To be sure, the shadow that lay across the freedom of individuals could not be banished entirely. Their equality, by which their freedom was justified, never did exist in reality as accomplished fact, and at the instant individuals received unlimited freedom, unmistakable inequality would generate a new repression, a repression of dullards by the smart, of the weak by the strong, of the shy by the aggressive. And it seems to me that it was an instinctive sense for this that resulted in the extension of the demand for liberté and égalité to include fraternité. For it was only through the voluntary act of renunciation as expressed in this concept that it would be possible to prevent liberté from being accompanied by the total opposite of égalité.

DEFINE: Reframes the slogan 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' as fraternité being a corrective renunciation preventing liberty from spawning inequality.

XREF: Connects to discussions of liberalism's internal tensions and how voluntary self-restraint was proposed as a remedy to market/competitive inequalities. QUESTION: Whether fraternité as voluntary renunciation has ever functioned as intended, or whether it collapsed with the rise of possessive individualism.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 534