Deneen begins functionally his first chapter with the goal of defining liberalism as he is using it in this book, and then with the goal of affirming that which is good in liberalism--with the attendant recognition that liberalism in the political-philosophical sense is very popular. In his view, as stated earlier, liberalism stands unchallenged among competing ideologies in terms of not only its popularity, but its success in achieving its aims.
He says that no other ideology had proved as successful in upholding the liberty which is fundamental to human desire and dignity. Liberalism proved especially attractive, he says, to those who were accustomed to arbitrary rule, to extreme poverty, or to social isolation. Deneen will argue that liberalism has proved most insidious because it redefines terms like "liberty" but with different, less sound philosophical bases.
Deneen says that liberalism is distinctive in its rejection of older mores and traditions, which its advocates like John Locke and Francis Bacon, believed to be injurious to the absolute freedom at the heart of the liberal project. The Christian emphasis upon virtue, as inherited from the ancient Greeks, was said to be unrealistic, and only intermittently achieved in the lives of a few individuals, and therefore, not a proper basis for the foundation of a political philosophy. Deneen points out that Machiavelli also rejected the older emphasis on virtue for the same reasons, and we might say--with appreciation to the fictional character George Smiley--that "acquisitive instincts" are more evidently apparent in the human animal. Machiavelli therefore believed that the powerful should operate according to what they observed, and to play different groups of people in society against each other. He offers this advice in his most famous work of course, for the sake of helping his sovereign acquire power, but it testifies to an emerging consensus within the liberal thinkers that dividing people against each other was a safeguard against the possible tyranny of few or one acquiring the most power.
Beyond the rejection of the older virtue ethics, Deneen says that liberalism advocates a voluntarist conception of choice. I am no philosopher, but what I understand him to be saying in practical terms is that voluntarism affirms the individual in accepting only those obligations which he or she chooses. I spoke in another post about the binding nature of obligations which are not chosen. In fact, as we think about that, to reject absolute autonomy is to accept obligations which are not chosen. Deneen would seem to agree that this is a good definition, because he spends a lot of the chapter talking about the looser nature of agreements between people, even in matters of marriage and family. This concern will not be new to the readers of this blog, I trust. It is frankly provocative and worthy of consideration to reckon with the notion that family breakdown is at least partly driven by economic and political imperatives given to us by liberalism. I have a sense that we will return to this at a later point in these reflections.
Another fundamental aspect of liberalism's distinctness and danger according to Deneen is its advocacy of the human mastery over nature. It might be better to call this "against nature," and if it is true, that would place this tenet of liberalism in direct contradiction with the Thomistic concept that grace builds upon nature, but does not destroy it. There is a harmony in this part of the argument with Pope Francis's rejection of the so-called "technocratic paradigm," because that paradigm conceives of human beings as mere instruments. Moreover, it conceives of people themselves as separate from the created order, and not a part of it. The autonomous self for Francis Bacon could conquer nature, and bend it to his will, rather than submitting to his place within the created order and its natural hierarchy. For my part, it starts to make a lot of sense that epistemic skepticism would come along with the rise of liberalism, because the older tradition of epistemology essentially says that we discover the truth about the world, not creating it, or naming it ourselves. In that consideration, we can see the philosophical nominalism of Ockham, and the harmful separation between universals, and particular instances of things. I see the prevalence of "science" functioning as a metaphysics, precisely because Bacon has taught us that knowing and following the scientific method makes us supposed masters of the known universe. I digress. I want to be careful here, because "nature" in the Catholic philosophical sense is not identical to the natural world, as such. But given the rejection of pre-modern thought by the Enlightenment thinkers, the destruction of the natural world is implied by the rejection of the hierarchy in things, and the instrumentalization which follows.
The authentic inherent liberty of a human being as a free creature has been hijacked, according to Deneen, to be redefined as a complete absence of external constraint, except as modified by the state with whom the individual negotiates his or her rights. If Deneen is correct, then the very concept of "religious liberty" is a chimera, a concession to religious practice the state allows for the sake of peace, but which in reality it only allows to the extent which it is able to control. That particular idea, it seems to me, has not been articulated by Deneen in its full force in this book. However, it seems to be the correct implication of the philosophy of John Rawls. We are living in Rawls's philosophy; the only question for Deneen's argument is whether this philosophy is the endpoint of liberalism's principles.
