The left's reluctance to embrace political liberalism is based, in part, on the persistent misunderstandings of justice as fairness. In What's Left of Liberalism? Jon Mandle provides a systematic overview of the theory, discussing its basic structure and describing the models of society and the person, as well as the idea of public reason, that it supports. Mandle also considers the challenges posed to political liberalism by communitarianism and postmodernism, offering critiques of theorists such as (...) Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, and Roger Scruton; and Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault. Scholars will find Mandle's arguments thought-provoking, while students will find his clarification of Rawls a useful supplement to the original texts. (shrink)

The debates between liberalism and the New Left, which broke out in the middle of the 1990s, are a phenomenon rarely seen among mainland Chinese intellectuals since 1949. They are large-scale, spontaneous debates without official manipulation or ideological constraint. The debates involve Chinese scholars on the mainland and overseas, and have drawn the attention of Hong Kong and Taiwan intellectuals. Several collective papers on the debates have been published, and other selected papers are in the process of being (...) compiled and published. The debates are continuing. As an active participant in the debates and as a researcher in the history of Chinese thought in the 1980s and 1990s, I would like to summarize the main issues of the debates and to analyze why liberalism and the New Left emerged in the 1990s. (shrink)

This book contains a collection of important recent writing on left-liberalism, a political philosophy that recognizes both strong liberty rights and strong ...

Today, liberals face a predicament: how to defend liberal principles, when adherence to them seems to constitute a fatal disadvantage against unprincipled opponents. The challenge is not new. In the early years of the twentieth century, liberalism was attacked, by critics on both the right and, especially, the left for being hypocritical, naïve, irresponsible, and impotent. It couldn't, for example (anti-liberalists thought), address the acute inequality of imperial rule, racial segregation, and socio-economic poverty. These issues of social justice (...) it was claimed by critics required a politics marked by an uncompromising commitment to ultimate ends, and an unrelenting use of power. Faced with such sentiments and the practical successes of anti-liberal ideologies (i.e. Fascism, Nazism, and Communism) liberals felt pressure to silence their scruples and doubts, and embrace the confidence, ruthlessness, and intransigence exhibited by their opponents. But doing so seemed tantamount to abandoning liberal hopes for, and commitments to, human freedom and all they valued in the first place. In Liberalism for Dark Times, Cherniss tells the story of the liberal response to this challenge in the twentieth century. Through a close study of five leading intellectuals engaged in these debates-Max Weber, Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin-Cherniss reconstructs a distinctive, neglected strand of liberal thought. This strand defines and defends liberalism as a political ethos: a complex of dispositions, temperament, and sensibility and style-which include skepticism; openness to experience; and careful, discriminating judgment-that shape how individuals make choices, meet challenges, understand and pursue possibilities, and conduct themselves toward others in the course of political struggle. In reconstructing the history of, what he calls, a tempered liberalism, and formulating it as a distinctive political perspective, Cherniss offers an alternative to the prevalent ways of thinking about both, liberalism's history and the intellectual resources available to it today. (shrink)

Compared with another founder of philosophical anthropology Max Scheler, Plessner is desolated by Chinese academe. His works have not been translated into Chinese systematically, and there are few articles about his life and thoughts. The reasons for this are complicated, but the most important point of these is that Plessner has paid most of his attention to the German problems. However, Plessner’s thought, especially his critique of social radicalism, enlightens us a lot. Plessner’s critique of modernity stimulates us to think (...) about the controversy which broke out between New Left-wingers and Liberalists in the late 20th century and to discern the common ground between the two parties: Radicalism. (shrink)

