the goal of education under liberalism. It is, in theory: "enabling people to do what they want." — Count Timothy von Icarus

And how are people to know or trust that what they want is what will lead to happy good lives, when liberalism teaches that only gray or illusory or socially imposed lines are all that can define anything we might want or pursue? Liberalism is a good method to achieve a goal, but useless as a goal in itself.

Liberalism, in its broadest sense, since the enlightenment, is the reification of experimentation as an end in itself. There is no single, happy goal, or truth, or conclusion to be drawn, as the coup that toppled religion, metaphysics, and kings was quite thorough. Anything institutional, other than liberalism itself, is oppressive. But liberalism itself is a method, a system of due process, a scientific method, devoid of any actual content or judgment of goodness or truth or value. Instead of admitting there is nothing left to progress towards, liberalism teaches that the excitement and adventurousness one feels in putting a hypothesis to experiment is the best there is for mankind and should be satisfying enough. The thrill of discovery is the goal, but once something is discovered, it too must be taken down, deconstructed, to make room for more "discovery." Such as the eternal recurrence of the same arguments against truth and goodness and virtue.

And then, hundreds of years go by with liberals leading the charge, but today, people still wonder whether they are free. Nothing is left to grab onto and build a freedom. Now we see that the wisdom of liberalism could only take us so far. Now, we must recover (rediscover) something permanent, something conclusive, something objective about goodness and beauty and humankind.

I sound anachronistic, to the myopic. Interesting post brother.

You used the term "critique;" does that mean you think something in the liberal tradition, broadly construed, is worth salvaging, or is it all ideology?

Often, champions of liberalism (I speak here of political theorists and popular authors) utterly fail at seeing even the haziest outlines of the apparent unfreedom critics see in liberalism. That's what this thread is about. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Didn't Leibniz believe in his work Theodicy that we were living in the best of all worlds? Start of the 18th Century wouldn't feel so optimal to us. Well, hopefully future generations 300 years from now feel the same way of our time compared to theirs.

It's easy to show what is wrong. The hard part is what to do about it. We seem to fall to the "I can fix it"-leader.

And how are people to know or trust that what they want is what will lead to happy good lives, when liberalism teaches that only gray or illusory or socially imposed lines are all that can define anything we might want or pursue? Liberalism is a good method to achieve a goal, but useless as a goal in itself. — Fire Ologist

Whoever claimed that liberalism was a goal in itself? Certainly not those people of faith who cherish the
ethical goals their Judaism, Christianity or Buddhism imparts within the umbrella of the liberalism they espouse. Scratch beneath the surface of this thread on liberal ‘myopia’ and it’s just another debate concerning which underlying philosophical worldview one prefers. Myopia isn’t unique to liberalism. It built into the normative commitments any political or philosophical view expresses. So you’re unhappy with liberalism? Name some alternative political thinkers and approaches you prefer.

So in response to: "that's not liberalism's problem, it's consumerism, capitalism, secularism, individualism, etc." I would reply, "give me one example where the two don't go together?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Simpson has a somewhat different angle. Here is a part of Simpson's early sketch:

The Mythical Character of This Story

This story about liberalism (thus schematically stated), about its rise and its superiority to illiberalism, is almost entirely mythical. It is a colorful story so universally taught and so universally believed that few are able, or able very easily, to see through its colors to question its truth. The myth has become a sort of instinctive state of the public mind, whereby people are caught up into the belief that liberalism, or something analogous to it, is the only acceptable doctrine about political life. This belief, however, generates a paradox on the one hand and insinuates a falsehood on the other.

The paradox is that while liberalism claims to free people from the oppression of states that impose on everyone the one true doctrine espoused by the state, liberalism itself imposes on everyone such a doctrine: namely liberalism itself.[1] Liberal theorists have long been offering solutions to this paradox. Whether they have succeeded in theory is questionable.[2] Whether they or any others have succeeded in practice seems plain to view. They have not. All those in professedly liberal states who, for whatever reason, do not accept the liberal doctrine, or are suspected of not doing so, become enemies of the state. They must at the very least be watched carefully, and if their unbelief in any way proceeds to attack against the liberal state and its interests at home or abroad, they must be hunted down and rendered harmless. The liberal state has proved itself as ruthless against its opponents as any illiberal state is supposed to have done.

