Liberalism Defended: The Challenge of Post-Modernity

by Douglas B. Rasmussen, Douglas J. Den Uyl

Liberalism is today under serious intellectual attack. It is said to undermine its own principles, to have lost any strong claims to universal validity, and to foster injustice and inhumanity. Liberalism is associated with Enlightenment thought and is considered by some as an outmoded political philosophy. Professors Rasmussen and Den Uyl take up this challenge to liberalism. They show that liberalism is not locked into traditional ways of understanding itself and has the capacity to enrich itself by intellectual traditions not usually associated with liberalism. Unlike much of liberalism, which defends its politics by resorting to either moral skepticism or moral minimalism, Rasmussen and Den Uyl employ a distinction between normative and “metanormative” principles. The latter are more directly tied to politics and concern principles that establish social/political conditions under which full moral conduct can take place. Thus it is not necessary to minimize the moral universe to support liberalism. Rasmussen and Den Uyl support their distinction through a novel use of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, and they show the importance of this distinction when they specifically address the positions of two leading critics of liberalism - John Gray and Alasdair MacIntyre.

Genres: Philosophy

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Paul Crider · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short volume was mostly a reprise of the argument for a libertarian political order from Aristotelian foundations found in their Liberty and Nature. The book's particular application is a response to communitarian critiques of liberalism, especially John Gray and Alasdair MacIntyre. It begins with an interesting discussion of whether and how the right and good can be separated. The authors' contention that there is no clean separation sets the stage for their argument for liberalism from the good, or from human flourishing.

I'm sympathetic to the authors' Aristotelian liberalism, with its acknowledgment of a thick social human nature and its particularist conception of human flourishing. The authors conceive of human rights as "metanormative," as merely securing the necessary conditions for individuals to pursue their own conceptions of the good. I think this effort largely fails. On the one hand, the developmental needs of human beings to achieve the capability of effectively choosing and advancing their own ends are far greater than the limited freedom from interference that the authors propose. On the other hand, as the developmental scope of positive rights increases to more realistically secure the conditions for individuals to pursue their eudaimon ends, these rights become more inherently contestable—more political. Thus the allegedly "meta" norms will in fact be treated just like garden variety norms.

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite thought provoking. How are ethics and politics related? Does one support the other? Do the principles of one derive simply from the other? This leads to collectivism sometimes. Acting on principle versus phronesis. Fighting the universality of modern ethics doesn't lead to relativism. That is a false dichotomy. In developing an ethics would universality or disinterest be the correct avenue? Why choose them? What do they have in their favor? Per these authors, impartiality comes from liberalism: creating a good society. So, it is a political nation not an ethical one. Self-perfection versus social peace. Justice versus prudence. They really are different