs constituting Chapter 15 (this is especially problematic since Sellers’ writes that the United States Constitution is the single best written expression of republican liberty). Chapter 29, titled "Natural Law," consists of three paragraphs on one-half page (p. 109); Chapter 26, titled "Rights," consists of three paragraphs on one full page (p. 104).
In addition to making it difficult for Sellers to fully explicate the origins and development of republican thought, this brief treatment of topics also complicates the project of making a persuasive case to "revive republican ideals in modern liberalism." Like many other works in legal studies and political thought that seek to revive republicanism, Sellers only makes brief mention of illiberal, inegalitarian, exclusionary strands in republican thought. Throughout the book, he argues that republicans view liberty as crucial. But he does not adequately address the fundamental political question of whether this liberty is promoted for all or only some of the populace.
Other more critical or cautious writers have suggested that republican notions of "virtue" and requirements for homogeneous populations of active citizens carry with them highly illiberal consequences (e.g., Herzog, 1986; Bloch, 1987; Takaki, 1990). A central unanswered question in this book is how an ideology that distinguishes between the virtuous and the corrupt and "the better and wiser citizens" (Sellers quoting Cicero, p. 46) and their opposite--distinctions that throughout history have been applied based on gender, racial, and class characteristics--can promote liberty for all people.
Sellers’ project, in sum, of reintroducing the common good into liberalism, of reconnecting "liberty" to notions of a community, seems worthy and promising. But it will need to be done in a more detailed and nuanced way than in this book for it to be persuasive. Moreover, such an effort requires that one explicitly acknowledge and confront the illiberal, exclusionary, inegalitarian strands of republican thought.
References
Ackerman, Bruce. 1991. We The People: Foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bloch, Ruth H. 1987. "The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America." Signs 13: 37-58.
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Herzog, Don. 1986. "Some Questions for Republicans." Political Theory 14: 473-493.
Pocock, J.G.A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Smith, Rogers M. 1997. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Takaki, Ronald. 1990. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wood, Gordon S. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.