The Crisis in Liberalism: Neutral Liberalism vs. Purposive Liberalism


Gorgias: Suppose we take it that there is a crisis in liberalism because we don't know what we mean by that term anymore. We might take some time to give some content to the idea of Liberalism, speaking of it as a political philosophy not a partisan political ideology.

One conception of liberalism is that of a "value neutral liberalism," working off the idea of John Rawl's "original position" in his book Theory of Justice. The idea behind the "original position" is that the participants in society don't have a specific conception of the Good Society that they are trying to gather a consensus on and get others to adopt. Rawls' idea is that people should set the structure not knowing where they will end up. It is a way of mitigating self-interest in efforts to define the good society.

William Galston's book is an attempt to elaborate a type of neutral liberalism, to say you can be a liberal and respect people's rights to work out their own specific conception of the good life, privately, with some public implications... But still have a commitment to certain liberal goods, virtues, purposes.

But there are other conceptions as well. I would hold for what might be called a purposive liberalism. And this is why I wanted to say do we have a "thinner or thicker" conception of the Good as one of the issues to be discussed in resolving the moral crisis. I think deciding what kind of liberalism we decide to have is very important if we are to teach values in the schools again.

There was a tradition of civic education, of civics class and some of the work at one policy center, the Institute of Philosophy and Public Policy, is to go back to the tradition of civic education and see what still remains of value in it which might be mobilized in this context. And, here the possibility of some kind of alliance with people that you might have reservations about someone like Bill Bennett as a political figure on issues of virtue, but on issues of public virtue becoming part of a common effort they are potential allies.

Charmides: An alliance of moral philosophers and theologians?

Gorgias: And all the people who care deeply about questions of morality. I am just raising this question of how to define the core values and relate it somehow to a reformulation or reinvigoration of old formulations of Liberalism.

But thinking in relation to my point about Chile earlier, and the notion of a kind of broad-based consensus being formed there, there may be some room for consensus here on some of a fundamental core of values that have gotten neglected in the public schools that might be.

Laches: This is the question that I really wanted to propose and I think Gorgias has really gotten to it in suggesting there is a relations between personal virtue and social virtue or civicvirtue. Are systems in collapse, are they really system collapses? Or are they really the collapse of something at the individual level? Are they really the individual collapses? That, to me, is the issue.

Charmides: Or both? I think that you can pour all kinds of money you want to into the system and you can change the system and you have the best constructed system in the world, but if the individuals in that system are weak, the system is not going to function.

Laches: And the reverse is true, too. You can have a relatively poor system with great individuals and have a very workable system. What defines a good system? In my opinion, it is a summation of the individual strength. And if the system fails, it is not because it is not structured properly or not because we need different laws, but because there is a fundamental weakness in the individuals in that system.

Meno: But, it takes a good system, say of civics education, to create those kinds of individuals. Isn't that one of the issues that Gorgias is trying to bring out.

Pythagoras: Laches, think of a situation where individuals and systems so closely interrelate that you couldn't pin it on individuals or systems.

Gorgias: Well, I agree with Meno that there is a dialectic relationship between individuals and the system here descriptively. My point is that normatively, I think we want to look at the system of the school as among other things a system that should have as its goal and purpose the nurturing or formation or building of a new generation in certain kinds of ways so that they come out from this process with certain kinds of capacities, capabilities and virtues and some of those are obviously cognitive and social. And I was raising the question of what kind of "citizen virtues" or civic virtues might be part of the responsibility of the school.

Plato: So you don't think a value neutral liberalism is enough content for civic education?

Gorgias: No, as I said, I would propose a purposive liberalism. But, I wanted to bring up the fact that when we are talking about a liberal polity, and by that you mean a society in which people have certain freedom to decide their own conception of the good life and a market that is regulated and moderated maybe to some extent, but still a market and representative democracy.

We need to go further in defining what it will require; if it is going to survive, we will need people with certain kind of civic or moral character. In other words, here this moral character is not only an end to be promoted by the system, but in some sense the system or the polity needs people of this type if it is going to survive.

Meno: And, one of the ironic points is that someone like Cornell West is saying a similar thing, that the free- market system to work requires certain kind of character traits that the free-market system itself cannot produce.

Gorgias: But, I think in some sense we've got to say, both what kind of people do we want to be, but also what kind of systems do we want to be promoting -- including the economic system -- in order to create those kind of people. We've got to work on both sides.