An exploration of the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism today. What does it mean to be a liberal in neoliberal times? This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a highly illiberal age. Liberalism in the broader sense revolves around tolerance, progress, humanitarianism, objectivity, reason, democracy, and human rights. Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights opened a theoretical pathway to (...) neoliberalism, through private property, a classically minimal liberal state, and the efficiency of “free markets.” In practice, neoliberalism is associated less with the economic deregulation championed by its advocates than the re-regulation of the economy to protect financial capital. Liberalism in Neoliberal Times engages with the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism, viewing it in relation to four central areas of public life: human rights, ethnicity and gender, education, and the media. The contributors explore the transformations in as well as the transformative aspects of liberalism and highlight both its liberating and limiting capacities. The book contends that liberalism—in all its forms—continues to underpin specific institutions such as the university, the free press, the courts, and, of course, parliamentary democracy. Liberal ideas are regularly mobilized in areas such as counterterrorism, minority rights, privacy, and the pursuit of knowledge. This book contends that while we may not agree on much, we can certainly agree that an understanding of liberalism and its emancipatory capacity is simply too important to be left to the liberals Contributors Alejandro Abraham-Hamanoiel, Patrick Ainley, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Michael Bailey, Haim Bresheeth, Başak Çalı, David Chandler, William Davies, Costas Douzinas, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Roberto Gargarella, Priyamvada Gopal, Jonathan Hardy, John Holmwood, Ratna Kapur, Gholam Khiabany, Ray Kiely, Monika Krause, Deepa Kumar, Arun Kundnani, Colin Leys, Howard Littler, Kathleen Lynch, Robert W. McChesney, Nivedita Menon, Toby Miller, Kate Nash, Joan Pedro-Carañana, Julian Petley, Anne Phillips, Jonathan Rosenhead, Annabelle Sreberny, John Steel, Michael Wayne, Milly Williamson. (shrink)

By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Moyn argues that the liberal intellectuals of the Cold War era--among them Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, and Lionel Trilling--transformed (...) liberalism but left a disastrous legacy for our time. In his iconoclastic style, Moyn outlines how Cold War liberals redefined the ideals of their movement and renounced the moral core of the Enlightenment for a more dangerous philosophy: preserving individual liberty at all costs. In denouncing this stance, as well as the recent nostalgia for Cold War liberalism as a means to counter illiberal values, Moyn presents a timely call for a new emancipatory and egalitarian liberal philosophy--a path to undoing the damage of the Cold War and to ensuring the survival of liberalism."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

This paper provides a brief overview of the relationship between libertarian political theory and the Universal Basic Income (UBI). It distinguishes between different forms of libertarianism and argues that a one form, classical liberalism, is compatible with and provides some grounds of support for UBI. A classical liberal UBI, however, is likely to be much smaller than the sort of UBI defended by those on the political left. And there are both contingent empirical reasons and principled moral reasons (...) for doubting that the classical liberal case for UBI will be ultimately successful at all. (shrink)

This article aims to outline a perspective on democratic ideology centred on orientation and justification, which is discussed in relation to the right?left dyad and public reason. Ideology is approached in terms of the orientational structuring of identification processes, which is discussed in relation to the articulation between four pairs of orientational metaphors (up?down, in?out, front?back and right?left), which shape the political terrain and the terms of political justification. The latter is expressed in public reason based on political (...) equality, pluralism and contingency as opposed to hierarchy, monism and objectivism. A modern democratic ideology is based on right/left orientation to underpin the autonomy of the political symbolic order vis?à?vis cultural and religious orders, and on public reason as freestanding in relation to comprehensive reasons, which is a political justification of the priority of right/left in matters of common concerns. (shrink)

Throughout recent discussions of race, gender, and identity, both sides of the political spectrum avoid addressing the central concept of what the “Other” is. Using the psychoanalytic insights of Slavoj Zizek combined with the philosophical writings of Jean Baudrillard and Albert Camus, this paper will argue for the rejection of left liberalism, political correctness, and conservative cultural theory due to their inability to allow the subject more freedoms in relation to the Other. In postmodern times we find that (...) the left has been duped into continuing the proliferation of conservative cultural ideology and that political correctness only works to continue capitalism as an acceptable economic structure. Finally, this paper looks at Zizek and Camus’ writings on possible solutions to this problem of identity being linked to capitalism. (shrink)

Argues for political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy as a politically liberal view Daniel A. Dombrowski brings together the thought of the 20th-century philosophy's greatest political liberal, John Rawls, with the thought of the great process philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. He shows that political liberalism is intimately linked with process philosophy, renaming it 'process liberalism'. He justifies this process liberalism in contrast to four potentially troublesome sources or influences: metaphysics, religion, (...) right-wing politics and left-wing politics. Dombrowski engages a series of interlocutors and alternative positions including Franklin I. Gamwell, Timothy D. Snyder, Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx. In conclusion, he offers a compelling, intricate and resourceful argument for nonhuman animal rights based on Rawlsian principles, which in turn forms the basis of a future environmental ethics. (shrink)

