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9 - Liberty as Independence Reaffirmed

from Part V - The Rival Views in Contestation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2025

Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Queen Mary, University of London
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Summary

Chapter 9 illustrates the immediate counterblast to which Price’s critics were subjected by a number of writers who continued to insist that liberty is a matter of possessing an independent will, not merely of not unrestrained from acting as you choose. Some leading Anglicans took up this position in their support of Price, including Richard Watson and Peter Peckard. But it was Price himself who answered his critics most fully. He admitted (although not explicitly) that he had given too broad a definition of slavery, but forcefully denied that he had confused the state of being at liberty with that of possessing security for your liberty. He countered that, unless you are free from the possibility of being restrained, you are not in possession of your liberty, because you remain in a condition of subjection and servitude. The chapter concludes by noting that this way of thinking about liberty gained much additional support after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Burke denounced the revolution, but he was in turn denounced by Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine, all of whom saw in the revolution a successful uprising against arbitrary and despotic power in the name of liberty as independence.

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Liberty as Independence
The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal
, pp. 229 - 254
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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