The falsehood is that the liberal state, contrary to the myth, is not a solution to some longstanding political problem. It is rather the invention of a new problem that before hardly existed. For the state is not a timeless human phenomenon whose history can be traced far into the past. On the contrary, it is almost entirely an invention of liberalism itself, first in theory by theorists and then progressively in practice by men of power and influence who, whether sincerely or insincerely, embraced the theory. This claim, which may seem more startling than the paradox, needs extended explication and analysis. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Policital Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom, 3

Politically, Simpson sees Liberalism as bound up with the State in a way that precedes its capitalistic or democratic character:

The Idea of the State

The first question to ask, for it is key to correct analysis, is what is meant by the state. An answer to this question is provided by Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology, who in a perceptive insight seems to have got to the heart of the matter. Here is the apposite quotation:

> Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially
> intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions . . . have known
> the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have
> to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims
> the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given
> territory.[3]

By the state, then, is meant that special organization of political power that takes to itself a monopoly of coercion; that is, of the use of force to impose obedience to laws and policies. Note too, then, the novelty of this idea, for what Weber brings to our attention in this quotation is the difference between what existed before and what exists now. Before the modern emergence of the state, no institutional structure had a monopoly on coercive enforcement. The power to coerce has, of course, always existed and always been part of communal human life. Weber is not saying anything new by associating force with politics. What is new in his analysis, and in the state he is analyzing, is how this force relates to politics. In the past the power to coerce was not concentrated at any one point but diffused through the mass of the population. The nearest approach to the state in premodern times (though Weber does not mention the fact) was tyranny, where one man or a few did possess something close to a monopoly of coercion over everyone in a given area. For this reason was it typically called a tyranny: instead of all the citizens sharing control, only one or a very few did. Even kingships were not tyrannies in this sense, since kings ruled through powers of coercion diffused in the general mass. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Policital Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom, 3-4

He goes on to distinguish Hobbesian liberalism from Lockean liberalism, where the latter seeks to impose restraints on the state in a way that the former does not. He notes that "practical men of power" tend towards Hobbesian liberalism, and thus in practice liberalism always tends in the direction of a totalizing state.

This is only one aspect of Simpson's analysis, but from this it is easy to see how liberalism is inimical to freedom. For Aristotle and the ancients a monopoly of coercion is a tyranny, plain and simple. This is also why, at a deep philosophical level, the common liberal opposition to the right to bear arms in the second amendment to the United States' constitution is a bit bewildering. For Aristotle, the liberal complaint that the U.S. denies a full monopoly of coercion to the state would be seen as a kind of blinkered brainwashing of the demos.

-

That's fair, I didn't even write it as an OP, and I didn't really write it to make it clear that my interest was primarily not in "all critiques of liberalism," but rather the advocates of liberalism's general tendency to be blind to critiques that question whether or not liberalism's definition of freedom is adequate (as opposed to critiques that call into question whether or not liberalism delivers on freedom as liberalism itself defines freedom; the second sort of critique essentially accepts the premises of liberalism). — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair, and I think it's an important critique.

And there are lots of men and women who have encountered this sort of "personal failure." Millions it would seem. So the question is, at what point do we stop thinking this is an aggregate of millions of personal, individual failures and begin to say it is a systematic, social failure? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I think that's a worthy critique.

So you’re unhappy with liberalism? — Joshs

I'm not. I like thinking for myself. I like knowing that class distinction is accidental and unimportant. I like democracy.

Just not at the expense of metaphysics, of universal truth. I need these to think for myself. Universal truth and goodness is what prove there never was such a thing as a divine right of kings.

I don't believe mankind can be his own salvation, just that mankind can contribute to and participate in it. So liberalism has wisdom, but not enough. That's why I say it is a method. It has no content or goal defined. Just amorphous "progress". I don't see any progress unless we have an ideal and goal defined towards which we can progress. Once you try to define goals and ends and ideals, you need metaphysics, institutionalizable systems, and definitions of truth and beauty and goodness.

It doesn't say "enterprise," it says "free enterprise" (i.e. a form or aspect of capitalism). Your own definition disagrees with you, and you fudged it by omitting the word "free." — Leontiskos

I left it out of the postscript. Enterprise can be free without exploitation; enterprise can be free without relying on debt: value for value rather than profit and loss. Capitalism absolutely requires debt and exploitation. Capitalist economies allow freedom for a few by constraining many. Their governments protect the public precisely to the degree to which those governments are liberal.
A slogan is not a fact.

