Liberal Reads

Shortly after the publication of the book, Larry Siedentop wrote an article in the Financial Times denouncing the ‘moral tepidity’ of the West. The West obsessively equated liberalism with secularism and neutrality, ignoring the Medieval period, which was associated with darkness, ignorance, and superstition. Siedentop’s book, appropriately titled 'Inventing the Individual', provides a new genealogy of liberalism, giving a completely novel account of how the seeds for the appearance of this ideology were sown. Instead of looking to John Locke, Adam Smith or the Enlightenment, Siedentop finds the ‘origins of Western Liberalism’ in Christianity. This book is not a History of European Liberalism, but instead a history of its roots or the preconditions for the apparition of liberalism. Siedentop argues that at present, liberalism is obsessed with ideas of neutrality and non-perfectionism and that this weakened the West vis-à-vis the postulates of ideologies such as radical Islamism, which are at odds with these principles. Part of the problem, he says, comes from historical misunderstandings, including the attribution of secularism to ancient Greece and Rome, and to the aspiration to construct political ideologies that are inspired by these false memories. Instead, we should look at the ‘Dark Ages’ for our origins, an age that has been unfairly mistreated, where the preconditions for the development of the freedoms of today were established.

When thinking of “the law,” the average person in continental Europe thinks of codexes and books. The criminal code, the civil code, the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB, or German Civil Code), the Code Civil, and so on are collections of legal rules that seem to be created by parliaments and governments in a top-down, rather than bottom-up, manner. The legal order the way we understand it in the twenty-first century and the way it is taught at universities thus appears to be an order that someone has created and designed. Friedrich August von Hayek provides an alternative view on the issue. In “Rules and Order,” the first part of Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty, the Austrian thinker claims that law does not have to be the result of deliberate action and design. Contrary to the beliefs of legal positivists, he claims that for most of human history, the law has been the result of a spontaneous order similar to the market.

Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought is not a classic unitary manuscript in political theory but instead a collection of twelve independent essays by Michael Freeden, one of the foremost contemporary experts on liberalism. In this volume, Freeden explores questions of the role of political ideology, green thought, nationalism and the reconfiguration of the liberal tradition in the UK during the nineteenth century. In particular, he tackles the role of the New Liberals and the influence of their thinking on the development of the ideology of New Labour ideology during Tony Blair’s tenure as the Prime Minister.

When Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published Liberalism in 1927, the world, particularly Europe, was going through tumultuous times. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, arguably some of the grimmest, most brutal and destructive years in the history of humanity, are also rightfully considered the decades of antiliberal ideas. While classical liberalism had already ceased to govern the minds of intellectuals and the masses alike for a long time, alternative ideologies - socialism, communism, fascism, or nationalism - were all united in their ultimate goal of dismissing the liberal, democratic, and capitalist systems.In his most influential work, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Ludwig von Mises proposes a concise but comprehensive defense of liberal ideas. Through the five chapters, Mises argues that free market capitalism is the only economic system that ensures the continued development, peaceful cooperation, and coexistence of human society. It is against this ultimate end-in-itself that Mises measures his arguments and that of others.

When we reflect on social contract theory and state of nature theory within political philosophy, John Locke is one of the first thinkers to come to mind. Of course, Locke was not the only thinker to have written on these two subjects. Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau also produced notable and influential accounts on this topic. By the state of nature theory, we refer to theories about the titular “natural state” of mankind before the formation and institution of government; in other words, theories about the state of mankind absent government. By social contract theory, we refer to theories about the reasons for which individuals in a state of nature would choose to leave this natural state and agree collectively to form and institute a government. Locke’s unique ideas about these two concepts have cemented his legacy in political philosophy. These ideas are presented in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), specifically his Second Treatise of Government (1690). The Second Treatise is widely accepted as one of the foundational works of liberal thought, though the wider implications of Locke’s thought for contemporary political philosophy are scarcely agreed upon. An introduction to the work by Richard Ashcraft, for example, in 1987 explains that Locke’s Two Treatises were viewed thirty years ago as “the classic expression of liberal political ideas” since it was read “as a defense of individualism and of the natural right of individuals to appropriate private property.” Ashcraft writes that the Second Treatise, especially, “was often characterised as the first secular expression of political theory in the modern era.”

BOOK REVIEW - Francis Fukuyama "Liberalism and Its Discontents" (2022) By Nataliia Bovkun Liberalism and Its Discontents is the latest book by Francis Fukuyama, the most celebrated liberal thinker of our time. The author applies his rigorous analytical approach to the challenges faced by liberal democracies today and offers a nuanced and insightful analysis of the sources of discontent and potential solutions to these problems. He puts forward a convincing and laconic argument regarding the unchanged relevance of liberal democracy despite the criticism he has been facing in recent years. Although liberalism has not experienced the same level of collapse of confidence that communism did in the late 20th century, it has nonetheless faced significant challenges. Fukuyama’s book examines a range of obstacles to liberalism, such as the growth of populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism, in addition to the implications of economic and technological developments for liberal societies. The book offers a critical assessment of the current state of liberal democracies and proposes strategies for addressing the discontents that threaten their stability and legitimacy.

