Taking the Liberal Challenge Seriously

Essays on Contemporary Liberalism at the Turn of the 21st Century

Sirkku Hellsten, Marjaana Kopperi, Olli Loukola

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138350472
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429789236
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

First published in 1997, this collection offers a critical view of modern liberal theory and attempts to present some signposts that could show a way towards a new form of liberal individualism. The first part takes a look at the theoretical aspects of contemporary liberalism. It analyses certain classics whose ideas have once again become central to the new formulation of liberal theory. The second part brings the discussion from theory to practice and to actual policies adopted in liberal Western welfare states. Its main interest is in the economic doctrines which have formed an essential part of classical liberal thought. The third part moves yet another step further in its analysis of contemporary liberal challenges. It concentrates on the problems of the liberal requirement of freedom, neutrality and tolerance.

1. New Interpretations: Liberal Theory at the Crossroads

Classical vs. modern liberalism: advantage, classical

Jan Narveson

Introduction and summary

Over the ‘past century’ or so, the political outlook going by the name of liberalism’ has undergone an evolution so drastic – the divergence between what the contemporary world thinks of under that title and what was imputed to it a century ago, which we may call ‘classic’ liberalism, is so great – that one may well wonder why the same name is used; nor would the reader be alone in wondering about this.¹ Despite that, this paper proposes a straightforward analysis of the root notion of liberalism: liberalism is the view that (1) government, or more generally, a set of fundamental social rules, is justified (if it is) exclusively on the basis of expected benefit to the ruled, and not at all on the basis of benefit to the rulers), where (2) it is the ruled who determine, ultimately, what constitutes ‘benefit’ in their case. Which is to say, that ruling must be justified only by its promotion, overall, of the realization of the preferences of the ruled. The question is whether this is to be understood on a basis of individualism, calling for Pareto restrictions on policy, or collectivism, in which case the good of some may be sacrificed in the interest of the greater good of others. Modern ‘liberalism’ is collectivist; classical liberalism is pareto-constrained, that is, libertarian. Classic liberalism is fundamentally anti-State; modern calls for heavy state involvement. I shall argue that the classical view has it right, and explain why.

We do well to approach the matter of liberalism by looking at its alternatives; it helps, too, to do so in a historical way, thus keeping track of the development of the idea, and, at some distance, also of reality, to a reasonable degree. Liberalism, in fully fledged form, came on the scene in roughly the 17th century. We should first consider what it was objecting to, what it took itself to be a departure from.

Political theory: the options

Like so much in philosophy, and perhaps even more so in political philosophy, the main basic options are discernible in Plato’s Republic. There are, in my reading of it, three of these, associated with three characters in that indispensable book: Thrasymachus, Glaucon, and Socrates. The first says, famously, that ‘justice is the interest of the stronger party’. The second sees justice as a noble ideal of life, an ideal at once for the individual and therefore – so Plato thinks – a program for the State. And the third suggests that justice is a sort of contract among sensible people. To supply tags for the three, we may call them respectively ‘realism’ (with many qualms), conservatism (or, in a sense, ‘idealism’), and liberalism. Let’s give each a brief look, by way of leading us into the central idea of liberalism, the subject of this essay.

Thrasymachean ‘realism’

Thrasymachus misleadingly presents his view² as a ‘definition’ of justice. But in saying that justice is the ‘interest of the stronger party’, he presents a view so dissonant with what everybody thinks of as justice that Thrasymachus, notoriously, has very heavy weather of it in his exchanges with the wily Socrates, and in the end comes out as an advocate of injustice rather than as the proponent of a new and different theory of it. Responding to a proposed analogy by Socrates between the good ruler and the good shepherd, Thrasymachus insists that the smart ruler will spend his time figuring out how he can best fleece his ‘flock’ for his own benefit. That, he says, is the way it really is.

The thesis that this is how things really are earns Thrasymachus’ view the title of ‘realism’ – later to be picked up and expanded by Machiavelli.³ A better way to put his proposal is to say that we should forget about trying to decide what rulers should do, and have a look at what they, simply, do. And what they do is, like everybody else, pursue their own interests – except that, being in a position of much greater power than the rest of us, they can pursue it on a much grander scale – and, generally speaking, at the expense of the rest of us. Rulers exploit.

But Thrasymachus presumably intended to be offering a normative theory as well. It has two components: (1) always do whatever maximizes your own satisfaction; and (2) do this, if you are in a position to do so, by exercising power over others, against their interests and in favor of your own. Thrasymachus thinks that any sensible person will, if he should be so fortunate as to get into a position of power, do what he claims (with uncomfortably high plausibility) that rulers in general actually do. Reason tells us to exploit, if we can; and if we have power, then we indeed can. For that’s what power is, after all: the means to achieve one’s will, whatever others may like. And if you aren’t in such a position? Well… expect a tough time of it. And duck, hoping that the lash will descend on the other fellow’s back, not yours.

For reasons that we’ll go into shortly, Thrasymachus scarcely can be said to have a political philosophy at all. His own proposal is manifestly absurd, if it is addressed to the people who would be exploited and robbed under his regime.

Plato and conservatism

We turn next to Plato, whose view is a kind of antithesis of that of Thrasymachus. Plato, familiarly, constructs an analogy between the soul and the state, the idea being that justice will really be the same thing in each. Justice is identified with whatever promotes the good of the personage being ‘ruled,’ or with that good itself. In the case of the individual, this is that person’s own soul, which is analyzed as having three ‘parts’ – Reason, Spirit, and Appetite, justice being, as it turns out, the ‘harmony’ among these three – though a harmony that really consists in the domination of the entire soul by one of them, Reason, which tells the appetites what to do in no uncertain terms, and enlists the emotions as ally to get them to do it.

