What is the West?

5. The Rise of Liberal Democracies

5 The Rise of Liberal Democracies The fifth historical development or “miracle” is more familiar . It concerns the great liberal and democratic reforms that resulted in the distinctive outward form of the modern Western world. This development extended, more effectively than in the Middle Ages, the aim of the Papal Revolution, namely the improvement of the world through the application of science and law. The Huguenot wars in France, the Dutch War of Independence against Spain, the two English revolutions, the American Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789–1792 (but not that of 1793–1794), the Italian Risorgimento, and other similar events, occurring somewhat later and spreading more widely throughout Germany and other European countries, gave birth to the democratic and liberal institutions of our modern Western countries. These include representative democracy, universal suffrage — the right of a personal, free, and secret vote — the 61 separation of powers, an independent judiciary, a neutral administration, mechanisms for the protection of human rights, religious tolerance, freedom of scientific research, academic freedoms, freedom of the press, the freedom to trade, the freedom to work, private property rights, and honoring contracts. These are the institutions that enabled the rise of the modern world and that, for the past two or three centuries, steadily contributed to the internal successes of the West and its continuing geopolitical preeminence in the world. Even though these reforms occurred in such diverse fields as politics, culture and the economy, they shared the same underlying principle and fostered a new paradigm for human interaction: the spontaneous order or the pluralistic order of society. This concept, which Friedrich August Hayek dealt with decisively in his theoretical contributions ,1 designates an order that is neither a preexisting natural order, nor one established artificially by some external authority. It is, rather, a spontaneously constituted order resulting from the unfettered initiatives of individuals. The European reformers of the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries ascertained that a polycentric social order was more efficient in regard to the resolution of the most important social issues than any previously known type of social order. Under the impulse of these ideas, which gradually evolved into an explicit model, the great democratic revolutions promoted the doctrine and practice of intellectual liberalism (religious tolerance, pluralism in the sciences, schools, the press, and culture in general), democracy (pluralism in politics, free elections, and shared and limitedterm responsibility of government), and economic liberalism (pluralism in the economic arena). In each case, progress 62 What is the West? was so significant that it would not be unreasonable to call the phenomenon a new cultural leap forward. We turn now to each of these three fields in order to examine their underlying logic and the mechanisms at work.2 I L Before the Europeans could fully — and analytically — comprehend the significance of critical pluralism, they embarked on a long march toward tolerance, beginning with the Reformation, which established religious pluralism in Europe on a lasting basis for the first time. This march, in fact, had its origins in the Middle Ages with such personalities as Pierre Abélard, Ramon Llull, and Nicolas Cusanus. It continued throughout the sixteenth century with the humanists — Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Guillaume Postel, Montaigne, Bodin — until it reached Grotius, Locke, Voltaire, to mention only a few of the greatest thinkers. But it would require even greater effort to move from the idea of tolerance to that of critical pluralism; to progress from the idea that forbidding pluralism actually entails more negative consequences than positive ones, to the idea that pluralism always produces a good; or, in still other terms, to grasp the idea that truth is only accessible through critical pluralism. This effort was accomplished by such distinguished thinkers as Milton, Bayle, Kant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Benjamin Constant, John Stuart Mill and, in our time, Karl Popper, Thomas S. Kuhn, and others. The corollary of the idea that a direct link exists between truth and pluralism is the idea that every citizen must be free to express his ideas, and that therefore the liberty of 63 The Rise of Liberal Democracies cultural institutions — books, newspapers, schools, scientific research, the arts, artistic performances — must be constitutionally guaranteed.3 These thinkers progressively demonstrated that critical pluralism in ideas and knowledge is fertile; it is neither sterile nor destructive; it serves truth better than a dogmatic or authoritarian defense of truth; and in the field of intellectual liberalism...