BOOK REVIEW - Joshua Cherniss "Liberalism in Dark Times" (2021) By Tirso Virgos On the first page of Liberalism in Dark Times, the latest book of Joshua Cherniss, we find a quote from Isaiah Berlin. This is unsurprising because it is one of the most widely cited liberal thinkers of the 20th century. However, the second quote belongs to Indalecio Prieto, one of the most famous members of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) during the Second Republic and the Civil War. It is an appeal to the soldiers and militias of the Republican side of the war during the first weeks of combat: "Do not imitate them! Do not imitate them! Surpass them in moral conduct; surpass them by being generous. I do not ask you, however, that you should lose either strength in battle or zeal in the fight. I ask for brave, hard, and steely breasts for the combat... but with sensitive hearts, capable of shaking when faced with human sorrow and being able to harbour mercy and tender feelings, without which the most essential part of human greatness is lost." It is, Cherniss argues, as he quotes Prieto at the end of the book again, a very liberal speech because this book is an attempt to define a “tempered liberalism” that is not focused on high principles and institutions, such as the one preached by, for instance, John Rawls. Instead, it places emphasis on a liberal disposition, a liberal ethos that aims to combat cruelty, ruthlessness, and all of the common vices of humankind. For this reason, Prieto, a socialist, can also be a tempered liberal, such as Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, or Max Weber. The book focuses on certain key thinkers and their ideological evolution and actions to provide a solid description of the nature of tempered liberalism.

BOOK REVIEW - Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) By Mathilde Berger-Perrin What would happen, in a world where interventionism is rife, and where the masses feed off the creativity and production of a few, if all the entrepreneurs, scientists, businessmen, artists, and working elites went on strike? What if we stopped the motor of the world? What if Atlas, the Greek mythological figure carrying the world on his shoulders, got fed up and simply decided not to care anymore? Such is Ayn Rand’s proposal in Atlas Shrugged. Published in 1957, it has often been considered one of the most influential and controversial American novels of the 20th century. In the traditional scheme of strikes, workers collectivity stop their activity to show their worth to the elite. Rand reverses this scheme with a what-if: what would a society deprived of capitalist values (e.g., free enterprise, private property, individual rights) look like? And how would those who see the fruit of their labor be taken away from them react? For Ayn Rand, who fled the USSR in the 1920s and embraced the American ideals of the Founding Fathers, such a society is simply not worth living in. Her entire life has been dedicated to defending freedom in all forms, proposing a resolutely individualist perspective on life. In 2009, a year after the financial crisis that was considered by some as the final nail in the American capitalist coffin, Atlas Shrugged sold as many copies as the Bible in the United States.

BOOK REVIEW - Helena Rosenblatt "The Lost History of Liberalism" (1958) By Tirso Virgos Liberal policies, liberal democracies, and even liberal dispositions are different ideas in different countries, but they share a series of common principles that define every strand of liberalism. At the thin core of liberal ideology, we always find the idea of protection of individual freedom from interference as well as a focus on the idea of the rights of each citizen. Regardless of the commitment to equality of opportunities, the value of autonomy, or limits of the state in matters of perfectionism or redistribution, all liberals share these principles. However, in her great book The Lost History of Liberalism, Helena Rosenblatt argues that what she calls ‘the turn to rights’, which is mainly focused on avoiding interference in the private sphere, in liberal ideology has been a recent invention and has been based on the Anglo-Saxon liberal tradition. Meanwhile, historical liberalism, which emphasized civic virtue and morals and has its roots in Germany and France, has been nearly forgotten. Thus, the association of liberalism with the United Kingdom and, especially, the United States is false and obscures a very important part of the liberal tradition that could be used to reconceptualise the term and propose political alternatives in today’s world.

BOOK REVIEW - Francis Fukuyama ""The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) By Luke Hallam Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) has a well-earned reputation for its discussion of the strengths of liberalism and the underlying claim that liberal democracy represents history’s final destination. At the same time, it is also one of the most insightful works about the weaknesses of liberalism, with the less popular idea of the “last man” who emerges at the end of history and kicks the historical process back into gear. We must understand both strands of the argument to appreciate the book’s profound contribution to 21st-century political philosophy. Thirty years after its publication, it remains a gold-standard reference for those seeking to understand our present historical moment.