Seems there are as many definitions and descriptions of liberalism, liberal ideals, policy, governance and activism as there are people to do the describing. Nor do we all read the same history books, attribute the same features of a modern society to the same formative processes, or the same characteristics to a person identified as liberal.

This makes identification of the issues difficult and agreeing on alternatives impossible.

A slogan is not a fact. — Vera Mont

But you are relying on slogans yourself. This is your argument:

1. Free enterprise does not necessarily involve exploitation
2. Capitalism necessarily involves exploitation
3. Therefore, free enterprise is not capitalistic

#2 is the sort of slogan I might find on a bumper sticker. It seems to me that if a Marxist thinks capitalism is problematic because of the right to private property, then they will object to free enterprise for just the same reason. There are many, many such overlaps between the concepts of free enterprise and capitalism, to the point that for most purposes they are irretrievably wed. The layman does not know the difference at all.

Myopia isn’t unique to liberalism. It built into the normative commitments any political or philosophical view expresses

This is of course true, but it's a matter of degree. A century or so ago, when liberalism faced actual opponents in the form of reactionary monarchism, fascism, communism, and a Church that had not yet decided to embrace modernity, there was (as can be seen from texts from that era), a much larger recognition that liberalism's view of freedom and human flourishing was not the only possible view.

That is far less the case today. All ideologies might become translucent to some degree, but late-stage capitalist, globalized liberalism has made itself increasingly transparent, even as it also makes itself all encompassing by backwards projecting its norms across the whole of human history, and across the breadth of the human experience. One finds the language of the atomized economic actor, the goal-driven consumer, even in the language of romantic relationships these days. Be it in guides on attracting "high value males," and not being a "pick-me," for women, or the "attraction through competition," and "peacocking" schemes of male-oriented romance advice writers, homo economicus has replaced homo sapiens. And this is true now even in the realm of parent-child relations. So too, it holds in the spiritual realm, as churches strive to "compete," consumers "church shop," and Evangelicals come to describe evangelicalism methodologies like "Disciple Bible Study" in the language of mass marketing campaigns.

The intrusion of homo economicus into the realm of romance is particularly revealing because it is very often wed to the (often spurious) language of evolutionary psychology. Through this, it pretends to describing not just "dating in the age of late-capitalism and Tinder," but human nature itself, projecting the image of homo economicus onto homo sapiens.

And how can man turn to the spirituality of the erotic ascent if he has been taught—has been indoctrinated into—the belief that Eros is fundamentally a matter of acquisition and consumption, a laying claim to a commodity (a commodity that "dimishes when shared," and so which sets up a dialectical of competition)? How can Eros or Reason be transcendent and ecstatic when both become saturated in the language of the self (the "Inferno of the Same")? They can't.

That is perhaps the problem, not just the myopia, but it's pairing with a truly totalitarian tendency, one that just happens to be joined to a vision of freedom that bottoms out in irrational, inchoate impulse. (Look, liberalism literally lashes me to alliteration in its inescapably inundating inferno of the identical! Help!)

"Free enterprise" has indeed become synonymous with "capitalism." I think that's one of the ways in which liberalism and capitalism can make themselves transparent. There has always been enterprise, this "there has always been capitalism."

But liberalism makes a certain sort of argument for private property and free enterprise. It isn't Aristotle's argument, nor is it the argument of the Christian tradition (which was fairly divided on the issue, with Franciscians even being burnt at the stake over the issue of if Christ and the Apostles owned property). I'd say a defining feature of "classical liberalism" (which current globalized liberalism has inherited), is a very particular sort of justification for free enterprise and private property that relies on its anthropology (i.e. the rational egoist actor who is not defined as a social/political animal). This is particularly true in the Anglo tradition.

I don't think all of this tradition is all bad. I think Hegel's use of Adam Smith identifies some valid ways in which markets can help construct identity and allow for participation in a common good (e.g. "a rising tide [will tend towards] lifting all boats.") But I also think the anthropology is extremely deficient, and this manifests itself in a big way when it becomes totalizing, particularly vis-á-vis the way in which participation in common goods is understood (i.e. in terms of individualized benefit, a sort of reductionism).

(If Hegel is a liberal. I've seen him described as the grandfather of communism, fascism, and modern liberalism, and these are all apt labels to some degree).

