Tag Archives: individualism

Riflessioni: The Limits Of Liberalism

28 Tue Oct 2014

Posted by in India, South Asia, Theory & Philosophy

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Everyone is a Liberal these days – classical liberal, social liberal, neo-liberal, left liberal, economic liberal, conservative liberal…the variations go on. Despite the variations, all these flavours of liberalism are held together by the common belief in the rational individual as the atomic unit of socio-political existence. The Age of the Individual was ushered in by the Enlightenment, its emphasis on rationality and empiricism fuelling the birth of modernity and giving a fillip to individual rights. The seductive appeal of a universal ethic based on reason was difficult to resist, particularly in Europe where the Church and its excesses had eroded faith in the Christian brotherhood of man.

However, the pendulum finally swung the other way and several critiques of liberalism and its cult of the individual began to be voiced by the early 20th century. Sociologists such as Ferdinand Tönnies and Émile Durkheim warned that the individualism of liberalism threatened the integrity and cohesion of a society, making the famous distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). This work was carried further after the Second World War by the thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse, Daniel Bell, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Neelly Bellah, and Alasdair MacIntyre.

The opposition to liberalism occupies three spaces: the ontological that disputes claims made about the autonomous Self, the political that challenges the rights of the individual over the community, and the social that questions the value or even possibility of an individual not rooted in a mesh of traditions, duties, and relations. At first glance, it might appear that emphasis on the family over the individual originates in Eastern societies but criticism of the liberal foundation has no geographical boundaries. Furthermore, opponents of the liberal ethos are as likely to be secular as they are to be religious.

Perhaps the most obvious salvo at liberalism comes at its tendency to universalise a moral code. Liberals who espouse abstract ideas of justice and fairness meet fierce opposition from traditionalists who view these values as necessarily embedded in the traditions and history of a people and can vary by place, time, and context. The primary focus of this line of argument, a tad unfairly, is John Rawls and his landmark work, A Theory of Justice. Rawls does allow for the possibility that liberalism may not be exportable to all places at all times and accepts the possibility of justifiable non-liberal regimes but nonetheless considers these inferior and worthy only of toleration, not emulation.

The failure of other ideologies like fascism, communism, and theocracies have only buttressed liberal notions of the polity and society. However, an interesting critique has come from the revival of virtue ethics: the purpose of the good life is eudaimonia, an end achieved only by the appropriate balance of intention, will, emotion, habit and capabilities. As such, eudaimonia is flexible not only by culture and time but also by person. Neo-Aristotleians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, and GEM Anscombe argue that purpose of life cannot be separated from the process by which it is achieved and in doing so, revive the ideal of reciprocating local communities whose members play socially given roles and are made intimate by their shared ends.

Unfortunately, Aristotle never envisaged the gigantic scale and complexity of modern cities and states when he wrote about ancient Greek society. What may have worked for a polity of at most 100,000 voting members – and a population of approximately a million – cannot scale up to accommodate nearly 20 million Mumbaikars or over a billion Chinese. In these circumstances, liberals argue, the impersonal liberal system better manages human organisation than particularised communities.

Of course, the question arises whether liberals actually think that the individual self is created ex-nihilo, outside of any social context. As Aristotle argued, the man who can live outside society is either a beast or a god. Similarly, three of the four Hindu purusharthas – dharma, artha, kama – are intrinsically social and only the fourth – moksha – leaves the individual to himself and his relationship with the gods. To be fair, this accusation applies more to libertarians like Robert Nozick far more than it does liberals like Rawls. No matter, the point still holds in that the liberal virtue of unrestrained individual choice trumps the wishes and traditions of the community.

The liberal argument for individual choice rests on the desirability of normative self-determination, meaning that everyone should have the right to make his or her own decisions to secure for themselves the optimal conditions for leading fulfilling life that cherishes the values they hold dear. These choices may be made by an individual taking into account his or her own valuation of tradition and community. Liberals fervently oppose the notion that government endorse communitarian wishes over personal choice, thereby defending a system of rights, powers, opportunities, and self-determination for the individual. There is an interest in periodically questioning traditions, liberals argue, and reviving or abandoning them. This is particularly true for groups who have experienced prejudice against them.

