Thank you Prof Vermeule for this great essay. To be sure, if I were teacher of a class on the Theory & Practice in the Evolution of Liberalism in America in the decades between late 1990's to present [which I am not; I am a practitioner in Clinical and Forensic Psychology), this essay would be Required Reading #1.
Allow me a few words:
As an an observer-participant swept in what I regarded a social movement that had little to zero substance in theoretical merit yet inured grave consequence to the lives of people and the collective health of a society, I feel a huge relief that this essay is finally written by a voice of authority.
Caught in the interstitial space of conflicting aesthetic values (and ultimately “moral” in the Aristotelean sense) between East and West, I have myself never regarded the “Liberalism” depicted in the picture of Regent Street, London, 2023 as anything more than a fad, as the “MiniSkirt” was a fad - there were tons of those pictures too on Regent Street and on Paris and Milan catwalks in 1960’s.
The task of living a real life, a true life, calls upon getting out of cat walks and climbing the heights of snow clad mountains for which The Skirt has no utility. Instead The Skirt is of hindrance. And if we read history, history has taught us it is the inerrant (defined here as minds that stand on First Principle) who saved the errant from themselves.
" ... progressivism is political liberalism that has worked itself pure ... " Mon Dieu.
You have been remarkably consistent on this point. And this is not just any point. It is one that gathered momentum to become the Schwerpunkt of your highly complex yet coherent argument - once properly understood - that liberalism is an edifice destined to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions and of the characteristic confusion of its practitioners.
Thank you for another great essay! (and for the links to earlier ones which I've read and enjoyed and will read again)
It seems to me that what comes after liberalism is post-liberalism. The same way that after modernism failed to be predictive we got post-modernism that took into account the specific context it was participating in, post-liberalism should be about what contexts lead to sustainable, inclusive plurality.
One problem with liberalism is the erasure of power dynamics and the real conflicts in human interests. Particularly conflicts in the feeling of comfort, belonging and relative status, which liberalism considered irrational and so ignored, even as they are primary principles shaping our society (see, for example, Gender Threat : American Masculinity in the Face of Change).
It turns out that one of humanity's greatest cravings is to sublimate ourselves into a community larger than itself, and liberalism ignored that as being inconvenient. I suspect that drawing on the experiences of people who build software we could start to build a post-liberal theory where liberty was defined at each level of human community, rather than being limited to individuals where it clearly doesn't have predictive power.
I think that's great but postmodernism is reapplying modernism's critiques against romanticism against itself. You can't really say the same thing for post liberalism and in any case why would you want to? Pomo follows hegelian dialectics and you're not actually rid of modernism by that (it's actually reapplied but in a pomo perspective in metamodernism).
There are many critiques of liberalism but the major one is definitely whether rationalism actually connects us to nature and whether that us, as individuals, actually exist as individuals. Those two can be disproven but the question is what meaningfully fills those spots. Romanticism cannot and we're a century and more into being unable to connect to nature.
“Political liberalism, even if possible in principle, simply turned out to be unsustainable as a matter of the deep facts of human anthropology and human psychology.”
It has been my experience that ignorance of these two subjects (though I tend to refer to the latter as human biology rather than psychology) is at the root of much mischief in the public discourse on a great many subjects — not least in economics where ignorance of them is displayed with a perverse pride in its unacknowledged (let alone critically examined) assumptions.
Economics has also been seriously hurt by the attempt to make things calculable with systems of linear equations, when it is trying to describe complex system with non-linear feedback loops.
It is wild to me how anyone takes seriously results from frameworks that claim, despite all observations, that raising minimum wage will reduce employment.
Liberalism in essence is good intentions, wishful thinking and unbounded hope in humanity’s ability to understand each others point of view. Delusional given humanity’s knowledge of history.
While this may appear laudable in reality it ignores the reality of human nature which has Evil imbedded in it as much as Good. A unwavering belief in that man made laws can create a Utopia on earth where all live in harmony with each other. As W.S. Gilbert in the Lord Chancellor’s song in Iolanthe says “the law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent, it has no kind of fault or flaw and I my Lords embody the law.”
When a human or human beings decide what is the law then a dystopia - a distortion results. That is why there has to be a set of external rules or laws that all can agree on either in fact or substance. We have these they are The Ten Commandments given by an external being - GOD. (Distilled down to two “Love God and Love others as yourself” by Jesus Christ.) No debate is necessary or required. These are blueprint for ALL humanity to live in harmony with each other.