Left-libertarian theories of justice hold that agents are full self-owners and that natural resources are owned in some egalitarian manner. Unlike most versions of egalitarianism, leftlibertarianism endorses full self-ownership, and thus places specific limits on what others may do to one’s person without one’s permission. Unlike the more familiar right-libertarianism (which also endorses full self-ownership), it holds that natural resources—resources which are not the results of anyone's choices and which are necessary for any form of activity—may be privately appropriated (...) only with the permission of, or with a significant payment to, the members of society. Like right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that the basic rights of individuals are ownership rights. Such rights can endow agents—as liberalism requires—with spheres of personal liberty where they may each pursue their conceptions of “the good life”. Left-libertarianism is promising because it coherently underwrites both some demands of material equality and some limits on the permissible means of promoting this equality. It is promising, that is, because it is a form of liberal egalitarianism. Left-libertarian theories have been propounded for over two centuries. Early exponents of some form of self-ownership combined with some form of egalitarian ownership of natural resources include: Hugo Grotius (1625), Samuel Pufendorf (1672), John Locke (1690), William Ogilvie (1781), Thomas Spence (1793), Thomas Paine (1795), Hippolyte de Colins (1835), François Huet (1853), Patrick E. Dove (1850, 1854), Herbert Spencer (1851), Henry George (1879, 1892), and Léon Walras (1896).1 It is striking how much of the current debate about equality, liberty, and responsibility has already been addressed by these authors. (shrink)

The dominant public philosophy of the United States of America has long been some version of liberalism--dedicated to individual liberty, equal rights, religious freedom, government by consent, and established limits on political power. Today, however, we find ourselves in unusual times, when the major political parties have powerful and growing wings that embrace decidedly illiberal public philosophies. On the Left, critical theory eschews Enlightenment rationalism and liberal ideas of toleration and individual liberty as structures that serve to support (...) inequality and oppression. On the Right, conservative scholars excoriate liberalism for privileging an ideal of individual autonomy that eats away at the civilizing bonds of family, tradition, religion, and country. What seems new here is not the critiques themselves, but the power and popularity of political movements that openly and proudly reject the first principles of America's long-dominant public philosophy. Can the center hold? Can the principles of 1776 survive? Or has liberalism run its course? With these questions in the air, this book proposes to return with fresh eyes to the beginning of liberalism and the political philosophy of John Locke. Instead of looking at Lockean liberalism as a simple and timeworn ideological program, the essays reexamine Locke's project by remaining alive to the complexity and nuance with which he addressed his subject. The Locke that emerges is indeed an ambitious and radical thinker, but one not as imprudent or unmindful of custom as his conservative critics would have it, nor as tolerant of oppression as his progressive critics aver. (shrink)

_An insightful and passionately written book explaining why a return to Enlightenment ideals is good for the world__ "Beginning with the simple but fertile idea that people should not push other people around, Deirdre McCloskey presents an elegant defense of 'true liberalism' as opposed to its well-meaning rivals on the left and the right. Erudite, but marvelously accessible and written in a style that is at once colloquial and astringent."—Stanley Fish__ The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre (...) McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by eighteenth-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. With her trademark wit and deep understanding, McCloskey shows how the adoption of Enlightenment ideals of liberalism has propelled the freedom and prosperity that define the quality of a full life. In her view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism. Liberalism is an optimistic philosophy that depends on the power of rhetoric rather than coercion,_ and on ethics, free speech, and facts in order to thrive. (shrink)