While there are pragmatic reasons to accept these liberal arguments, their solutions run into difficulties in cases where traditional identities also form the core of one’s identity. For example, an oppressed woman might still hold on to traditional understandings of what it means to be a good wife or mother and an attempt to liberate her from her situation may cause irreparable psychological damage; similarly, it is still quite common in India and Asia for people to take care of their aging parents despite familial discord. This is because, as cognitive psychologists tell us, people neither think nor behave as atomistic individuals despite their abstracted arguments for the same. Their emotions are value judgments about the world and how it should be: one takes satisfaction not in the political and social liberty of a man but his success in leading a meaningful life. Whereas the assertion of rights was once confined to matters of essential human interest, a strident rights rhetoric has occupied contemporary political discourse. The cult of the individual, together with materialism and the desire for instant gratification, have left little room for reasoned discussion and compromise between community and individual.

Properly understood, the communal critique of liberalism is not over ossified traditions but about the solutions proffered by liberals that disrupt traditional bonds of kinship, duties, and authority, thereby fuelling the atomistic tendencies of modern society. Several liberal ideas have contributed to the erosion of social responsibilities and important means of social cohesion and communal life. The invisible hand of the free market has also undermined family life and been a questionable influence on politics at best. The rehabilitation of greed fostered a utilitarian ethic that encroached into social and intra-community relationships that had previously functioned on a sense of reciprocity, duty, and civil obligation. This trend was further reinforced by globalisation and the creation of a global marketplace.

It is neither possible nor desirable to turn back the clock; the dogmas of the quiet past are indeed inadequate to the stormy present. Liberalism, the noun and the ideology, must be tempered by a liberal – the adjective – mind. Just as the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment was a reaction to authoritarianism, arbitrary laws, overbearing communities, and rigid dogma, communitarians today are reacting to the undue emphasis on the rights of the egocentric individual. So far, few viable alternative political structures have been offered.

An interesting solution, however, comes from rasa theory in Indian aesthetics. Rasa, the Sanskrit word meaning essence, is fundamental to Indian arts, from dance and music to literature. Its principle lies in exciting emotional states in the audience and it does so by distilling the range of human emotions to a a handful and depicting them vividly. The goal of rasa is not to merely evoke a rudimentary emotional response but one of philosophical and spiritual contemplation. Though there are marked differences between the two, Ancient Greek plays also played an important social role beyond entertainment.

Exposure to great literature, be it the Mahabharata or the Aeneid, the Silappatikaram or the Divina Commedia, instills broad archetypes of human societies in the audience. Over time and with sufficient reflection, it develops empathy in audiences. Literature perhaps does this better than other forms of art because of a clearer intellectual component required in its appreciation. Qualities like empathy strengthen the cohesiveness of communities, be they of geography, profession, or memory. An empathetic society will have less need to resort to rights conferred upon its individual constituents by a centralised and universalising liberal state because grievances may be worked out at the local level. At a political level, it follows that authority must devolve to the local level and laws intruding on personhood and identity must be minimal and restricted only to the essential.

The problem in selling virtues like empathy is that they are not quantifiable and our post-Enlightenment rational minds find it difficult to grasp subjective evaluations, particularly in matters of national policy. The fear is that some sort of inequity may become institutionalised. However, liberals need to stop chasing their utopia as traditionalists have theirs and realise that there is no such thing as universal equality – innate human capabilities and preferences will never allow it.

Ancient political systems may have lost their relevance to modern society but they operated on the sound and realistic principle that people must live together as cooperative and preferably friendly members of communities; no man is an island. Ideologies that erode this foundational observation cannot improve human existence, and though we do not have a “Grand Unified Theory” of social organisation, it hardly helps if we go against common sense.

This post appeared on FirstPost on October 30, 2014.

Qu’est-ce que le libéralisme?

14 Wed Jul 2010

Posted by in Theory & Philosophy

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What exactly is liberalism? Any description, either by its protractors or detractors, quickly brings up the image of the four blind men and the elephant. To complicate things further, anything beyond a cursory look reveals multiple strands of liberalism, ranging from the 20th century welfarist Left-liberalism of progressivism to the laissez-faire market capitalist orientation more common among liberals of the previous century. Even more vexing is how liberals are found on both sides of the aisle – they oppose the Right promotion of “traditional” and religious values, but support their advocacy of capitalist enterprise. On taxation and welfare, liberals are as divided among themselves as “Left” and “Right.” Occasionally, liberals might find common cause with other parts of the political spectrum – such as on welfare with the Left – but for entirely different reasons and to different degrees.

