Patrick Deneen, Republics, Ancient and Modern

The modern view of liberty rejects this ancient theory. On almost every count, modern theory – though it called itself “republican” – rejected these ancient prescriptions for the achievement of res publica, the inculcation of “public things.”
Whereas liberty according to ancient theory was the achievement of self-government, liberty according to the modern teaching was understood to be the condition in which ever greater opportunities for the satiation of desires is made possible. Of course, modern thinkers such as Machiavelli and Montesquieu shared the view of the ancients that human appetite was limitless. Machiavelli had noted that “desire is always greater than the power of acquisition,” an insight that Montesquieu further developed by observing the human propensity not to find satisfaction in any objective measurement of accomplishment, but only by comparative measurement to others, which ceaselessly gives rise to “more desires, more needs, more fantasies.” Both anticipated the fruition of this notion in the phrase that promised “the pursuit of happiness” without its likely attainment. However, this observation, rather than being an argument against efforts for the governance of appetite, was in fact a recommendation for its embrace, the redirection of activities that had formerly sought to achieve an education in self-restraint for one that sought the unleashing of frenetic activity aimed at an always imperfect fulfillment. Accompanying this unleashing of appetite were modern theories of the state that were expansionist, not only in the physical space that they occupied, but further, in their devotion to the ever-greater increase of human power directed at the control over nature.

A Straussian critique?