I am not saying society has a responsibility to make each individual happy. I am saying though that the goal should be a common good, and the goal of education should probably be "to help people live happy, virtuous, flourishing lives." But I don't think that's the goal of education under liberalism. It is, in theory: "enabling people to do what they want." These aren't the same thing (and in practice, the goal is often more: "supplying the labor force with workers and providing daycare so that children can be raised by strangers for greater economies of scale so that we get economic growth). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can see your point here (and Han's) but isn't it the case that liberalism in this context is not as significant the marketisation of everything and everyone - the West is in the business of churning out good capitalists who can live the dream of individual transformation though education, qualifications, enhanced earning power, spending and then, of course, there's the children we set upon the same path.

And he's miserable. He's prime bait for radical ideologies of one sort of another precisely because he "did everything he was told," and is miserable. This isn't an uncommon phenomena — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn’t human dissatisfaction and unhappiness inherent to our condition, rather than simply the product of the particular culture we come from? Even in societies with radically different values and social structures, people still grapple with restlessness, longing, and the sense that something essential is missing. Might this not be something to do with our nature? In the contemporary West we have given people permission to rebel and drop out since the 1950's - is it any wonder many people seem primed to do this as an almost ritualistic response to their lives? The idea that we are not authentic, not good enough, and not happy enough - a familiar trope in Christian Evangelical thought - and that we might become better, happier, and more authentic through a radical shift in belief or practice, seems to serve as a defining narrative of our time.

collapses liberalism into capitalism, but that’s a mistake—one Lefebvre might help us avoid. For Lefebvre, liberalism isn’t an economic theory, but a moral and political framework for coordinating life among individuals with different wants, values, and needs. It’s not about GDP. It’s about decency.

Liberalism, in this account, isn’t hollow—it’s ethical. Its institutions aren’t designed to satisfy appetite, but to manage disagreement without violence. Especially when people disagree about what is good.

Lefebvre is clear: liberalism doesn’t pretend to be metaphysically deep. What it offers instead is an ethic of mutual forbearance. That’s not nothing. It’s how we live together without killing each other.
So yes—liberal states often coexist with exploitative global markets. But that’s a reason to reform markets, not discard liberalism. If you think liberalism inevitably slides into consumerism or wage slavery, you need to show how the institutions must produce those effects. Not just that they sometimes do.

Lefebvre’s point is that liberalism’s value is not in what it promises about markets, but in the kind of interpersonal ethic it encodes. If we care about mutual respect, basic fairness, and the protection of difference, then liberalism is worth defending—even if capitalism isn’t.

Nussbaum’s capabilities approach picks up on this and gives it substance. She argues that a liberal society must guarantee the conditions for real human flourishing, not just negative freedom or consumer choice. We might well work towards the development of central human capabilities like health, education, emotional life, and political voice. It’s liberalism with a richer telos, grounded in dignity rather than market logic.

Yes, the problems are real. But they don’t all trace back to liberalism. The fact they appear across liberal states with wildly different politics suggests something deeper—like global capital, demographic shifts, or decades of bipartisan neoliberal consensus.

Lefebvre helps here. Liberalism isn’t just an economic order—it’s a moral anthropology. It treats people as plural and self-directing, not as interchangeable units of labour. If there’s a vision of humans as “plug and play,” it’s from capital, not liberalism.

Same goes for the capabilities approach. It’s not just about GDP—it’s about real freedoms: to think, move, speak, love. If those aren’t being secured, that’s a failure of implementation, not a failure of liberalism.

And the question remains: what is the alternative you are offering?

For Lefebvre, liberalism isn’t an economic theory, but a moral and political framework for coordinating life among individuals with different wants, values, and needs. It’s not about GDP. It’s about decency. — Banno

Right. I watched his lecture, thought it very good, and he's a charismatic speaker. In Alexander Lefebvre’s reading, liberalism is not merely a set of institutions, but a way of life—an ethos shaped by habits of mutual regard, consent, and self-restraint. But he also echoes the spirit of Pierre Hadot’s philosophy: that true ethical traditions are not reducible to doctrines, but are lived practices ( a point he makes in the Q&A, where he alludes to Hadot without naming him). Seems to me that he reaches beyond procedural logic to engage questions of meaning, virtue, and shared life in a way that is resonant with liberalism's ancient roots (hence his reference to the ancient sources of liberalis in the beginning of his lecture.)