What are we to make of the term then? Part of the problem is the refusal to acknowledge the evolution of the term over the last 200 years. Another part is the hegemonic position liberalism has achieved in modern political discourse, so much so that even modern conservatism and socialism share some of its principles. This overlapping of values makes it difficult to distill a set of core principles unique to liberalism. For example, liberty and tolerance could be seen as liberal values but are hardly the monopoly of liberal thought, and liberals did not always support democracy (understood as universal adult suffrage). Perhaps the central tenet of liberalism (which, now, libertarians also lay claim to) is individualism. But to put this in the appropriate context, liberalism is best understood as a zeitgeist rather than as a concrete political ideology.

Liberalism arose as an ideology of the middle class merchants. Early liberals stressed the sanctity of the individual over the aristocracy, based on birth, and the clergy, based on dubious, hand-me-down morality. As the Industrious and Industrial revolutions shifted consumption patterns and economic modalities, the new middle class strained against traditional authority. This universal appeal – the first and second estates were not so numerous – united the rich merchants as well as marginalised groups such as women, labourers, and slaves. However, as the “revolutionaries” replaced the ancien regime, women and labourers saw little change. Disadvantaged groups now used the universalist liberal principles they had argued for against monarchs to squeeze benefits from their erstwhile colleagues. This struggle for inclusion into the governing process took place along political as well as economic lines. As Robert Lowe, then only a Member of Parliament, said in 1867 on the eve of the Second Reform Act (and the beginning of the age of mass politics),

Because I am a Liberal, and know that by pure and clear intelligence alone can the cause of true progress be promoted, I regard as one of the greatest dangers a proposal to subvert the order of things, and transfer power from the hands of property and intelligence, and to place it in the hands of men whose whole life is necessarily occupied in daily struggles for existence.

Clearly, not all early liberals shared William Gladstone’s “trust in the people,” and the Second Reform Act can be seen as one of the early points of divergence among liberals. Opposed to the deification of humanity as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ernest Renan were wont to do, classical liberals argued that (a liberal) government was one that was intelligent and disinterested, free from a craving for popular approval, religious superstition, or unnatural hierarchies; it was a practical matter of business, and franchise a mechanism for selecting the best to govern. As Lowe famously said,

I cannot blow a glass bottle because it would be my interest to do so, nor discern political truth merely because I shall suffer if I am wrong.

The fact that working men would benefit from good legislation offered no security that they could supply it.

Political participation was gradually ceded, but economic upliftment gained traction more quickly, especially as mainstream liberalism adopted concepts of redistributive economics and Karl Marx’s doctrine of Socialism sprang up to vociferously denounce laissez-faire capitalism. While it is debatable whether the redistributive impulse among liberals was inspired by a religious or a humanist urging – Gladstone was profoundly religious, arguing that the mind and soul of a man cannot be measured in shillings and pence – liberal politics undertook fundamental social reforms and began to embrace labour unions, welfare, and other egalitarian principles. Right-wingers of today might cringe at this, but in the 19th century, these reforms were essential for creating a fair and humane society – the daily horror of low-wage labour in England, be it in the cotton mills or the coal mines, was unbelievable. The Left-liberal agenda included basic reforms that are today taken for granted such as 8-hour workdays, two-day weekends, paid holidays, as well as the abolition of the Corn Laws, tariff reforms, abolition of slavery, Poor Law reform, the establishment of a public education system, and the gradual expansion of suffrage to include the non-propertied and women.

The devastation of World War I and the economic collapse precipitated by the mercantilist advocacy of protectionism a decade later shocked international business. In the widespread post-war misery, socialism seemed a safer bet to many. So powerful was the socialist message that Left-liberalism and even fascism adopted some of its principles; the Great Crash in 1929 only underscored the fragility of the capitalist system and made socialist policies look more attractive. The economic theories of John Maynard Keynes found wide acceptance in this hopeless climate. One of its powerful supporters was no less than the US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR launched a series of massive public works projects, satisfying the infrastructural needs of the vast country. This, however, was not a temporary solution to the rampant unemployment of the late 1920s and early 1930s – FDR’s State of the Union speech in 1944 enumerated “rights” for all that created vague positive obligations on everyone, very different from the liberal ideals of just a century ago. Furthermore, this “second Bill of Rights” also expanded the role of government in the economy enormously.