American Protestant Christianity is often described as a two-party system divided into liberals and conservatives. This book clarifies differences between the intellectual positions of these two groups by advancing the thesis that the philosophy of the modern period is largely responsible for the polarity of Protestant Christian thought. A second thesis is that the modern philosophical positions driving the division between liberals and conservatives have themselves been called into question. It therefore becomes opportune to ask how theology ought to be (...) done in a postmodern era, and to envision a rapprochement between theologians of the left and right. A concluding chapter speculates specifically on the era now dawning and the likelihood that the compulsion to separate the spectrum into two distinct camps will be precluded by the coexistence of a wide range of theological positions from left to right. Nancey C. Murphy is Associate Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, and the author of Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion, also published by Trinity Press. Her book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning earned the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Egalitarian Liberalism Revisited: On the Meaning and Justification of Social Justice by Per SundmanBharat RanganathanEgalitarian Liberalism Revisited: On the Meaning and Justification of Social Justice Per Sundman uppsala, sweden: uppsala universitet, 2016. 242 pp. $72.50Across a range of contemporary disciplines, discussions about justice abound. Despite the prevalence of these discussions, however, there is little consensus about what justice is and whether (and, if so, how) appeals (...) to it should be made. Moreover, if the interconnectedness and pluralism that obtain in our rapidly globalizing world are taken seriously, concerns about the content, meaning, and use of justice are amplified. Against this backdrop, Per Sundman aims to explicate and evaluate one particular form of justice: egalitarian liberalism. On his definition, egalitarian liberalism is "best understood as a triune conjunction of equality of opportunity, desert and self-ownership" (10). Over the course of eight substantive chapters, Sundman labors to show how these criteria both reinforce and don't contradict each other, aiming to clarify the meaning of social justice while considering known alternatives.To develop this argument, Sundman covers a truly impressive range of topics in contemporary debates about justice, including consequentialism and deontology, equality of opportunity and equality of resources, capabilities and rights, corrective and distributive policies, the natural and social lotteries, status in moral and political communities, and the politics of recognition and misrecognition. On the whole, covering such a range of topics proves to be a strength. Sundman introduces the reader to a number of important topics and how several important thinkers have treated those topics, and his discussion of these topics and thinkers is evenhanded and insightful. If you're familiar with (and interested in) one or more of these debates, you will be delighted to find a theological ethicist engaging in them. There's also a further reason for delight: Sundman enters and engages in these debates without bringing the all-too-frequent (and oftentimes empty) charge that liberalism is "impoverished"—a point to which I'll return. But depending on your level of familiarity with recent debates in moral and political philosophy, you may be left unsatisfied with some aspects of Sundman's discussion. Specifically, some of these topics and thinkers deserve further attention and scrutiny than Sundman provides, especially important given Sundman's stated desire to navigate alternative understandings. [End Page 189]I do want to draw the reader's attention to the penultimate chapter of Sundman's book, "Save Us from Liberalism." But first I want to make a larger point. I mentioned what I think is an all-too-frequent charge made in theological ethics: namely, that liberalism is impoverished. Sometimes, this charge is entirely warranted. But oftentimes, at least in my experience, it is empty: the person bringing the charge neither distinguishes among the diversity that obtains within liberalism nor charitably reads and represents the thinker with whom they are trying to engage. Given this disciplinary shortcoming, Sundman is to be commended for turning to Christian critiques of liberalism only after he's carefully worked (and guided the reader) through the myriad topics and thinkers that constitute egalitarian liberalism writ large.So what about this chapter in particular? Focusing on Christian communitarians—for example, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank—Sundman explores whether authentic Christian ethics contradicts and is superior to egalitarian liberalism. In the first half of the chapter, he examines the different ways in which Christian communitarians understand obedience to God's commands and have criticized the putative liberal obsession with "autonomy." Following an important discussion where he contrasts Christian and liberal understandings of the circumstances of justice, the second half of Sundman's chapter argues briefly but persuasively against Christian exclusivity (e.g., the recently popular Benedict Option) and for Christians to act out of love, for justice, and in the world.There is much to recommend about this book. Both substantively and structurally, it is admirable and instructive.Bharat RanganathanUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Writing in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the moral philosopher Bernard Williams considers the opposing claims of Rawlsian liberalism, with its emphasis on pluralism and procedural fairness, and communitarianism, which instead promotes more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values. Williams shares the communitarians’ critique of Rawls’s theory as excessively abstract, questioning whether a rational commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement can serve as a sufficiently binding social force. (...) He simultaneously resists, however, the conservative tendencies of the communitarians, particularly their dismissal of ethically motivated social critique. Grounded in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein, communitarians reject foundationalism, the notion that beliefs can be philosophically justified, instead regarding ideologically driven social arrangements as the result of inherently particular historical and environmental conditions. This perspective precludes rational reevaluation of a society’s status quo; if a society’s adoption of values does not depend on philosophically grounded principles, neither can those values be altered through a process of collective moral reasoning. For Williams, however, because pluralism is a condition of modern life with which even culturally homogenous communities must contend, members of modern societies are aware of alternatives to their own social model, leaving a space for self-critical reassessment. Finally, Williams suggests that the desire of cultural minorities for separate states in the post-Soviet geopolitical landscape underscores the limits of both pluralism and communitarianism, limits that all of us will need to grapple with as we confront the immediate social and political realities of modernity. (shrink)