"the reigning version of comprehensive liberalism, which officially denies its own imperial nature and is thus, on a deep level, unable to comprehend itself."
"progressivism is just liberalism which has worked itself pure."
I hope more people in your circles realize where the genuine intellectual ferment is, and where it is not.
What are practical steps in facilitating a grassroots approach in society toward connecting or regulating one’s “rights” to the common good? To me this seems to be principally in the domestic arena, where the most fundamental block of politics is asserted
Great piece. Just added a few of your links here from yourself and Mr. Feser to my reading list. I was wondering why the “postliberal” substack page has been somewhat inactive. Glad I found you here.
Sacramental liberationism is a great neologism. I’m going to use that. It shows the nakedly religious nature of our current monoculture.
I have a question for you. While you mention theorists like Mill, Marcuse, and others, I want to hear your views on whether you would consider men like Alexis de Tocqueville (von Gentz would also fall in this category of being considered liberal but not seeming to line up with the liberalism you critique) as liberals and if so is it the liberalism you criticize or would that be a variant you find acceptable.
It is also interesting to me, because your theories here explain why overturning Roe v Wade has been such a disaster for American conservativism.
By prioritizing theocracy over Ragion di Stato, the legislation of this activist Catholic Supreme Court disrupted the slow process that had been ongoing creeping restrictions by imposing overt change with highly-publicized consequences of children being forced to bear children and people's lives and future fertility being sacrificed in favor of religious principle. Now that movement is losing repeatedly and soundly at the ballot box, in the case of Ohio leading to an expansion of the right to bodily autonomy. And conservative politicians are responding exactly the way you predict, by attacking the franchise and attempting to dismantle American democracy.
The one thing I think you may be missing is thinking of the polis of America as a single entity, when actually it is many different political units, with many different political traditions. It was founded as a coalition, and expanded as a coalition with successive waves of immigration and the granting of citizen status to those who had been held as chattel slaves.
A clear example of this is trans people. The idea that trans people exist isn't new in places like New York or Chicago: both cities have had traditions celebrating trans people reaching back to at least the 19th century. But it used to be possible in America to pretend such people didn't exist by moving to the countryside, whereas trans people born into such communities could leave and move to one of the communities where transition was available and they were significantly less likely to face violent political repression. Similarly, the Northern states tolerated the extreme violence of chattel slavery until the fugitive slave act required them to tolerate that violence in their own communities.
It is the invention of mass media that disrupted that status quo. It is no longer possible to avoid trans people by moving to rural America, because transition is available everywhere and violent repression is no longer licit. It is no longer possible to avoid acknowledging the equal citizenship of Black Americans by moving South, because President Obama was on everyone's TV for eight years.
Where I think you and I differ is in what should be done about this. It seems like you are advocating for proactively accommodating people's discomfort with the existence of others, and restoring those people's power to coerce others into hiding the messy truth of reality so they don't have to accept that humanity isn't uniform.
Whereas I believe the same institutions that have always supported human society, including churches, can shepherd their individual communities through this transformation into a less-coercive, less-violent society the way they have multiple times throughout human history. It is in community that we can reconcile our experience of moral injury, acknowledging the ways we have hurt ourselves in order to avoid rejection and coming to feel safe and secure in coalition with people both like and unlike ourselves.
For example the "Gender Threat : American Masculinity in the Face of Change" highlights a group of men who have redefined "fatherhood" as being about caring directly for their children. Studies have found that those men have escaped the increased anxiety and self-damaging behaviors the men who still see "masculinity" as being about sexually harassing women are exhibiting as social norms change to no longer accommodate a domination-based definition of manhood.
I think the image is meant to display the “aggressive sacramental” notion that contradicts the so-called pluralism. Yet as you say by those who promote it, it is perceived as a celebration of diversity, so it seems to be pluralistic. The issue is, pluralism ideologically always leads to contradiction. Because it’s no longer about tolerating an evil, but in a sense transcending the concept of evil. Yet here lies the contradiction: those who do not abide in that, are performing an evil. It’s interesting that the woke movement, as misguided as it is, really does uphold its own ethical stance. Now that relativism is over, secular dogma asserts itself.
Thank you Prof Vermeule for this great essay. To be sure, if I were teacher of a class on the Theory & Practice in the Evolution of Liberalism in America in the decades between late 1990's to present [which I am not; I am a practitioner in Clinical and Forensic Psychology), this essay would be Required Reading #1.
