Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
Freedom and democracy are great, but our understanding of what those things are has changed a lot since we came up with them.

- Philosopher Ben Constant explains how democracy today is nothing like what it used to be.
- His arguments show us that debates around what freedom actually is can go in very strange directions.
- Remember how busy the Athenian citizens were next time you think there are too many questions on the ballot.
When people talk about freedom and democracy, they often trace the lineage of both back 2,000 years to the rocky shores of Greece or to the Senate of Rome. However, the freedom they had in the ancient world was a bit different than what we have today, with significant benefits for us.
The ancient democrats wouldn’t think you live in a democracy
According to French philosopher Benjamin Constant‘s lecture The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns, the freedoms enjoyed by ancient peoples were fundamentally different than the ones we enjoy now.
He explains that Greek democracy:
…consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them.
That is to say, democracy and freedom meant popular participation in the political process. Any citizen might find themselves weighing the merits of war and peace, having to cast a vote on significant issues, or giving a speech on the need for more public spending to a crowd of hundreds. However, this increased democratic power came at a high personal cost. Constant explains:
…among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen, he decided on peace and war; as a private individual, he was constrained, watched and repressed in all his movements; as a member of the collective body, he interrogated, dismissed, condemned, beggared, exiled, or sentenced to death his magistrates and superiors; as a subject of the collective body he could himself be deprived of his status, stripped of his privileges, banished, put to death, by the discretionary will of the whole to which he belonged.
For the citizen in ancient times who could say they were free, the freedom part was the act of…
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