What is Liberalism, What is Post-Liberalism, and Why Has the World Lost its Mind?
By Paul Grenier
Most of us today, I wager, spend at least part of our days marveling at how our institutions in the political West have become so corrupt. By “corrupt” I do not mean, at least not in the first instance, “on the take.” I mean spiritually corrupt: incapable of telling the truth; either altogether complacent about evil or positively anxious to do evil; motivated by monetary gain to the exclusion of all other considerations; swept up in a rebellion against nature and God reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s Demons.
Overweening interest in power is precisely the first thought error of liberal modernity.
How did this come about? A certain “postliberal” philosophical tradition, a tradition to which Simone Weil, Alasdair MacIntyre, George Grant, D.C. Schindler, and John Milbank (in his earlier writings) belong, answers that it came about due to a prior corruption in our understanding of key concepts. Those concepts have been with us for so long, however, that we often do not even realize that we have accepted them or appreciate all that they entail. Although the philosophers listed above subject liberal modernity to a thoroughgoing critique, they do not do so as revolutionaries. It is not their goal to replace an evil power with their own, good power. Their critique, precisely because it is philosophical, is concerned not with power, but with truth. Overweening interest in power is precisely the first thought error of liberal modernity.
Power, Truth, and the Good
In the opening chapter of his An Intellectual History of Liberalism, Pierre Manent provides an account of how Machiavelli set the stage for liberalism by effectuating a change in the status of the good. “One of the most deeply rooted traits of the modern soul,” Manent tells us, “is doubt of the good, the smile of superiority and mockery, the passion for losing one’s innocence.” Machiavelli accomplishes this “loss of innocence” by insisting, by recourse to extreme situations in the life of the city state, that evil is more fundamental than the good; by insisting, in effect, that evil is more effective. More effective at doing what? At avoiding still greater evils, is the best one can say, because the good has already been set aside as the standard.
Another lesson modernity acquired from Machiavelli was that we should understand politics as a technique for acquiring and holding onto power. Simone Weil, noting that this is how modernity understands politics, makes an observation which, though it is in a sense perfectly obvious, is quite often ignored: power is not an end, but a means. To orient politics, therefore, to power, is, from Weil’s perspective, to fail to practice politics at all. It is to uproot politics from its true end and to immerse it instead in a literally futile—because of its inescapable limitlessness—quest.
The end toward which politics should be oriented, in the view of the postliberal philosophical tradition of which I am writing,[1] is that of the Good—toward precisely that end that the Greek and Christian (and other ancient traditions) used to talk about before Machiavelli deposed the Good, and before Nietzsche certified God’s death.
The end toward which politics should be oriented, in the view of the postliberal philosophical tradition of which I am writing, is that of the Good.
Weil, without by any means abandoning modernity—she retained an abiding respect for Kant, for example—attempted, in her writings, to reinsert into modernity the priorities of the ancient and Christian world. Leo Strauss frequently describes political modernity as a “lowering of one’s sights.” Weil sought to raise them back up again. She considered many of the “values” central to political liberalism to be relative things. In the context of a society itself properly rooted in the good, these “middle values,” when properly set in balance, can play an important role in the life of the community.[2] But for the life of the person and the community to be spiritually healthy, that life cannot take its orientation simply from avoiding (“fleeing”) evils and discomforts (a theme repeatedly taken up by the heirs of Machiavelli, to include Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith). It cannot even take its cue from aiming at middle-level goods. With her characteristic mix of concision and radicalism, Weil insists on an orientation to the good that goes all the way:
One of the fundamental truths of Christianity is that progress toward a lesser imperfection is not produced by the desire for a lesser imperfection. Only the desire for perfection has the virtue of being able to destroy in the soul some part of the evil which defiles it. Hence Christ’s commandment: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’
In calling for “perfection,” Weil is of course addressing her thought not to the legal code, but to the soul.
