The intimate connexion between the concept of freedom and that of equality in
Sophism, Cynicism, Stoicism, and Judeo-Christianity, has been the object of our
investigation in `From Freedom to Freedom', which has showed, on one hand, that
their hand-in-hand development, as a result of the increasingly subjective
standpoint from which the relationship with the sacred was viewed, was marked by
an increasing abstraction, and, on the other hand, that the subversive potential
they possessed intrinsically developed accordingly. The time is now to go
further into the examination of the influence of this twin concept on the
formation of the civilisation which is known as the `European civilisation',
and, beyond this, on the Teutonic spirit.
To begin with, there is some wisdom in dwelling on the fallaciousness of two
related theories on the early Germans.
The first is the theory concerning their `freedom' and `equality' and their
so-called self-government, which had its origins in the `German' nationalist
aspirations of the eighteenth century, only to be furthered in the nineteenth
century by the liberal claim that the political institutions of the ancient
Germans, as described by Tacitus, were essentially of a democratic and
constitutionalist character. Even though it was brushed aside conclusively as a
romantic fancy a long time ago, it seems to be assumed and proclaimed again by
the Marxists who make up much of the current self-styled anti-establishment
intelligentsia on our continent nowadays, especially in France and in Italy.
Equality of all free men - and not equality of all men - formed the basis of the
ancient Teutonic society. Out of the four classes the early Germanic society was
composed of, namely the nobiles, the freeborn, the freedmen, and the slaves,
only the first two had political power, while the freedmen and the slaves did
not enjoy any political rights ; nor did women ; these « were not in any sense
members of the legal community », yet « the unfree might be manumitted, and
emancipation usually secured to them half-freedom. Such half-free persons, or
serfs (`Hoerigen', `Liten', `Aldien') were capable of rights ; but they
continued to be marked off from the full freemen by the lack of liberty of
domicile » (1), an essential measure to curtail traffic. In fact, « Early
Germanic society was not democratic ; it was very conscious of differences in
class and rank. » (2) The primary sources are so clear about it that it is hard
not to think that it was merely to push their political agenda that XIXth
century `German' nationalists deliberately ignored the fundamental and critical
distinction between equality of all men and equality of all free men.
The second is the assumption that the Christian proclamation of the primacy and
the supremacy of certain rights and interests of the individual over any of his
duties to the state could resonate with the very high idea of personal
independence, the emphasis on the value and importance of the individual man as
compared with the state, which was characteristic of the Teutonic tribes. (3) It
is based on the mistaken and somehow romantic notion that liberty and
independence had the same meaning for the German and for the Christians. With a
reference to the Anglo-Saxon freeman that can be applied to a large extent to
all German freemen, S. Turner sets the record straight in this respect : « In
talking of the Anglo-Saxon freemen, we must not let our minds expatiate on an
ideal character which eloquence and hope have invested with charms almost
magical. No Utopian state, no paradise of such a pure republic as reason can
conceive, but as human nature can neither establish nor support, is about to
shine around us when we describe the Anglo-Saxon freeman. A freeman among our
ancestors was not that dignified independent being, `lord of the lion heart and
eagle eye,' which our poets fancy under this appellation ; he was rather an
Anglo-Saxon not in a servile state ; not property attached to the land as the
slaves were ; he was freed from the oppression of arbitrary bondage ; he was
often a servant, and had a master, but he had the liberty to quit the service of
one lord and to choose another. » (4) Their state of freedom had great benefits
and some inconvenients. It was based on rights and duties.
