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INTRODUCTION
Our collection of extracts on key concepts of democracy starts with the related
ideas of freedom and autonomy. These are the fundamental concepts of democ-
racy: a democratic system is justied because it creates and guarantees human
beings their freedom. But what is the democratic concept of freedom? For
many writers on democracy it has been bound up with an idea of autonomy
or self-determination, being ones own master. As Rousseau puts it in the rst
of these extracts, through the social contract we gain civil liberty and moral
liberty: the former involves being ruled by the general will instead of following
our individual self-interest. The latter means obedience to rules which we, in
association with our fellow citizens, have made. These rules or laws regulate
our actions, instead of the mere impulse of appetite.
This line of reasoning is followed by Kant in the somewhat complex extract
which follows. For Kant, autonomy involves deciding our plan of life for
ourselves. Even a benevolent paternalist government would be the greatest
despotism imaginable, because it would take away our right to decide what
is best for ourselves. Kant also invokes ideas of equality, by which he means
equality of opportunity and equality under the law. No legal transaction, he
argues, can ever make us cease to be our own master. He also appeals to an
ideal of independence, the independence of each member of the common-
wealth as a citizen. However, Kant makes it clear that this is the independence
of male property owners, who alone can be citizens. He sees it as obvious
that citizens have to be adult males, who own some property, even if it is only
property in terms of some skill, capacity or knowledge. Here we can see some
of the limits on the apparent universality of the democratic ideal, as expressed