The Liberal Non-Subject
Thus far, we have established two characteristics about liberalism: that it reversed the ancient world’s ordering of means to ends; and that it, in effect, privileges evil over the good in the sphere of politics. It is at least plausible to suppose that these changes have something to do with explaining our present-day madness (it would be hubristic to claim we can do any more than point at various hints and clues; at any rate, we can obviously not dream of achieving an exhaustive account). In his 2004 essay, “The Gift of Ruling,” John Milbank takes a deep dive into Manent’s Intellectual History precisely with the goal of rooting out how liberalism managed to replace what came before it, including, in the first instance, by replacing the good with evil.
Milbank begins by noting what he views as Manent’s inadequate account of why and how liberal modernity appeared on the scene at all, much less in the capacity of being a replacement for the classical world (a world which still lived on, at least in parts of Europe, until as late as the 17th century). According to Milbank’s reading of Manent’s account, things came to a head due to the conflict between two visions of human excellence: on the one hand, the self-abnegating saint, and on the other hand, the self-asserting political hero. To skirt this aporia, a new vision of humanity was invented more or less out of whole cloth. The new “liberal” humanity, Milbank accurately notes, would not set itself up as a rival to Christianity in the sense that it would propose some new ideal. To the contrary, political man was now destined to become a pure abstraction from which considerations of good and evil were a priori absent:
…politics was thought of not as the realisation of a natural telos, nor as the abetting of a supernatural one, but simply as the most efficient co-ordination of competing wills, and their summation into one common, powerful collective will…The only thing that now distinguished this bare existence from a blade of grass or an asteroid, was its reflexive capacity for self-moving: its will, which might be equally for good or for evil. Such a choice was now politically irrelevant. Or rather, as Manent says, if anything there was, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Montesquieu and Hegel, a bias towards the primacy of evil.
This essay by Milbank, it must be said (I add parenthetically that it was D.C. Schinder who first made me aware of it), is, aside from its other virtues, a rhetorical tour de force and well rewards a careful reading and re-reading. Milbank’s argument is that, far from itself being natural, liberalism proposes something “fantastically peculiar and unlikely” about what humans are. Real persons have souls, beliefs, associations. In the Christian world, we were thought of as “a divine gift, as defined by [one’s] sharing-in and reflection-of, divine qualities of intellect, goodness and glory.” The liberal self, by contrast, is a simple blank, to which are attached “rights.” The liberal fascination with freedom and the will has, indeed, precisely the very flaw to which Milbank alludes: the autonomous subject, the supposed holder of all these famous “freedoms” and “rights,” does not exist. Liberalism itself has dispensed with the subject.[3] To the extent it turns everything it touches into a means, it likewise dispenses with truth.
The autonomous subject, the supposed holder of all these famous “freedoms” and “rights,” does not exist. Liberalism itself has dispensed with the subject.
The Unreality of Liberal Autonomy
We have not yet provided a suitably precise philosophical definition of liberalism. In Anatol Lieven’s fascinating contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, he offers progressivism as a key to understanding modern liberalism. In the context of his essay, which emphasizes the distinction between democracy and liberalism, such a definition is extremely useful. It is worth noting, moreover, that the very idea of “progress” is admirably vague about the content of that progress (is it progress toward good or toward evil? Is it perhaps the progression of a disease?). So, in this sense, at least, Lieven’s starting point is very much in harmony with the themes we have taken up thus far. We will explore here, however, a somewhat different take on the essence of liberalism.
Man in his modern dignity, having emerged from childhood into adulthood, is self-directed; he does not need some outside authority but derives his law from within. Such was Kant’s position. This idea of self-direction points us to a concept that D.C. Schindler examines with considerable care—the concept of autonomy. His close reading of autonomy will bring us considerably closer to an adequate understanding of both liberalism and the postliberal critique thereof.
It is a commonplace of liberal apologetics (think Milton Friedman) that man must be free to choose. Choices are free, from the liberal perspective, if they can be viewed as made autonomously. The liberal will, at once absolutized and devoid of substance, feels oppressed by any “thing” beyond that will. The autonomy of the will to will comes very close to being the very definition of liberal freedom, and stands at the center of liberalism as such (I discuss this theme of liberal autonomy more deeply here).