And how can man turn to the spirituality of the erotic ascent if he has been taught—has been indoctrinated into—the belief that Eros is fundamentally a matter of acquisition and consumption, a laying claim to a commodity (a commodity that "dimishes when shared," and so which sets up a dialectical of competition)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The real problem is not liberalism but materialism.

↪Count Timothy von Icarus collapses liberalism into capitalism, but that’s a mistake—one Lefebvre might help us avoid. — Banno

It's interesting that you continue to speak about the Original Poster in the third person as you face your audience. That sort of tactic reads a lot like propaganda, or advertising. Maybe it would be better if we actually addressed the people we disagree with, instead of giving speeches about them.

Yep. That’s what’s so compelling in Lefebvre—he rescues liberalism from the charge of moral emptiness not by denying it, but by reframing it. Liberalism isn’t a doctrine, it’s a discipline. It's what we do. A lived ethic of coordination, mutuality, and restraint. Less about asserting the good, more about making life together possible.

And I liked that Hadot echo too—quiet, but clear. Ethics as practice, not rulebook. That’s why the capabilities approach fits so well here: it’s not just about rights or choices, but cultivating the real power to live well. Not a retreat from meaning, but a wager that meaning can be plural.

And still, what is the alternative?

...you continue to speak about the Original Poster in the third person — Leontiskos

More an artefact of the forum's referencing system. Clicking on the reply button places the reply in the third person. It's interesting that you wish to comment on my style rather than the content of my posts. A trivial issue.

And still, what is the alternative? — Banno

The moral vision that underwrote modern liberalism—its emphasis on human dignity, conscience, rights, and responsibility—did not arise in a vacuum. Thinkers like Locke, Mill, and even Jefferson operated within a cultural milieu deeply shaped by Christianity. While they may have sought to separate church and state - which itself was shaped by the desire for religious freedom - they operated within the moral architecture that Christianity provided: the belief in the sanctity of the individual, the imperative of conscience, the notion of moral equality before the law.

But as the religious roots of these values have withered, liberalism has increasingly defaulted toward scientific materialism—a worldview that is often indifferent or even hostile to spiritual identity. This shift has led to a flattening of the human image: from moral agent to biological organism. We see that reflected in the many comments to the effect that 'we're just animals'. It allows us to dodge the existential questions that only humans can ask.

This is not necessarily a call to return to pre-modern religious systems, but it is a call to grapple seriously with the existential and moral questions that Christian thought, at its best, sought to answer. Without a shared vision of what it means to live well—without telos—its moral language becomes increasingly hollow.

Clicking on the reply button places the reply in the third person. — Banno

No, it doesn't. Go read any post on TPF. 99.9% of them engage the person they are responding to, rather than talking about them in the third person.

Yes, but you can support liberal values and be opposed to murder. Liberalism isn't about letting people do whatever they want. — frank

I never said, or implied that it did. That would be confusing a Libertarian with an Anarchist. A good Libertarian understands that doing whatever one wants stops where what one is doing infringes upon the liberties of another.

Right, and this is where the disagreement runs deep. The idea that we need a shared vision of the good to live together—that’s exactly what liberalism resists. Its bet is that we can coexist without agreeing on ultimate ends. That isn’t moral emptiness; it’s a kind of modesty. A politics for a world where we don’t all think alike.

And if that sounds unsatisfying—what’s the alternative? Who decides what the good is, and what happens to those who don’t agree? There’s a long history there, and not a happy one.

The idea that we need a shared vision of the good to live together—that’s exactly what liberalism resists. — Banno

A shared vision is not an authoritarian religious regime. Your problem is the reflexive rejection of anything you identify as religion (which covers a lot!) Your aversion to perceived dogma becomes a dogma in its own right.

Consider what LeFevbre says in the passage on Kierkegaard. He says Kierkegaard criticized 'pretend Christians' who professed allegiance to the Church but didn't walk the walk. He then goes on to say that many who profess liberalism are 'pretend liberals' in the same vein, asking, what would it really take to realise truly liberal values? And the answer to that turns out to be rather a spiritual discipline. LeFevbre says:

Ancient philosophy ...is animated by a concern for people to live well. To be a philosopher in ancient times, just meant that you had to be committed to wisdom. You could be a philosopher in the robust sense and never publish anything. You wouldn't meet minimum performance standards at the University of Sydney. You would practice these disciplines. One of my main thinkers is a French philosopher who collated these together and gave us a palette of spiritual exercises.

