Royal Absolutism as a Pathway to Egalitarian Democracy in Western History

[Petr]

I think it is well known that in philosophic terms, Liberalism and Fascism share a common source in Hobbes. This statement was given by Strauss I think, or possibly his teacher Schmitt. I should give a link.

Well, this is how Benjamin Wiker saw the matter (this conservative Thomist writer has the talent of explaining complicated philosophical issues in such a way that tolerably intelligent ordinary people can understand them - he is a "popularizer" in the positive sense of the word).

Rousseau's theories about "the state of nature" were greatly influenced by Hobbes, even though he was partly reacting against him - one could say that Rousseau "stood Hobbes on his head," like Karl Marx did to Hegel:

Worshipping the state : how liberalism became our state religion : Wiker, Benjamin, 1960- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

376 pages ; 24 cm

archive.org

Hard and soft liberalism both have their roots in Rousseau. As we shall see, the difference between them arises from the above-mentioned contradiction in Rousseau’s thought – the notion that the state is on the one hand unnatural but on the other necessary for the re-creation of our original natural Edenic condition.​

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While Rousseau painted an Edenic picture of our unfallen, natural and animal-like condition, he also made it clear that humanity had irredeemably fallen from that condition. That is, we now live in highly developed societies with families, morality, private property and laws that protect it, vices that come with luxury, and virtues that are made necessary by the fact that we are no longer simple animals.​

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Against the debauched luxury of his own age, Rousseau preached the severities of ancient Sparta, of the primitive Teutonic peoples, and especially of republican Rome. All three of these political regimes were defined by a simplicity of life and manners and by the rough equality of citizen-soldiers. And all of them aimed at military virtue rather than artistic, economic, or intellectual development.17 This was a condition at least closer to our natural origins.​

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Rousseau’s admiration of the pagan Roman Republic, brought forward from Machiavelli, provided the intellectual inspiration for the Jacobins of the French Revolution, with their stress on virtue against the debauched upper classes and the church. By taking upon themselves the name “republicans” and setting up a French Republic they meant to reject Christianity as well as depraved eighteenth-century notions of nobility. Their return to pagan virtue allowed them to maintain the high moral ground, at least in their own minds, and vindicated their purifying brutality. Thus the figure of Robespierre, at once austerely virtuous and entirely savage.​

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The hard liberalism of the French Revolution was a child of Rousseau (and a grandchild of Machiavelli), as was the Romantic nationalism of both Fascism and Nazism, rooted in the primitive religio-mythic origins of, respectively, ancient Italy and Germany – pre-Christian cultures that Rousseau himself praised.​

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While hard liberalism embraces Rousseau’s praise of Sparta, the Teutonic tribes, and republican Rome, soft liberalism embraces Rousseau’s Eden. Both strains of liberalism are inspired by Rousseau, and both represent a rejection of Christianity. And the horrifying excesses of hard liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century have led to the victory of soft liberalism in France and Britain, and now in the United States. The goal of liberal politics today is not the creation of Spartan or Roman warriors. Instead, liberalism is creating a kind of soft techno-political paradise where Rousseau’s Adams and Eves can enjoy pleasure in peace.​

 

[Petr]

Even this kind of totalitarian PC madness...

...can find clear precedents in the history of royal despotism. For truly "omnipotent" statist power can "define its own reality" (in other words, it can play God). As the neocons liked to say:

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

www.theatlantic.com

This is like H.C. Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome in action - if the supreme authority says that day is night, who are you to contradict this official statement? Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?

Here is a concrete example of this phenomenon from the Roman Empire. That people who had once been slaves, let alone born as slaves, would always carry that stigma of servility even after being freed, was a commonplace truism for ancient Romans as much as "men are men and women are women" is for us today.

But, if the imperial power happened to greatly favour some exceptionally powerful freedman, it could, by official declaration, decree that this guy was a "freeborn" person after all, and was to be treated as such. In other words, retroactively changing the facts of his birth by simple statist fiat.

(And this principle has endless other applications as well, like for example declaring that the Somali immigrants fresh off the boat are "Englishmen" just as much as the descendants of Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain.)​

To ordinary, conservative-minded Romans, this kind of procedure - giving a former slave the honorary title of "freeborn" - was almost as obnoxious and artificial as it is for us today when we are told that someone who was born a male should be considered female, or vice versa. But they could not argue against Caesar's might. As this academic book about the Roman freedmen explains:

https://books.google.fi/books?id=sOWxzU66-7sC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q&f=false

Octavian first granted freeborn status to Sex. Pompey’s freedman Menas/Metrodorus, who had betrayed his patron and thereby given Octavian control over Corsica, Sardinia, sixty ships, and three legions.198 Later, the freed physician Antonius Musa, credited with Augustus’ recovery in 23 BCE, also received the right in addition to many other honours.199 The new status was a legal fiction ‘imago’, which posited that while the recipient remained a freedman in relation to his patron he became an ingenuus in relation to all others. ​

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The ius illustrated how the ruler could overturn the social order, and it may seem surprising that it was Augustus, otherwise intent on maintaining a conservative image, who masterminded this invention.​

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The ius anulorum aureorum involved the miraculous suspension of the freedman’s servile ‘stain’, but emperors would gradually introduce an even more subversive legal device, which transformed the freedman into a freeborn. Through the process of restitutio natalium emperors would ‘restore’ the free birth of favoured freedmen, granting them complete ingenuitas.202 The procedure derived from real cases of restored free birth which could be claimed before the courts.203 In the early empire it seems that some ‘evidence’ of free birth usually was produced, but later the process became entirely fictitious. As a result, a person’s past could now be retrospectively altered by imperial fiat, and although such instances may have been rare, they nevertheless cast a revealing light on the emperor’s ability to define his own reality.​

 

[Petr]

And this question - the supposed ability of statist power to mould reality according to its arbitrary will - is also very much what the famed historical drama A Man For All Seasons was all about.

I have to say, nowhere else do the representatives of the Popish church look better than when opposing despotic secular power in this manner (although of course they seek to uplift the despotic spiritual power of Roman popes against it):

A Man For All Seasons Script - transcript from the screenplay and/or the Paul Scofield as Thomas More movie

A Man For All Seasons Script taken from a transcript of the screenplay and/or the Paul Scofield as Thomas More movie

www.script-o-rama.com

Then he said, "But I will put you a higher case. How, if there were an act of parliament, to say that God should not be God?"

 

[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

Provide an example of a democracy in Western history.

Provide an example of an egalitarian society in Western history.