I would prefer not to double post, but I worry that my next response would become lost in the shuffle if I attach it to the above...
The statement you asked me to elaborate, and subsequently paraphrased, means that the notion of individual rights was understood and articulated within a specific social context. It's absolutely correct to claim that prior to a specific period in time and a particular branch of philosophy that the notion of individual rights in Western Europe was simply unimaginable. I don't want to go into how that relates to the discussion at hand, other than to state that any statesman was aware that his writings, debating points, and positions on a particular topic were subject to, and interpenetrated by, the social context within which he operated.
In short, I wouldn't put too much stock in the "beliefs" of politicians caught between an illiterate, rowdy bunch of farmers roaming the countryside, in need of the rule of law rather than rule of the king, and a state-sponsered religion and its adherents they just broke themselves away from as derived from what they said and wrote to the people paying attention to them.
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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