It's fair to say that I'm not a fan of the term "classical liberal." This is a term of self-aggrandizement adopted by people who claim to be the real inheritors of Enlightenment values and the tradition of Smith, Locke, and Jefferson. Calling yourself a classical liberal tends to beg the question; the legacy of that era is contested, with leftists like me insisting that the egalitarianism espoused by those thinkers necessarily includes reasonable equity in fact and not just in theory. Even the legacy of specific thinkers, like Adam Smith, are contested. He's generally taken as the patron saint of laissez faire capitalism, but he endorsed progressive taxation, and some read his work as an endorsement of markets specifically because he believed they would deliver egalitarian outcomes.
But even this discussion strikes me as being somewhat besides the point. One of the most obvious elements of the Enlightenment was the rejection of tradition, and particularly the idea that tradition should preserved simply because it is tradition. Embracing reason means embracing change, as what is dictated by reason will shape and be shaped by a changing world. I take the best of liberalism to be its refusal to declare an end to any inquiry. Like the scientific method, liberalism is not a list of truth statements about the world but a way of knowing. It is a process through which useful knowledge can be developed, but the self-critique within it suggests that this knowledge can never be considered the final word.
For this reason, I find constant reference to the ideals of the Enlightenment, like constant invocation of the framers of the Constitution, to be uniquely self-denying. To treat the words of the Enlightenment thinkers as inflexible authority is to reject those thinkers in the most real and distorting way. The world has changed and liberalism must change with it or be discarded.
(Incidentally, I am trying to write shorter posts, as I have been teased about it. I am apparently not entirely incorrigible, my showy assertions of independence notwithstanding.)
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6 comments:
Well done on the recent brevity thing, Freddie (with the exception of the Yglesias post!).
I enjoyed your take on the ritualistic invocation of "Enlightenment" as an immutable creed.
I think a variation of long and short posts would be great. I enjoy reading an extended thesis when appropriate rather than just the one paragraph soundbites on so many blogs.
"I take the best of liberalism to be its refusal to declare an end to any inquiry. Like the scientific method, liberalism is not a list of truth statements about the world but a way of knowing. It is a process through which useful knowledge can be developed, but the self-critique within it suggests that this knowledge can never be considered the final word."
Interesting. I spent a lot of time on this, trying to make a logical link between Rorty-type philosophical pragmatism and Rorty-type political liberalism, but ultimately I think the connection is at best historical/sociological. Plenty of conservatives can say that their politics are underwritten by a skepticism about knowledge, and with justification. Conversely, political liberalism (like every other political ideology) presupposes certain truths, and is in practice unwilling to revise them.
But I would be very interested in seeing you expand on this, and convince me otherwise. And I agree it's high time the classical liberal fence-sitters came clean, and told us what they really believed.
Once again, you demonstrate how your posts are very pertinent to the root of our most important contemporary issues (pointing out how their roots are found in often centuries-old fashion and opinion)insightful, wise, and iconoclastic--all reasons why, the more I read your blog, the more my views of its importance are confirmed.
The Enlightenment's main challenge and goal was to defeat the power monopoly once shared by nobility and the church--a.k.a. the Church of Rome, the Catholic Church. Much in Enlightenment philosophy was less than free, fair and liberal as these are (or were) understood in the best of modern times.
Now, though never definitively vanquished, the church of Rome no longer holds all-powerful control over millions, nobility has shifted to a corporate wealthy oligarchy, and much of liberal thought has approved and helped in securing these power centers against the interests of democracy and the common citizen; briefly, the public sqaure has suffered and lost ground as the private realms have gained in immense power hardly dreamed of in the 17th and 18th centuries.
We should re-read, reconsider and re-order our stale views of what the Enlightenment got right and what it got wrong. Some of it remains indispensible to free society while other aspects sowed the seeds of much in our current faulty reasoning about individual or collective rights and responsibilities.
Write more and at greater length on this and related matters, please.
Recommended readings;
Luc Boltanski, Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval, Zeev Sternhell, C. Wright Mills, Richard Hofstadter for starters.
relativism isn't self-refuting, it is, i think, sometimes true
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