Aristotle later defined the subject of moral virtue as the rational control of the emotions, the principle being observance of the ‘mean’. In either Plato’s or Aristotle’s version, ethics for the individual is a sort of science, aimed at producing the happiness of the whole person via an insight into the nature of the soul. And so – not surprisingly – the ideal of the harmony of the whole will likewise be the appropriate theory of justice for the state. Its ruling element will likewise be Reason; but since only individual people actually have faculties of reason, the ruling element in a community, will have to be those people who are possessed of the best faculties of Reason – rather than, say, those with the most courage (‘timocracy’) or the most money (‘oligarchy’), or simply the most people on their side (‘democracy’). In fact, the good state will be one in which everyone else is subordinate to the wise, who – somehow – know what is best for them and, since hoi polloi can’t really be expected to know that for themselves, to bring about the happiness of the whole, by force when necessary. As it often will be, since the irrational parts of the soul are notoriously unruly in themselves.

It is central to the Platonic idea, then, that there should be a discernible answer to the question of how we ought to live, that this answer can be and at least to some reasonable approximation actually has been discerned by the most intelligent members of the community, and thus – Plato’s ‘thus,’ not ours – that the right way to run a community is by making those most intelligent people the rulers – the king, if there’s just one, or (what we are led to expect, generally speaking, by Plato’s exposition) an aristocratic committee. Rule by the Central Committee is the upshot.

The common good

Before turning to the idea of the ‘social contract’ so tantalizingly but evanescently suggested by Glaucon, it will be useful to make a short excursion, in order to emphasize the common element between Platonic conservatism and liberalism: the idea that the ruler ought to aim at the good of his community. For the classic exposition of this as the central idea of political philosophy, we turn to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, writing a millennium and a half later. It is found in his analysis of the idea of Law. Law, says St. Thomas, is ‘an ordination of reason for the common good, promulgated (and enforced) by the one who is in charge of the community’.⁴ The point of my bracketed insertion is that Aquinas has already made it clear at this point that laws are not just pieces of advice, but are enforced. That’s what politics is about, then: what order may be imposed on a community, by force if necessary.

What is distinctive about Aquinas’ idea, however, is the reference, not simply to ‘the good’ of the community, but to it as a ‘common’ good. Is the idea of a ‘common good’ interesting? What makes it so, if it is, is due to an important point about communities that distinguishes – or at least possibly distinguishes - them from, say, flocks of sheep, or for that matter from groups of slaves: namely, that they are composed of individuals with minds of their own: ‘The proper end of a group of free men is different from that of a group of slaves, for a free man determines his own actions, whereas a slave, qua slave, belongs to another’.⁵ A society is an interacting group of organisms each of whom has a capacity for self-direction, and some likelihood of using it in such a way as to direct himself in a different way from what the others do. This being so, we will be able to distinguish ‘individual’ goods, which vary from one person to another, from ‘common’ goods, which are the same for all. Aquinas, probably following Plato and Aristotle in this, says that individual goods tend toward community discord, whereas common goods tend toward community unity – or, as might as well say, toward community, which contains the word ‘unity’. One of the more important questions in political theory, I think, is whether and in what sense he is right about this.

Writers have tended to talk, loosely, about something called ‘individualism’ in social theory. To use this term as a descriptive one is to suggest that there is some alternative – ‘socialism’, or Organicism’, perhaps. But the idea that there is an alternative to individualism needs careful analysis, for after all, society consists of individual people; it is, as Aquinas saw, essentially a group rather than, say, a single large organism. If individualism in this sense is to be called a ‘view’, then we have to be aware that there is no alternative to that ‘view’ – indeed, it hardly deserves the title of ‘view’. But what are these individual people like, of which the community consists? After all, flocks of sheep also consist of individual sheep, and in any sense in which it is undeniable that individual people have minds of their own, so too it is undeniable that individual sheep have minds of their own. If we are to say that sheep are nonindividualistic in a sense in which people are not, this is going to have to be an observation about the way those individual minds work, or what is in them, and not an observation that sheep, or sheepish people for that matter, don’t have minds whereas people do.

That is why I have put the matter in terms of there being some likelihood of using that individual mind in such a way as to direct himself in some different way from that in which others do. The feature of having interests different in kind from, and quite possibly such as to conflict with those of other individuals is the characteristic of humans in social settings that creates the background for political philosophy, this being a normative theory intended for the direction of individuals in light of their social situations. That theory addresses the question, What should one do, taking into account the fact that there are other people around, potentially and perhaps actually quite different from oneself? So characterized, the theory in question includes both moral and, in a more specific sense, political philosophy.

Before leaving Aquinas, we should take note of the fact that he does not think that legislated law is the only kind of law is. He supposes that his dictum on the nature of law comprehends not only the kinds that are issued by human rulers of human communities, but also every sort of law there is, including the laws that physicists and chemists are trying to discover. All, he thinks, are laws in the same sense of the word ‘law’. The most notable implication of this, to the modern reader, is that what we call morality is likewise a system of ‘law’ – law discerned or at least discernible by natural reason, based on the nature of things rather than on any ruler’s pronouncements. Of course, in his view as a Roman Catholic monk in good standing, those things, in turn, are th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. New Interpretations: Liberal Theory at the Crossroads
• 2. Facing the World: The Liberal State and Its Policies
• 3. Beyond Good and Evil: Neutrality, Tolerance and Individual Morality