Among the great forces which have dethroned tyrants, few stand so thoroughly victorious as liberalism. During the centuries following the revolution of Luther and the splintering of Christendom, it swept through the palaces of the civilized world like an unstoppable plague, wresting the scepters from the cold hands of kings. At its most ruthless it did not stop at severing the crowns from their heads, preferring also to sever their heads from their bodies; and up rose the multitudes who were once their subjects, taking the power to rule upon themselves, giving birth, over time, to what we call liberal democracy, and with it, the modern world.
To make sense of our current political landscape, we must consider this strange beast called liberalism. The force that drove masses to the murder of kings is the lifeblood of our world, and it flows through the very veins of modern man. It is easy enough to define liberalism: very simply, it is the “political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics.” But this basic definition can only take us so far; to know the strengths and shortcomings of the thing examined, we must look deeper. If we seek to nourish the virtues, and extinguish the vices, of the modern world, we must better understand what created them.
For this we turn not to the philosopher but to the poet. It is well to remember that poetry generally precedes philosophy in the history of ideas; Greece, for instance, was steeped in the great legends of Homer long before the birth of Socrates. So it was in England, where the poet Milton, and not the philosopher Locke, was the spokesman of the first of Europe’s great republican revolutions. John Milton was not only the foremost apologist for the triumphant Puritans after the English Civil War and the killing of King Charles I, but also the author of Paradise Lost, the unrivaled pinnacle of English epic poetry; it holds the same place in our language as the Odyssey in Greek and the Aeneid in Latin. The poem consists of a highly imaginative version of the story of the Fall of Man, as described in the biblical book of Genesis. It covers the fall of Satan and his followers from Heaven, the creation of Adam and Eve, the war between St Michael the Archangel and Satan, and, of course, the temptation and fall of humanity’s first parents.
The most compelling character in this narrative is the prince of the fallen angels, the author of mankind’s destruction. Milton’s Satan is unforgettable for his stubborn devotion to revolution and steadfast hatred for Heaven; in many readers he even arouses some measure of sympathy, if not admiration. When he realizes his cause of usurping God’s throne is lost, he persuades his legions that the best course of action is to attack the newly created and tenderly loved Adam and Eve. Unlike God, this strange new creature called Man might just be vulnerable; thus on them Satan resolves to exact his vengeance. But why not surrender? Is not submission to God preferable to misery in Hell? The great Tempter entices even the reader of the poem when he responds to this unspoken enquiry, affirming to his demons that it is “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”
Even those who do not believe in the Devil, upon reading this passage, may suddenly find themselves fallen under his spell. Who has not known intimately the allure of revolution? When have we heard it more beautifully expressed? In small and subtle ways we experience it in daily life, with our varied violations of the rules and authorities which surround us; like Satan, we assert our individuality, whenever we can, against the will of those who have power; like Satan, we know it to be a pleasure and a thrill. It is here that his cause most evokes our sympathy and respect; it is here that we most easily forget that he has well earned his title as the Father of Lies.
According to Satan, total authority over himself is preferable to any kind of obedience, even to what Milton portrays to be such a natural and essential authority as God. Satan’s doctrine might be expressed as that of the absolute triumph of the individual will; the right of the self to rise, if it can, above anything that might limit its caprices and desires. This is the fundamental liberal principle, that of individual liberty, taken to its most radical and unrestricted extreme.
We need only continue reading the poem to see where this doctrine leads. We are told that Satan was once among the most brilliant and admired of all the angels in Heaven, but that after banishment, he was reduced to an utterly atrocious state, a hollowed shell of his former glory, writhing endlessly in the pain of Hellfire. It is important that we do not think of this as an arbitrary punishment, but as the logical consequence of Satan’s rebellion. His war against the Author of joy has made him miserable; his mutiny against the Fount of beauty has made him ugly. In a word, his revolt has made him rather revolting. For Adam and Eve, Satan’s philosophy has similar effects. It is Eve who first becomes convinced that she will rise to the glory of a goddess if she violates God’s only command and eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Satan promises she will be freed from the burden of submission; yet immediately after she eats of the fruit, she kneels down to pay homage to the Tree from which she received it. Here Milton provides an important reminder that human nature will always be inclined to serve something outside itself. We must choose wisely what we serve, lest we make the mistake of our first parents; who, for the sake of freedom, traded worship of God for the worship of a lifeless vegetable.
It is important to recall that Milton was no opponent of liberalism. He defended vigorously the regicide of King Charles I on the basis of that crucial liberal principle, that the right of a sovereign to rule is derived from the consent of his subjects. In his famous tract Areopagitica, he even more fervently argued for the right to freedom of speech. So why would such an ardent believer in individual liberty, such an influential apostle of the revolution against the throne of England, write so fiercely about Satan’s revolution against the throne of God?
The answer is that Milton believed, unlike many moderns, that liberalism has limitations. He understood the weakness of the individual will, which, left to its own devices, and taken to be the highest good, only brings about its own devastation. Like Adam and Eve, we often fall short when we have our way. We fall into vices, mistaking them for virtues; we make critical lapses in judgment, and fail to correct them without guidance; we are only human, and so we tend toward self-destruction. As important in politics as it is to preserve the ability of men to flourish through freedom of self-expression, we must understand that even this freedom has its tipping point. When Satan rebelled against God, he only became entrapped in the prison of Hellfire which he wrought upon himself. Adam and Eve, when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, did not become more free, or even more knowledgeable; they only made themselves slaves to the cruel tyrant that is Sin. This marks the limit of liberalism: when the freedom that it affords us undermines itself, destroying the virtue on which true liberty relies, resulting in our ruin.
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