Liberalism

Essay by ArjontCollege, UndergraduateA, November 2006

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Liberalism could be defined as the opposite of the unlimited power that a king would enjoyed for example in the17th century. The kings used to have absolute power by which they decided the fate of all their peasants, no matter they agree or not. In this unlimited power, the opinion of an individual person an his independence was nor consider at, neither it was the will of the community, the only will that was satisfied was the king's will, even if the community was totally hurt by the king's will. Liberalism is also divided in two branches, liberal liberalism and modern liberalism.

The modern liberalism stresses the importance of the liberty of each individual limiting the power of the government as much as possible while the modern liberalism gives more power to the government. The theorist Benjamin Constant, (1767-1838) stresses clearly the opposition of the classical liberal thinking to the unlimited power in his book "On the Limits of the Popular Sovereignty": "No authority on earth is unlimited, neither the people's, nor that of the men who claim to be their representatives, nor that of kings whatever their rule, nor that of the law which, being nothing but the expression of the will of the people or the prince, according to the form of government, must kept within the same bounds as the authority from which it emanates" ( Sources, 138).

He claims that society could be held successfully limiting the power that governs, and by that, every individual person would enjoy independence and freedom.

One of the main points of the classical liberalism is evidently emphasized in the book of Jeremy Benetham "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and legislation". Jeremy makes clear that in a liberal society the good of the individual in the community is more...