Does leftist political thought have a future? American liberalism is being marginalized, European socialism is exhausted, and cultural radicalism has become little more than a sideshow. Contributors to The Left in Search of a Center probe questions of how political community can be imagined and constituted in the contemporary world. Together, they make it apparent that the still-emerging idea of political community is anchored in the pluralistic and cross-cultural nature of late twentieth-century Western societies.

This article examines the work of Martin Loughlin, a prominent public lawyer who works in the leftwing tradition of political and legal theory, often associated with the London School of Economics and Political Science. It argues that tensions in Loughlin’s work exemplify certain trends within the left, the result of the left having lost faith in its positive political programme, one which was supposed to be delivered by Parliament. What remains once this faith is lost is a traditional (...) hostility to liberalism and judicial review in combination with a sense that the realm of politics—the political—is valuable. This combination explains the turn taken by certain leftwing theorists to Carl Schmitt’s authoritarian understanding of politics and to a kind of romanticism about tradition. Given the risks inherent in this turn, would be better for the left both to return to its roots in a positive programme. This move would require the left to engage properly in the contemporary debate about the normativity of law. (shrink)

Contemporary Marxism may seem to have been eclipsed by the dominance of Left-liberalism in egalitarian thought. Since Rawls, the liberal tradition has made a robust contribution to the argument for distributive justice, whilst Marxist orthodoxy regarding the “withering away” of the state has seemed unhelpful in comparison. However, most Left liberals are wedded to several claims that constrain the ambition and depth of the egalitarian project, claims which can be shown to be wanting in light of the (...) socialist commitment to distribution on the basis of need, as well as the Marxist critique of alienation. This paper explores the potential of Marxism to address some of the limitations of contemporary liberal egalitarianism. (shrink)

Current understanding of Mill as a founding father of liberalism is a Cold War creation. Discarding this conception opens the way to a general reassessment of his thought: who was the historical Mill? He did not define himself as liberal and there is no simple template. Most obviously he is a pluralist, defined by a plural heritage received through his father. This framework permitted great creativity in political and social theory, but it was diffuse. The one clear unifying theme (...) is a unique conception of a hierarchy of intellect founded on the inexorable accumulation of positive knowledge. The one important exception to this is political economy. What stands out overall is his individuality, where Mill embodies his own ideal. So apart from political economy, where he could be identified in more conventional terms, his nineteenth-century legacy was personal and incalculably diffusive rather than doctrinaire. This left it ripe for twentieth-century re-invention. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of (...) extremist political organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of (...) extremist political organizations have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)

The aim of this article is neither to challenge nor to defend Isaiah Berlin’s thought but rather to identify the main influences on his concept of liberalism. Berlin’s justification for liberalism is distinctive in that it reflects influences of Romanticism and Augustinianism. Unlike some liberals, his liberalism does not reflect unambiguous confidence in the products of the Enlightenment. Berlin valued the freedom of expression and identity, yet he feared that these freedoms faced potential threats from both (...) class='Hi'>left and right. These considerations led Berlin to found his liberalism on the notion of limited government, as is reflected in his bias towards negative, rather than positive, liberty. Negative liberty implies restraint on the part of the state in order to limit anything that might act as an impediment to individual freedom. In contrast, positive liberty implies that the state may have to be active even to the point of imposing restrictions on individual freedom in order to ameliorate effective limits on liberty imposed as a consequence of societal inequities. Berlin is justly deemed to have been one of the great political theorists of the twentieth century. Few, even among his critics, would deny this, and even those who disagree with Berlin’s conclusions would acknowledge that his framing of the questions and his references to history have elevated and enriched the debate on liberalism. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent towards people's ways of life, it (...) can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

