has been greatly exaggerated. The constant drum-beat of gloom against the “moral emptiness” of liberalism has been sounded for quite some time (and I must confess I was an unfortunate participant in the chorus earlier on in my academic life). While it certainly does not culminate in this article in Prospect, the arguments are notably typical.
The critique goes something like this: Liberalism, in championing pluralism to such an extent, makes it very difficult for people to be free to pursue their own ends because it conditions people to accept that they are their own best judge on what is and is not morally acceptable regardless of how preposterous their moral choices. This gives rise to cynicism, relativism, etc. that poison our values and make us he vapid, dishonorable, and viscous creatures that we are today.
There are two problems with this argument. The first is that it does not acknowledge that liberalism originated itself, as a resistance movement to the stagnation of moral understanding that had formed between 16th-18th Century Europe. For example, Immanuel Kant’s case for Enlightenment rest on being allowed to push forward in making our moral world more intelligible. Enforcing a comprehensive moral understanding of an illiberal sort will likely lead to the same future stagnation. When that day comes, we will probably wish we had toleration back.
Second, the best liberals (Kant, Rawls, Nozick, Locke, Berlin, Mill, etc.) are all interested in moral philosophy. Many of the rest of us fall short of realizing this liberal ideal. However, it is not clear that the philosophy itself is the causal agent. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our belief in society as a fair system of cooperation, but in our empiricism. The great thinkers listed above all thought seriously about questions of how we come to believe that we know something, and this is where our political culture seems to have simply quit en masse.
The problem lies in the common belief that, to paraphrase Allan Bloom’s observations of his students, “truth is relative, and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion” is not a distinctly liberal phenomenon, as we see it advanced and countered as far back as Plato’s Republic. A liberalism with a serious epistemic foundation works better than any particular moral system because it is the least threatened by the new discoveries of our evolving understanding of the world. No system without a serious epistemic foundation works well at all. The argument against liberalism, in this context, boils down to surrendering on truth and just forcing one system on everyone for the sake of coherence and expediency. The author of this piece cites Alisdair MacIntyre approvingly, let us not forget that the only advice we get from MacIntyre at the end of After Virtue, is to “pick a philosophy and jump, and don’t look back.” Or, put another way, it is better to be against truth-tracking in bad faith than it is to be against it in good faith. Good liberals believe that it is better not to be against it at all. You tell me which sounds like the most morally empty position.
September 18, 2008 at 1:13 pm |
Is there any reason we can’t consider liberalism itself to be the moral system? It need not have a “serious epistemic foundation,” if liberalism and the resultant pluralism act as the core principles/foundation.
September 18, 2008 at 2:39 pm |
I’d say yes and no. Well, maybe just yes. I think your comment may be more directed at my lack of clarity in what I said (I was behind schedule in getting to work) than in a philosophical difference. I’ll try and clarify, but now I’m late to go home, so I may yet muck the explanation.
Absolutely, liberalism is in itself a moral system, and one that it seems almost impossible to defeat in argument. The basic liberties of liberalism are such a moral foundation that not only are they shared by radically different liberal points of view, but the fact that they are a foundation that allows those different liberal points of view, and criticism and reinterpretation of liberal political values are strengths in a public philosophy put into practice that no other moral view can seriously take on in practice.
However, I would say that it is our ability to engage in public reason and to revise our claims for what we believe to be true based on the soundest arguments available that makes makes liberalism strong as a moral system and not “morally empty,” as the piece claims. Because liberalism allows for pluralism, we can hold onto many different reasonable points of view, but not antiliberal ones. Liberalism is only subject to significant moral critique if we loosen the importance of reasonableness.