Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism / Larry Siedentop

This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think. The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy.

There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are.

'A most impressive work of philosophical history.' Robert Skidelsky

'This is a strange and disturbing moment in Western history.  Europeans - out of touch with the roots of their tradition - often seem to lack conviction, while Americans may be succumbing to a dangerously simplistic version of their faith.  On neither side of the Atlantic is there an adequate understanding of the relationship between liberal secularism and Christianity.  Failure to understand that relationship makes it easier to underestimate the moral content of liberal secularism.  If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the coversation of mankind?' from the Epilogue

'Inventing the Individual opens up a new and original approach to the Middle Ages and redresses in a much needed way a balance between them and the Renaissance.  It has coherence and intellectual drive in rare degree.  It also comments incisively on our present time.  It ought to come to be considered an important book.' Henry Mayr-Harting