The New York Times-bestselling author offers a stirring defense of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought. A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal (...) tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history--and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation. (shrink)

Shapiro knows there are totalitarians on the political Right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian Left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising leftists have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition. Shapiro lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping (...) into all American ideology, and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future. -- adapted from jacket. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Enlightenment liberalism has come under furious attack from multiple sources in recent years, including cognitive science, the social sciences, identity politics of the left, and populism and nationalism on the right. The notions of individual liberty, free speech, and broad rights protections operating under neutral procedural law has been tied to elitism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and oppressive capitalism. This article points out that recent criticisms from progressives and conservatives are not new. They were mostly formulated several decades (...) ago. Further, they commonly create a straw liberalism, failing to recognize the complexity of the Enlightenment liberal tradition. They ignore the fact that the validity of the institutions and processes of liberalism can, indeed must, be accepted, regardless of criticisms of simplistic versions of liberal theory. For those liberal institutions and processes remain the only known means for controlling the forces of modernity on which we all depend. (shrink)

The challenges to designing and implementing ethically and politically meaningful eating policies are many and complex. This article provides a brief overview of Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti’s Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach while also critically engaging with the place of racial justice, global interconnectedness, and debates over science in thinking about ethics and politics of public health nutrition and policy. I do not aim to burden Barnhill and Bonotti with the responsibility to fully address (...) these issues, but considering the interconnection of these issues and the ever pressing effects of climate change on local and global food systems, we collectively need to turn to these difficult and pressing questions about what a just food system looks like, what concerns are centred, and who is left out. I group these engagements with Barnhill and Bonotti under three headings: racial liberalism, global food system, and contested nutrition science. I conclude with some remarks about locality. (shrink)

A work of popular philosophy that articulates a new way of understanding th moral foundations of liberalism in terms of an ethic of care and responsibility rather than social contract theory. Reviving the Left defends "rootstock liberalism", a cultural liberalism that develops the moral basis of society from the ground up, propagating relationships of social trust that provide the moral foundation of society. All intact human relationships depend on an ethical commitment that commands us to be (...) responsible. Rootstock liberalism names a politics that seeks to build institutions and practices that strengthen that ethical commitment. (shrink)

Milbank and Pabst’s account of liberalism as rooted in ontological violence picks out the secret commonalities of left-leaning rights-based and right-leaning market-based liberalisms with considerable shrewdness, and their elaboration of associationist and civil economic alternatives contains many strikingly expansive and novel elements. However, their totalising account of liberalism prevents them from engaging the strengths of the liberal era with sufficient generosity, and so impedes their efforts to articulate a way forward that is substantially and not just chronologically (...) post-liberal. (shrink)

Emma Goldman's stance toward anarchism was oddly mystified, even loving. Precisely this enchantment led her to see clearly the deep vices of Soviet Russia, when so many on the sane and sober Left were blind to them. So pedestrian liberals ought to relish having the extreme likes of Goldman in their midst. They-we-can faithfully recite their lessons from Mill about free speech, eccentrics, and the proliferation of viewpoints. But more recent liberals and deliberative democrats, insisting on the political centrality (...) of reasonableness, would have problems embracing her. That should give us pause at the politics of reasonableness. And Goldman's infatuation with her own politics offers a tweak on Aristotle: a bad person can make a good citizen. (shrink)

