Liberalism, the happy exception

ABSTRACT

This essay reviews the main themes and ideas of a couple of recent books on liberalism written by two intellectual historians, Alan S. Kahan and Nathaniel Wolloch.Their books shed fresh light on the internal diversity and complexity of the liberal tradition, especially in relation to the Radical and Moderate Enlightenment as well as the French Revolution. Wolloch and Kahan show that many of the ideas and aims of the Radical Enlightenment ended up being implemented by thinkers who belonged to the tradition of moderate liberalism. The essay also argues that two books offer a timely opportunity to revisit the limits and virtues of liberal principles and respond to their recent critics.

KEYWORDS:

• liberalism
• Enlightenment
• moderation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Patrick J. Deneen, Regime Change: Toward a Post-liberal Future (New York, 2023).

2 Samuel Moyn, Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (New Haven, 2023).

3 Pankaj Mishra, ‘Trump’s Talk of “Western values” is Bogus’, Bloomberg.com, 10 July, 2017.

4 See Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, 2018), Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (New York, 2016). I have commented on these issues in Aurelian Craiutu, ‘Why Are Western Intellectuals Abandoning Liberalism’, Journal of Contextual Economics – Schmoller Jahrbuch, 142, no. 1 (2022): 1–20. For the officially published version of Orbán’s speech, see https://2015-2019.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp.

5 See Daniel H. Cole and Aurelian Craiutu, “The Many Deaths of Liberalism,” Aeon Magazine (June 28, 2018), https://aeon.co/essays/reports-of-the-demise-of-liberalism-are-greatly-exaggerated\

6 See, for example, Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism (Oxford, 1992) and Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion (Oxford, 2016); Nathaniel Wolloch, Macaulay, and the Enlightenment (Woodbridge , 2022).

7 See Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberation: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-first Century (Princeton, 2018).

8 See Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001); Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1721 (Oxford, 2006), Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790 (Oxford, 2011), and The Enlightenment That Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748–1830 (Oxford, 2019). Wolloch is right to point out that the concept of the Radical Enlightenment has a long history, dating back to the nineteenth century and was expanded later by Leo Strauss and Margaret Jacob. Israel’s approach has given birth to criticism from various quarters that questioned his methodology, distinctions, and treatment of individual authors and themes (for example, the French Revolution).

9 This is also a point made by Raymond Aron in Liberty and Equality (Princeton, 2023), 49.

10 Raymond Aron, Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society (New York, 1968), 275.

11 Aron in Liberty and Equality, 54.

12 See Joshua L. Cherniss, Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2021); Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox, Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change (Oxford, 2023); Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge, 2024).