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This craving for freedom found its greatest expression in the works of John Milton (1608-1674). According to Milton, nationalism is not a struggle for collective independence from the ‘foreign yoke’; it is an affirmation of individual freedom from power, a self-affirmation of individuality before his government and church, ‘freeing man from the oppression of slavery and prejudice’. For Milton, freedom meant freedom religious, political, and personal. The culmination of his call for freedom of the press in the Areopagitica is a cry: ‘Above all freedoms, allow me to know, to speak out, to argue freely according to the dictates of my conscience.
The Puritan Revolution, in the words of this leader Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) for the first time brings two great principles to the forefront of history. ‘Personal liberty and freedom of conscience are two great demands that must be fought for, as for all the other freedoms given to us by God,’ he said in a speech to Parliament on September 4, 1654, ‘Free Church’ demanded a ‘free state. However, the time has not yet come for this. The Puritan Revolution was still full of emotions and sectarian intolerance of the age of religions. The restoration seemed to have defeated it, but the revolution’s main aspirations found new life and pride thirty years after Cromwell’s death during the Glorious Revolution: rule of law over the king, the priority of parliament in making laws, impartiality of justice, protection of individual rights, freedom of thought and press, religious tolerance. The Glorious Revolution lifted new freedoms over the elements of fanatic religious and party strife, making them the basis of the life of the nation, rooted in historical tradition as ‘the true and ancient rights of the people of this land. The Puritan Revolution degenerated into a parliamentary and military dictatorship. The glorious revolution has so entrenched a new and ever-expanding code of freedom and tolerance in the national life and character of the British that no serious attempt has been made to undermine it since. The glorious revolution has created a climate of reconciliation, discussion, and compromise; only under such conditions can democracy penetrate all pores of national life
In the 18th century, nationalism as an active force in history limited its influence on the North Atlantic coast. It expressed the spirit of an epoch that emphasized the individual and the right, the spirit of the epoch was also expressed in the humanism of the Enlightenment. The rise of British nationalism in the 17th century coincided with the rise of the British trade middle class. All this was clearly expressed in John Locke’s political philosophy (1632-1704). Characteristically, his first ‘Treatise on State Governance’ begins with a phrase that brings together his humanist and national outlook: ‘Slavery is a state so disgusting and offensive to man, it is so incompatible with the generosity and courage of our people that it is impossible to imagine an Englishman, let alone a gentleman who could speak for him’. Locke’s philosophy has served the nascent middle class a lot, for its core was property and justification of property based not on seizure, but on one’s labor and efforts. But Locke did more than just serve his class, as he defended two other principles: 1) the individual, his freedom, his dignity, and his happiness are the basic factors of all national life; 2) the government of the nation is an association based on morality and dependent on the free will of its subjects. If in France and in general throughout Europe the authoritarian absolutism of kings and churches came out victorious from the battles of the 17th century, England was the only country where the stronghold of absolutism was broken. Only here the free and powerful public opinion which has provided itself influence on conducting national affairs though conducting these affairs remained in the hands of oligarchy was shown. In England, the national spirit has penetrated all institutes and has created live communication between ruling classes and people. Exactly under the influence of liberal British nationalism the French philosophers of the XVIII century struggled against authoritarianism, intolerance, and church and state prohibitions.
British influence on France, strengthened by Voltaire’s stay in England in 1726-1729, his letters about the life and freedoms of the British were not only important for France. By the 18th century, France had been the intellectual center of Europe for two centuries. The French language became the universal language of educated circles everywhere. The British ideas of personal freedom and national organization became known abroad through French thinkers and were absorbed and redesigned by the common consciousness of people in the West in the XVIII century. Thanks to the geniuses of French rationalism and transparency of the French language. In this way, the national and historical freedoms of the British acquired universal significance. They became a model for the awakening liberal thought of the era. Until 1789, they had only a small direct impact on the political, religious, and social reality of France, but became an important factor in the birth of American nationalism in 1775.