There are at least three reasons why present circumstances favor a renewal of dialogue on Hegel’s political philosophy. First, it seems increasingly clear that the collapse of the “big left” over the past two decades has produced a crisis of imagination in political theory and practice. Debate in North America particularly has polarized—on one side the splintering and perhaps ultimately cynical forces of postmodernism, on the other, the triumphal indifference of corporate capitalism. Since most thoughtful people reject both alternatives, (...) the post-Cold War years, their promise and opportunity notwithstanding, have been marked by an ethos of political disenfranchisement and the growing desire for other options. Secondly, the recent attacks on American targets and the subsequent mobilization of military/propagandist might in the war on terrorism have made evident the necessity of rethinking geopolitical paradigms. In the past year especially, the consequences of the West’s essentially colonial foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Rim and elsewhere have become frighteningly evident. Instead of surveying unsatisfying but comparatively harmless theoretical options we have seen concrete political activity around the globe becoming reduced to the dilemma of terror or armed intervention. This reduction, in turn, has exposed mere languishing in desire for other options as a species of moral cowardice. The situation now demands a positive counterproposal. Finally, and almost paradoxically, recognition of the fact that Western institutions stand under threat, that besieged by forces within and without they could fail, has produced across the political spectrum a new determination to defend them. As if danger itself were a reminder that the structures we have been descrying from the left or the right as politically compromised are nevertheless essential to the accommodation of human freedom. I can think of no time since the end of the Second World War more ripe for reflective engagement of the possibility of an autonomy won through and vouchsafed in an authentically rational state and its institutions. (shrink)

There are at least three reasons why present circumstances favor a renewal of dialogue on Hegel’s political philosophy. First, it seems increasingly clear that the collapse of the “big left” over the past two decades has produced a crisis of imagination in political theory and practice. Debate in North America particularly has polarized—on one side the splintering and perhaps ultimately cynical forces of postmodernism, on the other, the triumphal indifference of corporate capitalism. Since most thoughtful people reject both alternatives, (...) the post-Cold War years, their promise and opportunity notwithstanding, have been marked by an ethos of political disenfranchisement and the growing desire for other options. Secondly, the recent attacks on American targets and the subsequent mobilization of military/propagandist might in the war on terrorism have made evident the necessity of rethinking geopolitical paradigms. In the past year especially, the consequences of the West’s essentially colonial foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Rim and elsewhere have become frighteningly evident. Instead of surveying unsatisfying but comparatively harmless theoretical options we have seen concrete political activity around the globe becoming reduced to the dilemma of terror or armed intervention. This reduction, in turn, has exposed mere languishing in desire for other options as a species of moral cowardice. The situation now demands a positive counterproposal. Finally, and almost paradoxically, recognition of the fact that Western institutions stand under threat, that besieged by forces within and without they could fail, has produced across the political spectrum a new determination to defend them. As if danger itself were a reminder that the structures we have been descrying from the left or the right as politically compromised are nevertheless essential to the accommodation of human freedom. I can think of no time since the end of the Second World War more ripe for reflective engagement of the possibility of an autonomy won through and vouchsafed in an authentically rational state and its institutions. (shrink)

Eric Nelson claims that political liberals following in John Rawls's footsteps are unwittingly participating in the theodicy debate. Luck egalitarians, institutional egalitarians, and left libertarians all fail to offer convincing arguments for egalitarianism, in part due to the theological premises that are basic to—though unrecognized in—their arguments. Calls for egalitarian redistribution from political liberals are actually veiled Pelagian arguments. With Nelson's fascinating book we appear to be in a post-Rawlsian moment.Nelson defines a Pelagian as a rationalist who so prizes (...) human "metaphysical freedom" that it vindicates... (shrink)

The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A “liberal renaissance,” as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in this pamphlet, Danny Postel charts the contours of the intellectual upheaval. _Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran_ examines the conflicted positions of the Left toward Iran since 1979, and, in particular, critically reconsiders Foucault’s connection to (...) the Iranian Revolution. Postel explores the various elements of the subtle liberal revolution and proposes a host of potential implications of this transformation for Western liberalism. He examines the appeal of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin among Iranian intellectuals and ponders how their ideas appear back to us when refracted through a Persian prism. Postel closes with a thought-provoking conversation with eminent Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo. A provocative and incisive polemic highly relevant to our times, _Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran_ will be of interest to anyone who wants to get beyond alarmist rhetoric and truly understand contemporary Iran. (shrink)