Cornell West might be asking the exact right question, is our economic system creating the kinds of economic individualists that are causing the political or social system to fall apart?

Plato: You need a term in addition to system and individuals, and ethos might be that term. The system can support and form an ethos in which the individuals are formed.

Gorgias: All right, we need to recognize that the ethos, the cultural dimension here, the values that are operating in people's lives is, in some sense, the glue between individuals and the institutions that makes up the system.

Parmenides: There is an interesting sense in which the very problems we face are driving us to reach for answers which are themselves mistaken. I am reminded in regards to what was said about religion in the public schools. So, as a response to the fact that the old common culture is disappearing we see an effort to pull in religion as a solution to it.

Or if I may come back to Bill Bennett. Bill Bennett is packaging virtue in a questionable way because it is too full of didactic approaches. Bill takes these stories which are very much aimed at civic virtue, and he will preface them always by very heavy handed moralisms. And secondly, he will often take the story and take it out of the context in which there is moral complexity.

Laches: Say, using Lady Macbeth as an example of moral courage?

Only kidding.

Meno: Although it has to be said in fairness to Bennett, I think that the alleged heavy-handedness is not as apparent to some of us. I went through that book and it didn't seem to me it was so bad, although some of the examples are unfortunate. I don't think that one has to be looking for Bennett type evils to see all that in this book which has a lot of pretty good stuff.

Parmenides: But my point is a broader one. Simplified examples of virtue do not prepare kids for the moral complexities of the modern age.

Also, if we are going to think about civic virtue, then we need to look at the alternative answers in the religious community in helping to form that ethos. The religious communities of previous times had a lot to do with the ethos of Liberalism.

Laches: Is the question something like can there be a "religious left" or a "religious progressivism", or something like that which has an idea of Liberalism, which would support a broader definition of civic virtue?

Parmenides: Exactly.

Meno: But to still look carefully at Bill Bennett and people like that too. All Bennett has to say really is that you need a better look at virtues.

Parmenides: Of course, no argument there.

Laches: Bennett certainly raises the moral consciousness. Something is needed to raise the consciousness. To me again it is only a salvage operation. Something is needed to get virtue back into the realm of discussion.

Gorgias: But, I detect a consensus that part of the solution that we are going to have rests on the question, Which virtues should we be promoting? Should the virtues necessarily be those which our major institutions are promoting. Isn't that the other side of the question Cornell West is raising? Do our institutions, like our market institutions, emphasizing self-interest and acquivisitiveness, or government institutions, emphasizing a bureaucratic rather than an independent mentality, cut against real civic virtues like sacrifice for the common good, or personal virtues like compassion?

And we need to critically evaluate Bennett's and other conservatives answers to that.

Parmenides: As well as the religious community's answer and all the other answers.

And, it does give you an opportunity to ask at this point. If there is kind of a consensus about this, then why or what is it that makes for a divergence at the next step of the analysis? I mean by consensus and divergence that if we can agree so readily that some education on civic virtue or on the moral substratum is necessary then how can we so quickly disagree as to what kind of virtues should be taught? So that either you go with Pat Robertson or someone equivalent on the Liberal side but you may not be able to pull the two sides together, even though both agree.

Plato: There may be a couple very different explanations here. First, you have a very divisive issue, maybe two, splitting the two sides - Abortion and maybe homosexuality. If we could get beyond these issues there might be a lot of room for agreement on why our institutions are breaking down. I am thinking of the changes in the economic arena and how the pain is born unevenly where a lot of people are experiencing the pain, as the issue that we will have to confront together if we are to remain together as a society.

There is a second explanation for the divergence -- there is a sharp disagreement over how virtues are to be learned.

Gorgias: I agree. This seems to me a fundamental issue which divides, that is, the method of arriving at moral truth -- is it by inquiry and reason, or by faith? In fact, the conclusions may not be that far apart if the fundamental issues apart from the hot button issues could be debated. Sadly, it may not be in anyone's political interest to defuse these issues.

Laches: The reason for the dialogue we are having here, right?

Gorgias: That's right. So one of the interesting questions here for those of us that come out of the philosophical tradition is whether Socratic critical dialogue model is one of the important civic virtues?


Comments are appreciated, particularly on the questions:


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