Let us look further into the insubstantiality of the liberal will, which Locke and his heirs posit as defining that “fantastically peculiar and unlikely” thing known as the “individual” invented by liberalism. Schindler begins by noting that the word auto-nomy is composed of two parts: auto, which of course refers to the self, and nomos, which refers to a rule, law or “custom.” There are, thus, two ways of understanding autonomy. One would imply a relationship to nomos as something other than me myself. It is hard to understand a “rule” as in fact (substantially) a rule if it is simply changeable at a whim. In other words, one may choose a “rule” (Montesquieu dwells at length on the monastic rule with the intention of subtly trivializing it), but having made that choice, whatever it is, the rule itself now exercises its own influence as something now beyond my “will to will.” The pre-liberal tradition at its best grants a place for autonomy, but views autonomy as transpiring always within heteronomy—in other words, it views even the autonomous self as always in relation to what is other than the self. The monastic rule, like the rule of marriage, or any given custom, for that matter, does not contradict freedom and autonomy even in their strict observance. In the ideal case these “rules” (nomoi) are embraced out of love or affection, or at any rate out of admiration for their enduring meaning.
Liberalism, for its part, asserts freedom as autonomy that does not enter into a wider relationship with anything. I will add, parenthetically, a quick preamble to my further development of Schindler’s argument. It is easy to assume, though the assumption is inaccurate in this case, that he is making a moral argument. “He is saying we should not be self-centered; that we should will something good.” That may be so, but it is not what Schindler is saying. He is making, instead, two philosophical points about the nature of what is (i.e., ontology, not morality).
The following passage is very helpful in clarifying Schindler’s argument:
…we need to see that the alternative—either self-determination or determination by the other—is a deceptive illusion. As we saw…above, one can be determined at all only through the acquisition of some new form, which necessarily entails a subordination, in some respect, to what is other. Self-determination and determination by an other, if this means a genuine transformation of the self, a becoming different—and what else could determination mean?—can only occur simultaneously.
If autonomy is defined as meaning the absence of relation to what is other, then the autonomous self, with its abstract willing and “self-determination,” collapses into unreality. That is the first point.
If autonomy is defined as meaning the absence of relation to what is other, then the autonomous self, with its abstract willing and “self-determination,” collapses into unreality.
But there is also a second aspect important to our discussion, a discussion which, as we noted at the outset, wished to shed at least some light on qualities of our present day world that seem, not to mince words, demonic. It is once again helpful to quote Schindler directly:
If we ab-solutize autonomy (that is, sever it from any relation), which means that we deny that there is a prior nomos to which it is relative, then self-governance comes to mean the power to give oneself a rule whatever one might determine that rule to be. The inversion of means and end that we spoke of at the outset comes into play here. As we saw above, autonomy in the sense we are describing is the power that one has over oneself, but because it is by its nature devoid of determinate content [emphasis mine – PRG], this power receives its defining contours, not from any actual reality, but instead precisely from one thing alone, namely, its exclusion of the power of an other. This exclusion becomes its formal meaning.
From this (essentially liberal) perspective, neither autonomy nor heteronomy point to a “nomos” with any intelligible content. Both are reduced, very typically (!), to nothing but a power, the only distinction between the two being that one power originates from some “I,” and the other power originates from some “not I.” Schindler notes, in conclusion: “We recall that Locke can tolerate subordination to anything but the ‘arbitrary will’ of another. Thus, autonomy, interpreted as a power, is essentially diabolical: it has no other meaning than the keeping at bay (δια-βάλλω) of what is other.”
We have reached, it seems, the very heart of the matter. First, the redefinition of the individual as essentially a “power.” Then, given that this “power” is wholly other, the necessity of a “deterrence” of that “power”—whether by coercive law or by armies and all the rest. We have tracked down to its source, it would seem, not only liberalism, but also the national security state.