The recent increased prominence of far-right movements and nationalism has led to a renewed focus on the political thought of the early twentieth century. This era is defined by large strands of anti-liberalism, fascism, communism, and other political inclinations and practices that have largely fallen out of favour. Nevertheless, there are a multitude of thinkers that occupy unique niches that avoid these classifications but are associated with these movements to categorise and minimise their heterogeneous thoughts. This paper counters arguments (...) that claim that Georges Bataille is a fascist or left-fascist thinker. Specifically, these arguments claim that his “anarchism” is founded on a valorisation of violence and reckless usage of social effectivities. However, these arguments often misinterpret his writings or force his thought into easily understandable categories in which it does not fit. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project of (...) unified science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

What is the connection between the surge of populism and the deflation of electoral support to traditional left-leaning ideological positions? How can we explain the downfall of the Left in conditions that should be propelling it to power? In its reaction both to the neo-liberal hegemony and to the rise of populism, I claim that the Left is afflicted by what Nietzsche called ‘a democratic prejudice’ – the reflex of reading history as the advent of democracy and (...) its crisis. As a result, the Left now undertakes to recover democracy by resurrecting the growth-and-redistribution policy set that was a trademark of the ‘golden age’ of social democracy in the three post-war decades. This nostalgic gesture, however, is leading the Left into another predicament, which I call the ‘paradox of emancipation’ – while fighting for equality and inclusion as essential conditions for democratic citizenship, the Left is validating the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought – namely, order shaped by the competitive production of profit which is the root cause of our societies’ plight. The analysis concludes with a proposal for building a counter-hegemony against neo-liberal capitalism by means of enlarging the Left’s focus beyond its traditional concerns with inequality and exclusion, to address also the injustice of growing social and economic insecurity – a harm whose reach surpasses the working poor. Reformulating an agenda of social justice around issues of economic insecurity that cross the ‘class divide’ would allow the Left to mobilize a broad coalition of social forces for radical and lasting change in the direction of socialist democracy. (shrink)

Following hints in the writings of Isaiah Berlin, some political theorists hold that the thesis of value pluralism is true and that this truth provides support for political liberalism of a sort that prescribes wide guarantees of individual liberty.1 There are many different goods, and they are incommensurable. Hence, people should be left free to live their own lives as they choose so long as they don’t harm others in certain ways. In a free society there is a (...) strong presumption in favor of letting individuals act as they choose without interference by others. William A. Galston has developed this argument with exemplary clarity.2 He is wrong. The idea that value incommensurability is a reason for toleration of diverse ways of life and protection of the individual’s freedom to choose among diverse ways of life is a mistake. In his paper for this volume, What Value Pluralism Means for Legal Constitutional Orders, Galston undertakes to resolve a further problem, namely, whether the presumption in favor of individual liberty that value pluralism establishes can be kept within bounds. In his words, “Within the pluralist framework, how is the basis for a viable political community to be secured?”3 On one construal of these words, Galston is seeking the solution to a non-problem. Value pluralism does not establish any normative presumption in favor of liberty, so the worry “does this presumption hold without limit” or, “are there good reasons that constrain it at some point”, is otiose. On another construal, Galston is addressing a different question: if most of the members of society came to believe that given value pluralism, they ought to be left free to live according to their own conception of values, then would a “decently ordered public life” be impossible to sustain?4 On the second construal, the issue being posed is a genuine empirical question, which philosophical arguments cannot answer. (shrink)

By embodying the hopes of a set of qualitative liberals who believed that postwar economic abundance opened up opportunities for self-development, David Riesman's bestselling The Lonely Crowd influenced the New Left. Yet Riesman's assessment of radical youth protest shifted over the course of the 1960s. As an antinuclear activist he worked closely with New Left leaders during the early 1960s. By the end of the decade, he became a sharp critic of radical protest. However, other leading members of (...) Riesman's circle, such as Kenneth Keniston, author of the influential Young Radicals, applied Riesman's ideas to create more sympathetic understandings of the New Left. Examining reactions to the New Left by Riesman and his associates allows historians to go beyond the common understanding of the key ideological divisions of the 1960s as existing between liberalism and radicalism or between liberalism and conservatism to better appreciate the significance of splits among liberals themselves. (shrink)