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Chapter One liberalism in crisis Liberalism—and the intellectual heritage that gave it birth (the Enlightenment)—are now openly and respectably attacked by such thinkers as Alasdair MacIntyre and Alan Bloom. Liberalism is also being vigorously defended by such thinkers as David Gauthier , Ronald Dworkin, James Buchanan, and F. A. Hayek—not to mention the seminal works of [John] Rawls and [Robert] Nozick. Although many of these thinkers differ significantly from each other, they all share a concern over the prospects of liberalism. This can be said without even defining what liberalism is, for the term often remains undefined, and part of the debate about liberalism is certainly connected with debate over what it means. —douglas b. rasmussen and douglas j. den uyl, liberty and nature: an aristotelian defense of liberal order We made the observation in this epigraph over a decade ago,1 and if we are any judge of what has occurred in the intellectual world since, the nature and defense of liberalism is an even more pressing issue. Indeed, in a recent work, Liberalism Defended: The Challenge of Post-Modernity, we began by asking: Why bother about liberalism? In recent times it has been pejoratively called the ‘‘L’’ word. And even though the 60’s generation now taking the reins of power may still see something idealistic in liberalism, the rest of us know that more government is not the answer to our problems. It may even cause many of them. The country, especially the young, has turned more conservative politically —especially when it comes to economic matters. Liberalism, then, seems out of step politically. That also appears to be the case 1. Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991), xiii. 6 liberalism and the political order intellectually. True, thinkers such as John Rawls have spawned whole intellectual industries that defend various versions of the welfare state; but one gets the sense that these efforts are more along the lines of propping up a crumbling edifice than of laying out a new direction. Why bother, then, with liberalism?2 Clearly, both the title and tone of Liberalism Defended indicated that we did not believe that the ‘‘crisis of liberalism’’ had abated, even when, as in the second statement, liberalism is understood in the modern American way. Perhaps it is fair to say that in the years from our opening statement to the one just cited to the post-9/11 world of today, the vitality of liberalism as a political and theoretical doctrine has continually dissipated. The scavengers have multiplied around liberalism’s almost lifeless carcass, but any efforts to revive it seem weak and ineffectual. Yet because there is no compelling alternative to liberalism being offered, liberalism manages to hang on. The crisis, therefore, continues. The literature in political philosophy is replete with ruminations on the crisis of liberalism. The political left has always been with us as a source of criticism of liberalism, but the crisis of liberalism has arisen largely because traditional leftist sources are not the only, or even the principal, basis of criticism. From these newer perspectives the forms of criticism of liberalism fall into three main types: first, there are criticisms that see the essential character of liberalism as the political expression of principles derived from the Enlightenment. The failures of the Enlightenment are thus the failures of liberalism, so criticisms of the Enlightenment are also criticisms of liberalism . In this camp we find thinkers such as John Gray, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Second, there are more directly political criticisms of liberalism, which usually carry the label ‘‘communitarian’’ with them. The aforementioned thinkers qualify here as well, but Michael Sandel and Roberto Unger come to mind in addition. These thinkers mainly attack the individual-rightsbased orientation of liberalism in favor of community procedures. At the foundational level the autonomous rights-bearing individual is rejected and replaced with individuals more fully formed by, and integrated with, the communities in which they live and act.3 Indeed, liberalism is accused of 2. Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberalism Defended: The Challenge of Post-Modernity (Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1997), 1. 3. In Communitarianism and Individualism, ed. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 12–50, essays by Michael Sandel, ‘‘The Procedural [18.119.131.178] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 12:03...

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