It was clear that the new nation was not based on a common origin or religion, and that it did not differ in language, literary, and legislative tradition from the nation from which it wished to separate itself. The nation was born in a common effort, in the struggle for political rights, personal liberty, and tolerance – the same British rights and traditions, but elevated here to the rank of inalienable rights of every human being, and to the character of the universal hope that was proclaimed to all humankind. The diversity of religions and religious tolerance in eighteenth-century America, unheard of at that time, coexisted with a variety of racial flows mixed in a melting pot and racial tolerance. The idea of freedom within the law, enshrined in the Constitution, cemented a new nation. The American Constitution came into force in early 1789, the year of the French Revolution. Despite its imperfection, this constitution stood the test of time better than any other constitution on earth. It survived because the idea it promoted fused so closely with the life of the American nation that without it, the nation could not exist. For the first time, the nation emerged from those truths that seemed self-evident: ‘All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with known inalienable rights, which include: freedom and the pursuit of happiness. A nation could not have acted upon these truths without destroying its foundations. These truths had a profound impact on the early period of the French Revolution when French nationalism was elevated to the throne as a decisive factor in French history. However, a new element entered French nationalism – the myth of the collective personality, expressed in the fruitful, albeit rebellious, thoughts of Rousseau.
Under the influence of British ideas, the Enlightenment, or Age of Mind, proclaimed the right of a free person to freedom. Rousseau (1712-1778) shared his faith in human freedom. However, he saw flaws in the individualist approach. In the opinion of Russo when in the state old dynastic and religious authorities break down, there is a necessity for the formation of the collective person of the nation as the new center, as a legitimization of a society and a public order. The sovereignty of the state finds its visible embodiment in a ruler whose will is the state. Regis voluntas suprema lex (the will of the king is the supreme law). How can the new sovereign – the people – express their common will? How can a people become a single body, like a ruler, who must also be alone? To do this, the entire people must be united by the feeling of closest proximity, common destiny, and responsibility. Rousseau, a native of the Swiss city republic of Geneva, felt nostalgic for the Greek cities and states, for the exceptional and all-encompassing devotion of the citizens to the policy. Rousseau, who lived in France as a poor exile, saw the evil of the arbitrary rule of the king and court. He wanted to replace this order with a government of Reason, under which man would observe the rules of public order of his own free will and obey the laws because he had prescribed them. This was the subject of Rousseau’s book On the Social Contract (1762). The book recreates an ideal community based on the patriotic virtues of ancient city-states, the Calvinist Geneva tradition of the infallibility of the people, and the proud sense of independence of citizens of rural Swiss republics. Rousseau was convinced that a true political community could only be based on the virtues of citizens and their passionate love of the homeland. Public education must bring these feelings to the hearts of children.
Rousseau was the first major writer to fail to recognize the aristocratic and rationalist civilization of the era as the highest achievement of human progress. Rousseau was outraged by the egoistic life for the pleasures of French society at the time, its lack of interest in public needs, and its disregard for human welfare. He called for a new approach to society, for the transformation not of minds but of hearts, for nobility, for simplification and inner concentration. He believed that a clean life, unfortunately, rejected by the educated upper classes, he found among ordinary people, especially peasants; only they still live at the source of good, in the bosom of nature, not corrupted by artificial civilization. For Rousseau, it was not the aristocrats by birth and education, but the people themselves, who were the heart of the nation, which gave the nation strength and guided it. The active activity of people – equal citizens united by a feeling of brotherhood and mutual help, was represented by Russo as a unique ethical and rational basis of the state. At the same time, he believed that love for the national community, and emotional and almost religious patriotism were the living blood that fed the development of human personality. In his utopia – and Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’ is as utopian as Plato’s ‘Republic’ – he made a virtuous, cohesive people sovereign, people expressing their will through a ‘common will’, which (in Utopia) was a derivative of all individual freedoms, but differed from the will of each individual, for it was not an expression of chance or arbitrariness, but of Reason and Goodness, a virtuous patriotism that should inspire every member of society.
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