Despite these economic deviations from the original tenets of liberalism, Left-liberals held on to other ideas such as tolerance and anti-clericalism that were central to the liberal philosophy. This was amply demonstrated during the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the support of liberals to gender equality and LGBT rights. In the late 1960s, the famous political philosopher John Rawls rewrote the social contract of John Locke and Immanuel Kant to give it a more egalitarian outlook. However, by the end of the next decade, governments worldwide were stepping back from their flirtation with social democracy, as liberalism with socialist leanings was then called, towards the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Ironically, though neoliberalism resembles the original liberalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it has been adopted by centre-Right parties such as the Australian Labour Party, the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, and the Republican Party in the United States. Social democracy, also known as Progressivism or Left-liberalism, has taken centre-stage for liberalism in today’s political spectrum.

While “old” liberals accuse the “new” liberals of betraying the original tenets of liberal thought, Left-liberals argue that the liberal agenda of equal opportunity can only be met by appropriate restructuring of societal preferences, restraining prejudices, and a substantive redistribution of wealth – in essence, what they see as a pragmatic approach. In turn, the new liberals accuse the old liberals of failing to create equal opportunities, resistance to universal suffrage, and hesitance to include marginalised groups into the political process, only to be reminded by classical liberals that the purpose of government is not social engineering but the defence of individual liberty, leaving society to sort out the rest.

Liberals – I shall use “progressives” to designate the Left-liberals – argue that rights are relational, imply obligations, and are compossible; fundamental rights are inalienable, inherent, and create negative obligations. Liberals also distinguish between rights and needs – the former creates a claim while the latter does not. To juxtapose this with Left and Right notions of rights, it is worth noting the different priorities of collectivist ideology. The communists argue that the needs of the proletariat were a claim against the individual, while the Nazis subordinated the individual to the race. Italian and Spanish fascists and the architects of the welfare state placed society before the individual, and theocracies oppressed the individual in the name of religion. The proletariat, race, society, and religion are the personification of the state to which the sacrifice of the individual will is demanded.

Liberals put individual liberty above all else; the social contract is between the state and the individual. This does not, contrary to the straw man conservatives like to put up, restrict the individual from organising into different associations. For example, a liberal state will not interfere if every member of a gated community decides to live a communitarian lifestyle, combining chores, income, and responsibilities. Nor would it prohibit the gathering of similar-minded individuals to read, discuss, and learn the teachings of ma’at. The liberal mindset has evolved from observing the historical oppression of minorities in the name of collective identity and is hence suspicious of any form of the collective. However, it would be antithetical to common sense and the natural order to prohibit to people, a social species, collective identities and activities. The balance between ensuring the rights of the individual and the thriving of the collective is to allow each individual to voluntarily choose his or her affiliations. This couples responsibility for choice with the freedom to choose in one individual.

Many of today’s conservatives and progressives thus find themselves descendants of the liberal tradition in that conservatives support laissez-faire capitalism and progressives support the liberal rejection of religion at the governing level. However, progressivism, or what passes for liberalism today, sought to push through its agenda by means of an activist state. In the 19th century, this was understandable, for the liberal agenda was to ensure that every individual received his or her fundamental rights. Since then, however, progressives have forgotten the old Aristotelian virtue of the golden mean, and their agenda has been expanded beyond fundamental rights to need-claims. One’s natural sympathy for the less fortunate is manipulated, and a guilt tax is extorted in the name of poor relief and the actualisation of the promise of equality. However, liberalism was never truly a doctrine of equality but one of compossible equal opportunity, or, as Locke expressed, equality of authority. The liberal support of education stems from their belief that a person be able to stand on his or her own two feet and the responsibility for success or failure be his or hers alone.

Unfortunately, this progressive strategy has evoked much hostility from conservatives and liberals alike. Welfare economics, particularly with a slowing economy, has disrupted growth; fetishism made out of inclusivity has made society more unsafe, and a weak intellectual grasp of liberal political philosophy (or worse, hypocrisy) has brought progressivism (and dragged liberals along with it) to an intellectual crisis of political philosophy. Here on out, in the din of populist politics, whether it is the progressives who win or the conservatives, the liberal individual is subordinated; the only choice is between a state ideology and a state-sponsored group. In an effort to defend a philosophically flawed political position (since they insist on arguing from liberal and not socialist first principles), they may very well end up sacrificing the real liberal talisman – individual liberty.