ArticleWaleed Aly’s analysis of modern liberalism’s failing health in the most recent Quarterly Essay (No. 103), Time of Monsters: What Future for Liberalism?, is insightful and timely. But it offers more than mere diagnosis. It hints at what is needed for liberalism’s restoration. Aly approaches liberalism like a good doctor approaches a patient: calmly and respectfully, but without sugarcoating the truth. He refrains from bringing politically partisan lenses to his subject – a largely fruitless path that has seen plenty of shots fired between conservatives and progressives, each blaming the other for the ills of life in a liberal society.
His genealogy of liberal philosophy, from Hobbes, Locke and Mill through to Rawls and Hayek, is helpful, especially for those outside the beltway of political philosophy. Of course, liberalism’s emergence goes well beyond these thinkers, and any attempt to summarise liberalism concisely will necessarily be reductive to some degree. Nonetheless, Aly offers a broad sense of the philosophical journey that has underpinned liberal modernity. He also gives a relevant account of how liberalism has changed – especially noting some of what has been lost, or at least eroded, along the way: telos, the common good, intrinsic meaning and social trust.
Of course, much has been achieved within the liberal paradigm: the freedoms of thought, speech and conscience; the freedoms of religion and association; property rights; free markets; a free media; and more. However, the challenges facing many contemporary liberal societies – as catalogued by Aly – are ripe for deeper consideration: rising inequality. Growing loneliness. Accelerating polarisation and extremism. And the mainstreaming of political, social and cultural disaffection. While it may not be liberalism per se that has caused them, their growing prevalence in liberal societies seems to warrant an examination of whether aspects of liberalism and its progeny are not working as planned. And if so, why.
Liberalism has become less accommodating of the transcendent, and it is arguably paying a steep price because of that.
Aly’s diagnosis points to an insight worthy of attention: liberalism has become less accommodating of the transcendent, and it is arguably paying a steep price because of that. By definition, liberalism is freedom-centred, but it needs more than freedom to work. Berlin’s negative freedom, Rawls’ positive freedom and Hayek’s market freedom have all played important roles in shaping the liberal project. And all three thinkers – and others – posited much more than raw freedom as necessary ingredients. However, the kinds of thinking that emerged from such characterisations of freedom have given rise to a philosophical environment that is less concerned with the ‘common good’ than earlier liberal thinkers were. Notably, John Stuart Mill – a seminal early liberal thinker and fierce protector of individual freedom – recognised the need for limits on our desires and pursuits. Mill identified harmony, relationality, reciprocity and social cohesion as key pillars of a healthy liberal society.
Aly notes that current versions of liberalism are failing to deliver people the ‘good life’. At least part of the reason for that could be that – in contrast with earlier varieties – modern liberalism struggles to define the ‘good life’. Some of this can be attributed to changes in how liberals have come to think of the individual. Thinkers like Bentham sought to optimise for happiness. Others like Rousseau championed self-assertion and self-creation. This all contributed to a gradual shift from the idea of a ‘common good’ to individualised conceptions of the good. The Protestant Reformation played a role too – emphasising individual will and salvation rather than the more collective anthropology that preceded it. The emergence of the modern consumer (as explained by thinkers like Larry Siedentop) was then ushered through the 20th century by claims such as that of Nietzsche – that God is dead, by Ayn Rand’s call to self-actualisation, and by the modern computing, communications and digitalisation revolutions.
Our liberal project may well benefit from a reconsideration of the transcendent, or at least an agreement on common principles that are considered to have the status of the transcendent. In this search for anchoring principles, the Christian message offers important anthropological resources.
As Aly implies, another contributing assumption is that liberalism can be neutral on values. His analysis points to a difficult truth for modern liberals of all political stripes: we need to talk about metaphysics again. Aristotle defined ‘metaphysics’ as an understanding of ultimate reality, first principles and first causes. Rawls built a political philosophy without metaphysics. So did Isaiah Berlin. These great minds – and many others – posited that a social contract with the objective of economic well-being and social cohesion amid irreducible differences should be liberalism’s objective. However, the decision to excise metaphysics is a metaphysical decision. As per author and atheist Aldous Huxley: ‘You can have good or bad metaphysics, but you can’t have no metaphysics.’ Perhaps values-neutral liberalism is a tough sell philosophically because values are never neutral.
Our liberal project may well benefit from a reconsideration of the transcendent, or at least an agreement on common principles that are considered to have the status of the transcendent. In this search for anchoring principles, the Christian message offers important anthropological resources. The Christian doctrine of imago Dei – the idea that all people are of intrinsic and equal worth by virtue of their being made in the image of God – was key in seeding liberal conceptions of human rights, human equality and human dignity. These central building blocks of liberalism are arguably in need of re-clarification. And bringing ancient theology to bear on modern anthropology could offer an important means of renovation through which liberalism might be strengthened.
It is no accident that Aly quoted Pope Leo’s Magnificat Humanitas extensively throughout his essay – noting that for the Pope, humans are ‘deeply relational and sacred’. When Abraham Lincoln referred to democracy as government of the people, by the people and for the people, he was quoting a Boston preacher who was in turn quoting theologian John Wycliffe. All three were making the same point that Adam Smith and others have made – that to build cohesive societies, free people and free markets require moral imagination that transcends us.
Aly’s diagnosis invites us to look outwards and upwards, to something beyond us. We need to find ways to understand ourselves as relational and sacred again.
Max Jeganathan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX). He served as an adviser in the Rudd-Gillard Labor governments and is undertaking a PhD in law on the ethical foundations of liberalism.Â
This article was first published in Eureka Street.Â