He says that no other ideology had proved as successful in upholding the liberty which is fundamental to human desire and dignity. Liberalism proved especially attractive, he says, to those who were accustomed to arbitrary rule, to extreme poverty, or to social isolation. Deneen will argue that liberalism has proved most insidious because it redefines terms like "liberty" but with different, less sound philosophical bases.
Deneen says that liberalism is distinctive in its rejection of older mores and traditions, which its advocates like John Locke and Francis Bacon, believed to be injurious to the absolute freedom at the heart of the liberal project. The Christian emphasis upon virtue, as inherited from the ancient Greeks, was said to be unrealistic, and only intermittently achieved in the lives of a few individuals, and therefore, not a proper basis for the foundation of a political philosophy. Deneen points out that Machiavelli also rejected the older emphasis on virtue for the same reasons, and we might say--with appreciation to the fictional character George Smiley--that "acquisitive instincts" are more evidently apparent in the human animal. Machiavelli therefore believed that the powerful should operate according to what they observed, and to play different groups of people in society against each other. He offers this advice in his most famous work of course, for the sake of helping his sovereign acquire power, but it testifies to an emerging consensus within the liberal thinkers that dividing people against each other was a safeguard against the possible tyranny of few or one acquiring the most power.
Beyond the rejection of the older virtue ethics, Deneen says that liberalism advocates a voluntarist conception of choice. I am no philosopher, but what I understand him to be saying in practical terms is that voluntarism affirms the individual in accepting only those obligations which he or she chooses. I spoke in another post about the binding nature of obligations which are not chosen. In fact, as we think about that, to reject absolute autonomy is to accept obligations which are not chosen. Deneen would seem to agree that this is a good definition, because he spends a lot of the chapter talking about the looser nature of agreements between people, even in matters of marriage and family. This concern will not be new to the readers of this blog, I trust. It is frankly provocative and worthy of consideration to reckon with the notion that family breakdown is at least partly driven by economic and political imperatives given to us by liberalism. I have a sense that we will return to this at a later point in these reflections.
Another fundamental aspect of liberalism's distinctness and danger according to Deneen is its advocacy of the human mastery over nature. It might be better to call this "against nature," and if it is true, that would place this tenet of liberalism in direct contradiction with the Thomistic concept that grace builds upon nature, but does not destroy it. There is a harmony in this part of the argument with Pope Francis's rejection of the so-called "technocratic paradigm," because that paradigm conceives of human beings as mere instruments. Moreover, it conceives of people themselves as separate from the created order, and not a part of it. The autonomous self for Francis Bacon could conquer nature, and bend it to his will, rather than submitting to his place within the created order and its natural hierarchy. For my part, it starts to make a lot of sense that epistemic skepticism would come along with the rise of liberalism, because the older tradition of epistemology essentially says that we discover the truth about the world, not creating it, or naming it ourselves. In that consideration, we can see the philosophical nominalism of Ockham, and the harmful separation between universals, and particular instances of things. I see the prevalence of "science" functioning as a metaphysics, precisely because Bacon has taught us that knowing and following the scientific method makes us supposed masters of the known universe. I digress. I want to be careful here, because "nature" in the Catholic philosophical sense is not identical to the natural world, as such. But given the rejection of pre-modern thought by the Enlightenment thinkers, the destruction of the natural world is implied by the rejection of the hierarchy in things, and the instrumentalization which follows.
The authentic inherent liberty of a human being as a free creature has been hijacked, according to Deneen, to be redefined as a complete absence of external constraint, except as modified by the state with whom the individual negotiates his or her rights. If Deneen is correct, then the very concept of "religious liberty" is a chimera, a concession to religious practice the state allows for the sake of peace, but which in reality it only allows to the extent which it is able to control. That particular idea, it seems to me, has not been articulated by Deneen in its full force in this book. However, it seems to be the correct implication of the philosophy of John Rawls. We are living in Rawls's philosophy; the only question for Deneen's argument is whether this philosophy is the endpoint of liberalism's principles.
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