This is his reference to Hadot that I mentioned. And if you peruse the IEP entry on Hadot, you will encounter the following paragraph, under the heading Askesis of Desire:

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84).Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires...

My bolds. I also note, LeFevbre has written a lot on Bergson (and I will add that to my list.) Was Bergson a religious philosopher? Was Hadot? Neither of them were, but the scope of their philosophy was sufficiently broad to address metaphysical questions - of identity, nature of being, place of man in the cosmos, and so on.

Me, I think that is what 'liberal culture' is crying out for. Hence the audience for books on stoicism, mindfulness, and so on. SO maybe the alternative we're looking for, is a liberal political system that does not take neo-darwinian materialism for granted as its default metaphysics.

That’s what’s so compelling in Lefebvre—he rescues liberalism from the charge of moral emptiness not by denying it, but by reframing it. Liberalism isn’t a doctrine, it’s a discipline. It's what we do. A lived ethic of coordination, mutuality, and restraint. Less about asserting the good, more about making life together possible.

And I liked that Hadot echo too—quiet, but clear. Ethics as practice, not rulebook. That’s why the capabilities approach fits so well here: it’s not just about rights or choices, but cultivating the real power to live well. Not a retreat from meaning, but a wager that meaning can be plural.

And still, what is the alternative? — Banno

:clap: :fire:

A shared vision is not an authoritarian religious regime. — Wayfarer

I'm not assuming it is. I'm not assuming anything about a shared vision, but asking - who decides what our shared vision is to be? And what happens to those who dissent?

It's not what we say that is important, so much as what we do. It's not we believe that counts, but how we behave. That’s where liberalism earns its keep. It doesn’t require us to agree on first principles, only to act in ways that let others live according to theirs.

A shared vision is not an authoritarian religious regime.
— Wayfarer
I'm not assuming it is. — Banno

You sure sound like you do. And again, you're declaring it a matter of opinion.

And what we do is informed by what we believe. Do you think if murderers really believed that they would suffer in hell for acts of violence, that they would commit them? The belief that belief doesn't matter is itself a kind of nihilism.

Your aversion to perceived dogma becomes a dogma in its own right. — Wayfarer

Yes, and we could apply this to liberalism itself.

What is often meant superficially by liberalism is something like, "A tolerance for different ideas." For such a person this is a dogma of liberalism. But the interesting thing about a dogma is that it isn't self-supporting. The liberal wants to retain that dogma, but even if we ignore the paradox of a toleration dogma, they have no way to support the dogma. It is a free-floating, untethered norm.

That dogma in fact arises out of the Judeo-Christian premise that every human being is created in the image of God. This was an anthropological premise which logically grounded what has now become the liberal dogma. The liberal wants to retain the dogma while dispensing with the Judeo-Christian support.

Note too that the liberal is incapable of substituting a different support-premise in place of the Judeo-Christian premise. This is because to do so would be anti-liberal. It would be to impose a truth on the society, in this case for the sake of the liberal dogma. Thus as the liberal state moves away from its founding religion and culture, the dogmas which once had support are now left hanging in midair, ready to collapse. "Honor your father and mother, and you will have a long life in the land." Liberalism's current demise is seen by many as a result of failing to honor that which nourished it, of cutting off the branch on which it sits. Hence:

Liberalism is failing, and I think it is now important to have proper alternatives so that we don't fall into something worse. — Leontiskos

. Do you think if murderers really believed that they would suffer in hell for acts of violence, that they would commit them — Wayfarer

Do you think that all murderers necessarily think of themselves as murderers rather than, for instance, as committing acts that according to their moral compass was justified? By the same token, are not lawful forms of punitive justice acts of violence? Do you think the enforcers of such acts can be convinced they will suffer in hell for them?

Therefore, free enterprise is not capitalistic — Leontiskos

Therefore the support of free enterprise is not necessarily the support of capitalism.

#2 is the sort of slogan I might find on a bumper sticker. — Leontiskos

You might. Is it therefore not factual?
Never mind: the words don't really mean anything.

I really like Hadot. His "Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates of Foucault" is quite good, although I do think he misses some of the important ways the Christian tradition of late antiquity differs from the Pagan. It's an area that surprisingly barren, although I did enjoy Niki Kasumi Clements' "Signs of the Ascetic Self," on St. John Cassian. It's very much from a post-modern perspective, and that causes some things to come through a bit strange (it also moralizes quite a bit, making excuses for violations of contemporary liberal norms, which sort of gets to my OP). But that also makes it novel and pretty neat.

