Larry Siedentop

The majority of this book is fascinating and puts forth a strong case for Christianity being behind the modern cult of the individual.

The idea that things changed completely over night with the coming of the Renaissance is a little hard to believe so, I am very comfortable with Mr Siedentop's theory. The problem comes with the plea in the epilogue for secularism to link with Christianity in the fight against Islam. I have no wish to fight for Christianity or indeed against Islam.

Christianity was (notice the tense) integral to Western development but has become less and less significant in the modern day. I also felt that the author was a little too secure in his knowledge that individualism equates to equality.… (mais)

This is not an easy read. Siedentop delivers an almost purely intellectual history, focusing on mental images of people and society in ancient Antiquity and the Western Middle Ages. He jumps from thinker to thinker, constantly probing the concepts they use and what that says about their image of man and society.

His thesis is simple: the origin of secular liberalism, - conceived of as the intellectual current and attitude that puts the individual at the centre, as a unique acting object and as fundamentally equal to other individuals -, its origins don’t lie in the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, but much earlier, in medieval Christianity. "Secularism is Christianity's greatest gift to the world", he states. Christianity, through Paul and Augustine, put the freedom and equality of the acting man first, in contrast to ancient Antiquity, where inequality determined the character of society and each individual found its place in a certain, natural hierarchy. It took centuries for Christian intellectuals to focus on freedom and equality in their thinking and to make it a natural starting point for people and society. The major breakthrough took place between the 12th and 14th century, in the high Middle Ages. That is the central thesis of this book.

Siedentop certainly is not the first one to emphasize the Christian origins of our modern freedom and equality concept, and to revalue the Middle Ages for their contribution to the gradual development of that concept. But as far as I know, he is the first to do it so systematically and in detail. And every so often he shows unsuspected perspectives on developments in the Middle Ages, which I had not read about anywhere else. In short, it is impressive what Siedentop offers us, although it requires some concentration and perseverance from the reader to keep following his line of thinking.

But ... I did not feel wholly comfortable, as I read this work. There are some issues with the approach and focus of Siedentop, and especially his strongly Christian-apologetic undertone, and the teleological scope (exclusively aimed at proving his position). The critical remarks about that I have collected in my review for my Sense-of-History account on Goodreads. Follow this link https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1637620945.… (mais)

The new book from Larry Siedentop, acclaimed author of Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today

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.… (mais)

I was sent this book to read and I struggled to get through it. In fact, I skipped whole sections in the middle. It's very academic, extremely repetitive and, despite Seidentop's massive body of research, it only tells a very partial story. The whole thesis of the book is summed up in the epilogue and I wish I'd just read that. There's no doubt some truth in the thesis that modern day Western liberalism and democracy based on the freedom of the individual owes a great deal to historical developments in the Christian church but a whole host of other influences are left out including the populace of Western Europe (the peasants' revolt?).
As a result, the fascinating dilemma in modern western society which was his starting point for writing this book, is only addressed very schematically in a few pages at the end of the book - namely, the battle between religion and secularism, and particularly between western secular values and religious fundamentalism.… (mais)