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QUOTE=scottw;1030578]Saving liberty from liberalism

Patrick J. Deneen ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS 31 JAN 2014

It was an interesting read. I enjoyed and agreed with most of it, but some peculiar assumptions were annoying.


The narrative that dominates the political landscape of the United States poses liberty - as defined by classical liberalism - over against "progressive" liberalism or statism. Both claim to be in favour of liberty, yet, far from being opposites, they are mutually reinforcing reflections of the same ideology - liberalism.

What is his definition of classical liberalism which reinforces reflections (whatever that means) of the same ideology of progressive "liberalism"? Were classical liberals "statists"?

While liberalism has in its very name the word "liberty," its internal logic leads inexorably to the extinction of true human liberty - namely, through the elimination of everything aside from what the two "sides" in today's debates support: the autonomous individual and the liberal State.

What is "true" human liberty? Does one "side" actually support "the autonomous individual"? If the rest of his article means that Locke supported the individual outside of society, I would disagree.

Modern liberalism begins not, as might be believed if we were to follow the contemporary narrative, with the opposition to statism or progressivism, but rather with the intense rejection of ancient political thought,

One "side" intensely rejects that ancient thought, but the other "side" is split--half not intense and the other half not rejecting all of ancient political thought.

Thus, Aristotle was able to write (and Aquinas after him essentially repeated) that "the city is prior to the family and the individual" - not, of course, temporally, but in terms of the primacy of wholes to parts. To use a metaphor common to both the ancients and in the Biblical tradition, the body as a whole "precedes" in importance any of its constitutive parts: without the body, neither the hand, nor foot, nor any other part of the body is viable.

Comparing body parts to societal parts is not analogous. While it is true that the hand is not viable without the body (but it can be without various other parts), all body parts make up a genetic, organic, whole. The body is not separate from its parts. Without any part, it is a different body. And without some parts, it cannot exist. And there is no consent between parts. There is no choice. There is no distinction. The whole and the parts are one, and act as one.

On the other hand, the city is not a genetic or organic physical entity of families or individuals. The family and the individual are actually distinct "living, breathing" beings who, in a state of natural law, or political law that derives from natural law, are not bound to merely function as appendages to that which they create, but can actually diverge in opinion and action. The city (government), contrary to progressive speak, is not a living organism. Without actual living human beings, there can be no city. The living individuals determine what the city is, not vice versa. And they have natural rights that exist beyond the bound of city ordinance.

Actually, his analogy is closer to the progressive idea of collective government being necessary for the viability and definition of the individual than to some notion of "true" liberty.

Liberal theory fiercely attacked this fundamental assumption about human nature. Hobbes and Locke alike, for all their differences, begin by conceiving humans by nature not as parts of wholes, but as wholes apart. We are by nature "free and independent," naturally ungoverned and even non-relational. There is no ontological reality accorded to groups of any kind . . .

Hobbes, yes . . . Locke, no.

Liberty is a condition in which there is a complete absence of government and law, and "all is Right" - that is, everything that can be willed by an individual can be done.

Locke did not believe this. On the contrary, before government there is natural law. And it has a moral component. And in a "state of nature" humans should and would act according to that law with its morality. And they would punish those who would trespass that law. And, contrary to what Dineen says about "spontaneous order" later in the article, it would indeed occur in a state of nature.


To the extent that modern "conservatism" has embraced the arguments of classical liberalism, the actions and policies of its political actors have never failed to actively undermine those areas of life that "conservatives" claim to seek to defend. Partly this is due to drift; but more worryingly, it is due to the increasingly singular embrace by many contemporary Americans - whether liberal or "conservative" - of a modern definition of liberty that consists in doing as one likes through the conquest of nature, rather than the achievement of self-governance within the limits of our nature and the natural world.

He may be making the usual assumption that "conservatism" means Republican, or one of the two "sides." There is another conservatism represented by the much maligned Tea Party, as well as others, that hearkens back to a constitutional form of government founded by our Framers, which would be much closer to Dineen than to what he calls "liberalism." And he equates "modern liberalism" to "classical liberalism" which, I think, is a misreading of the latter. Certainly, Locke differs with Hobbes, and modern liberalism both on the nature of government and the "conquest of nature." He assumed nature was supreme, not to be conquered, but followed. He believed that government law is bound by natural law, and that legislation should further the goals of natural law making it more specific and applicable in certain circumstances. Locke would see political law as a protection of natural rights--mostly "negative" liberty, but "positive" only in those areas which the social compact granted it power by consent of the governed.

In that respect, Dineen wrongly attributes to him "a fundamental goal of Locke's philosophy in particular is to expand the prospects for our liberty . . . under the auspices of the State . . . that the law works to increase liberty . . . from the constraints of the natural world." Rather, the social contract helped to protect natural liberties, not increase them--that is, I don't think Locke saw government as a means to expand liberty, instead, individuals actually diminish their natural rights to some extent by transferring some to the collective to protect the rest.

We need rather to attend to our States and localities, our communities and neighbourhoods, our families and our Church, making them viable alternatives and counterpoints to the monopolization of individual and State in our time, and thus to relearn the ancient virtue of self-government, and true liberty itself.

Patrick J. Deneen is a David A. Potenziani Memorial Associate Professor of Constitutional Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.[/QUOTE]


For the rest of the article, the large middle section, I agree with Dineen as he basically describes the progressive State. Somehow he throws Locke in with it and likens him to Hobbes. My opinion is that Locke is much closer to Dineen than to Hobbes, and certainly would advise us to "relearn the ancient virtue of self-government, and true liberty itself.
The Founders would.