And then there is Michael Champion's book on St. Dorotheus of Gaza, which really gets into the central role of ascetical practice and spiritual exercises in both the Pagan and Christian education of late-antiquity (an element of education that has been virtually eliminated, but still exists in a very tailored form in military training or in outdoor education programs).



Like I said, I'd see more merit in separating the terms if there were a single example where they don't go together. There isn't. That there are theoretical works that make a political philosophy look appealing doesn't say much. The same is true for communism, fascism, etc. It's the old "real communism hasn't been tried with any true Scotsman," thing. I think there are fairly straightforward ways where liberalism connects to capitalism and consumerism—the two haven't developed together by accident. That Eastern Europe experienced them all as a package deal with political liberalization is one example.

Nussbaum has some good ideas, but to the extent that developing citizen's positive capabilities for reflexive freedom becomes a major focus of education, it would seem to be moving away from liberalism, or at least liberalism as commonly practiced and the anthropology that undergirds it. At least, given the anthropology of Deneen, Augustine, Plato, etc. you cannot develop people's capacity for self-determination and self-governance and maintain a commitment to being neutral on "the good life." It takes a certain sort of anthropology (the one that has dominated liberalism), to say "all that people need to be free is the option and resources to become so," i.e., that the development of virtue can be promoted while taking no positive position on virtue. It's an extremely optimistic anthropology in this respect (dismal in others).

At any rate, my point, which was not "liberalism is bad," was about proponents of the current liberal system (as it actually exists)'s incapacity to countenance that rejections of liberalism and it's vision of human freedom could be anything but demands for authoritarianism (which this thread has borne out to some extent). People criticize the hyperbolic liberal state, and then their strangely accused on wanting a totalitarian autocracy.

Its bet is that we can coexist without agreeing on ultimate ends. That isn’t moral emptiness; it’s a kind of modesty.

Is it that modest? It still requires the claim that all its competitors are wrong. Suppose there is an objectively " better way." If there is, then obviously liberalism is not ideal. Indeed, depending on how people tend to orient themselves under liberalism, it might be extremely far from ideal. If the liberal is just a skeptic then this is a possibility. Hence, it needs to at least involve positive claims about what it thinks opponents cannot know.

Yet as you said, it is a doctrine. It does positively indoctrinate. So it doesn't act like a skeptical thesis that is unsure of itself. It is very active in the defense of its system and has aggressively sought to export it, or even force it on other countries. And it enforces its ideals on organizations within the liberal nation state as well.

Fair enough—maybe I came across too categorical. I don’t wish to shut down the search for meaning, despite my view that meaning is made, not found. I’m just wary of the insistence on there being one true catechism, especially when history shows how easily that slides into coercion.

And yes, of course belief matters. But liberalism puts its emphasis on conduct—on how we live together in spite of differing beliefs. It doesn’t deny that beliefs shape action; it just refuses to make one worldview the price of admission.

Yep.

I understand your point, but just because liberalism and capitalism often align doesn’t mean they must always go together. Historical examples—like the welfare states of Scandinavia—show that liberalism can exist without full market-driven capitalism. The connection isn’t inevitable, even if it's often the case.

On Nussbaum, liberalism isn’t about abandoning values—it’s about letting people shape their own lives. It’s not about imposing a singular vision but creating the conditions for personal freedom.

Liberalism doesn't claim that competitors are "wrong"; it simply operates differently. Unlike authoritarian systems that enforce a single vision of the good life, liberalism allows diverse views to coexist. It doesn't impose a specific moral framework but creates conditions for individuals to pursue their own conceptions of the good, emphasizing freedom and pluralism. It’s not about rejecting other ways of life, but enabling them to flourish alongside each other.

Liberalism isn't perfect—no system is—but it might be preferable to the alternatives, which have yet to be clearly articulated in this discussion. Its flaws are evident, but it offers the most inclusive space for diversity and individual freedom, avoiding the coercion that accompanies more rigid ideologies. Without a viable alternative on the table, liberalism provides the best framework for coexistence and self-determination.

Here's the rub: What's the alternative?

Here's the rub: What's the alternative? — Banno

Dictatorship