This is not to say that there is not truth to the belief that the modern concept
of representative and constitutional government developed gradually from the
political institutions of the early Germans, and, in the last analysis, from
their notion of individual liberty and their system of common laws. It is true
insofar and only insofar as it takes account of the involutory and parodic
character of the whole process. In ancient Germany, « 'Parity' referred in a
legitimate and virile way only to `free men' and `nobles', beyond any difference
in nature… however, the democratisation and the inversion of this concept led to
the egalitarian `immortal principle', precisely as a tool of world-wide
subversion. » In short, « It is enough to desecrate [principles such as this
one], to secularise and to democratise them, so as to make them an ideal for any
individual whatsoever, so as to make them weapons of subversion and to arrive at
anarchism and individualism, that is to say, to errors and attitudes which would
result in the negation and the destruction of the spiritual plane, the only one
to which these principles could apply legitimately. » (5) The ultimate and
practical consequences of this illegitimate conceptual extension of inborn
quality of freedom to all men in the political domain are well summarised in
`Men among the Ruins' : « Where there is equality there cannot be freedom : what
exists is not pure freedom, but rather the many individual, domesticated, and
mechanized freedoms, in a state of reciprocal limitation. Paradoxically, that
kind of freedom could approximately be realized in the system that is most
opposite to liberal preferences : namely, in the system in which the social
question is resolved in such a way as to guarantee certain privileges for a
small group, at the cost of the total subjugation of everybody else. If carried
to its extreme consequences, the figure of a tyrant would then be the most
perfect concretization of this concept or ideal of formless freedom. » While,
down to Carolingian times, only the freeman of the tribe had the right and the
duty to take part in the `thing', the assembly, experience in democratic
conditions, such as those the occupied countries of our continent are under,
shows increasingly that the indiscriminate granting of civil and political
rights to any adult who is not disqualified by the laws of the country, without
distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, is a recipe for such a
disaster, through popular vote, universal suffrage.(6)
A lot of water would pass under the bridge before the old Germanic institutions
and the notion of freedom which they embodied would be prostituted. While it
does not fall within the scope of this study to reconstruct this process, it is
important to remember that the egalitarian view can be traced to the
Deuteronomic code and the Prophets, to Yahweh's « burning compassion for the
oppressed », and that the expression it naturally found in the organisation of
some early `oppressed' Christian communities went underground in the
institutionalised Church of the "Middle-Ages" only to resurface more acutely in
later times, beginning with the emphasis on liberty and equality as `natural
rights' that is found in Calvin, Hobbes, as well as in the U.S. Declaration of
Independence. « The way in which the various ekklesiai in different localities
originally organized themselves varied, though, at least in some, local leaders,
both men and women, were democratically elected (Acts 6). Likewise, major issues
facing the expanding church were dealt with in council and often by consensus. »
(7) As the development of Christian orthodoxy resulted in increasing
hierarchical structures of the church, in order to ostracise and to control
heretical apocalyptic and millenarian factions, where women shared an equal
status with men, more radical groups emerged which « have retrieved those
socially subversive texts within Scripture which demand liberation, justice, and
equity, for the poor and oppressed… » and « have kept alive the utopian
prophetic vision of an egalitarian and participatory society both in the church
and in the public arena, while « others, inspired by the same prophetic vision,
but less utopians in their expectations and usually less radical in their
strategies, have likewise struggled for freedom… In doing so they have helped to
develop social structures which have found particular expression in
representative forms of democracy » (8) To put it bluntly, « Christianity, or
the religion of the Bible, is emphatically and distinctively, THE religion of
the equal and common brotherhood of mankind… And this feature embodies the only
solid foundation for the principle of democracy. » (9) Now, the Christian notion
of brotherhood is nothing else than freedom in equality.
(1) Hübner R., A History of Germanic Private Law, New Jersey : The Lawbook
Exchange Ltd, 2000, p. 89.
(2) Strayer, J. R., The Mainstream of Civilization, vol. 1, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich Inc., 1989, p. 146.
(3) Adams, G. B., Civilization During the Middle Ages Especially in Relation to
Modern Civilization, New-York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. Chap. V.
(4) Turner, S., The history of the Anglo-Saxons, comprising the history of
England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest, vol. 3, Longman, Brown,
Green, and Longmans, 1823, p. 84.
(5) Cf. Evola, J., Fenomenologia della sovversione. L'Antitradizione in scritti
politici del 1933-70, Ed. SeaR, coll. « Il Cinabro », 1993.
(6) In the Carolingian period, limitations on the legislative rights of the old
assembly were imposed by the introduction of lay assessors responsible to the
emperor for the administration of justice, who prevented the freeman from taking
an active part at the thing and expressing his approval in the time-honoured way
: he `was entitled only to attend'. Green, D. H., Language and History in the
Early Germanic World, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 39. If the
representative assembly as a political institution and the corresponding appeal
to the lower rank of society goes back to the XIIIth century, the institution of
the Schöffen could be seen as the first step to the establishment and the
generalisation of representative system.
(7) De Gruchy, J.W. Christianity and Democracy : A Theology for a Just World
Order, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 51.
(8) Ibid., p. 52-53.
(9) Ibid., p. 19.