Liberalism’s Diabolical Freedom
The good, true, and beautiful, for Weil, is not proven, but encountered. The concept of rootedness is central to Weil’s political thought precisely because it names a complex of practices (cf. in this respect, MacIntyre) and moral attitudes— all of which, when taken together, make possible over time such encounters. Freedom is possible in such an order, because its “rules” inhere in the very nature of things, on the one hand, and on the other, because, given their link to an order that can be loved, its practices are willingly accepted. The rooted world as described by Weil, in common with Hegel’s Sittlichkeit, has the ability to keep to a minimum the number and intrusiveness of laws. It was not zoning law that created Europe’s cathedrals and beautiful surrounding towns, but patterns and a vocabulary that were passed on from generation to generation because they were loved. Liberalism, with its assertion of autonomy from the good, gets precisely wrong the source of real freedom. Liberal freedom, which cannot manifest itself except by means of conflict with the other and rejection of the real, is indeed precisely diabolical.
Liberal freedom, which cannot manifest itself except by means of conflict with the other and rejection of the real, is indeed precisely diabolical.
It is easy to see from the above that the modern (liberal) fixation on power, its rejection of limits, its belief in the greater effectiveness of evil—all this can only uproot any and every community from its own traditions and customs. The community, having lost its prior roots, is left with little more to aspire to than the acquisition of means, such as money or other forms of power. This then generates that familiar feedback loop, whereby the liberal world marches forth to save “backwards peoples,” who are attached to their various customs and religions that restrict their ability to enjoy “modern freedom” (on this point, see again Anatol Lieven’s contributions). This endless cycle of liberal liberation is, of course, deeply dishonest, because no one outside the political West is asking for this assistance (ask a Libyan today how it has worked out for them) nor this “freedom.”
Tocqueville, if I am not mistaken, believed there is no way back from modernity, and that America was in some sense the world’s destiny. After all, Tocqueville reasoned, once consent is enshrined as the political principle, it is not in man’s nature to consent to the loss of one’s consent. For all his insightfulness, Tocqueville seems here to be missing something essential about modern liberty. There is no need to repeat the points already made above. I will simply add that it does not seem such a reach to imagine even the political West eventually growing weary of this corrupt and dishonorable order.
Paul Grenier is the president of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy and the editor of Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue. An essayist and translator who writes frequently on political philosophy, urbanism, and foreign affairs, his writings have appeared in Landmarks, American Affairs, The American Conservative, The National Interest, Telos, Consortium News, The Baltimore Sun, Ethika Politika, Johnson’s Russia List, Russkaya Idea, Tetradi konservatizma, and in translation in Russian, Spanish, and French.
[1] The term “postliberalism” can refer, as the reader already knows, to a rather wide range of different political perspectives. The perspective of which I am treating here does not yet have any accepted name, and so I am simply going to refer to it as the postliberal philosophical tradition. This is in keeping, at any rate, with the Platonic (and Christian Platonic) sensibilities of these sources. Plato did not use the word “philosophy” as moderns do. The modern, whether educated or uneducated, tends to use the term interchangeably with a certain arbitrarily chosen set of opinions or ideology. For Plato, of course, an orientation to the truth was what sets apart philosophy from, for example, the rhetoric of a Gorgias, which has the goal simply of being (surprise!) effective. The truth is one, and therefore so is philosophy.
[2] Cf. Weil’s essay, The Needs of the Soul, which was published in English as part I of Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, ibid., 3 - 39. Weil was a proponent of democracy and freedom of speech, and, indeed, condemned Stalinist communism because of its rejection of both. All the same, she did not absolutize democratic values. In her compendium of “needs of the soul,” she balances the needs for equality and freedom of opinion against the needs for hierarchy, obedience, and truth.
[3] On my reading at least, Manent makes this same point about if not the disappearance of the human subject, at any rate the trivialization of the supposed winner of modernity’s freedom sweepstakes—the human subject. Cf. Manent, The City of Man (Princeton, NJ: 1998), 156-157; 180-181, and passim. Manent’s Intellectual History and City of Man present among the most powerful and incisive spiritual critiques of liberalism available, and for this reason it strikes me as unreasonable for Milbank to take this highly-respected (and rightfully so) philosopher to task for not denouncing liberalism root and branch. It is true that he does not do so. Perhaps, under the influence of Tocqueville, he sees no way back.