Allow me a few words:
As an an observer-participant swept in what I regarded a social movement that had little to zero substance in theoretical merit yet inured grave consequence to the lives of people and the collective health of a society, I feel a huge relief that this essay is finally written by a voice of authority.
Caught in the interstitial space of conflicting aesthetic values (and ultimately “moral” in the Aristotelean sense) between East and West, I have myself never regarded the “Liberalism” depicted in the picture of Regent Street, London, 2023 as anything more than a fad, as the “MiniSkirt” was a fad - there were tons of those pictures too on Regent Street and on Paris and Milan catwalks in 1960’s.
The task of living a real life, a true life, calls upon getting out of cat walks and climbing the heights of snow clad mountains for which The Skirt has no utility. Instead The Skirt is of hindrance. And if we read history, history has taught us it is the inerrant (defined here as minds that stand on First Principle) who saved the errant from themselves.
" ... progressivism is political liberalism that has worked itself pure ... " Mon Dieu.
You have been remarkably consistent on this point. And this is not just any point. It is one that gathered momentum to become the Schwerpunkt of your highly complex yet coherent argument - once properly understood - that liberalism is an edifice destined to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions and of the characteristic confusion of its practitioners.
Thank you for another great essay! (and for the links to earlier ones which I've read and enjoyed and will read again)
Thanks much! Looking up “Schwerpunkt”…
It seems to me that what comes after liberalism is post-liberalism. The same way that after modernism failed to be predictive we got post-modernism that took into account the specific context it was participating in, post-liberalism should be about what contexts lead to sustainable, inclusive plurality.
One problem with liberalism is the erasure of power dynamics and the real conflicts in human interests. Particularly conflicts in the feeling of comfort, belonging and relative status, which liberalism considered irrational and so ignored, even as they are primary principles shaping our society (see, for example, Gender Threat : American Masculinity in the Face of Change).
It turns out that one of humanity's greatest cravings is to sublimate ourselves into a community larger than itself, and liberalism ignored that as being inconvenient. I suspect that drawing on the experiences of people who build software we could start to build a post-liberal theory where liberty was defined at each level of human community, rather than being limited to individuals where it clearly doesn't have predictive power.
I think that's great but postmodernism is reapplying modernism's critiques against romanticism against itself. You can't really say the same thing for post liberalism and in any case why would you want to? Pomo follows hegelian dialectics and you're not actually rid of modernism by that (it's actually reapplied but in a pomo perspective in metamodernism).
There are many critiques of liberalism but the major one is definitely whether rationalism actually connects us to nature and whether that us, as individuals, actually exist as individuals. Those two can be disproven but the question is what meaningfully fills those spots. Romanticism cannot and we're a century and more into being unable to connect to nature.
“Political liberalism, even if possible in principle, simply turned out to be unsustainable as a matter of the deep facts of human anthropology and human psychology.”
It has been my experience that ignorance of these two subjects (though I tend to refer to the latter as human biology rather than psychology) is at the root of much mischief in the public discourse on a great many subjects — not least in economics where ignorance of them is displayed with a perverse pride in its unacknowledged (let alone critically examined) assumptions.
Indeed
Economics has also been seriously hurt by the attempt to make things calculable with systems of linear equations, when it is trying to describe complex system with non-linear feedback loops.
It is wild to me how anyone takes seriously results from frameworks that claim, despite all observations, that raising minimum wage will reduce employment.
The branch in psychology that delves into the neurobiological bases of human behavior is not a discrete and separate subject field from biology.
Excellent!
Liberalism in essence is good intentions, wishful thinking and unbounded hope in humanity’s ability to understand each others point of view. Delusional given humanity’s knowledge of history.
While this may appear laudable in reality it ignores the reality of human nature which has Evil imbedded in it as much as Good. A unwavering belief in that man made laws can create a Utopia on earth where all live in harmony with each other. As W.S. Gilbert in the Lord Chancellor’s song in Iolanthe says “the law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent, it has no kind of fault or flaw and I my Lords embody the law.”
When a human or human beings decide what is the law then a dystopia - a distortion results. That is why there has to be a set of external rules or laws that all can agree on either in fact or substance. We have these they are The Ten Commandments given by an external being - GOD. (Distilled down to two “Love God and Love others as yourself” by Jesus Christ.) No debate is necessary or required. These are blueprint for ALL humanity to live in harmony with each other.
Nice, resonant phrasing:
"the reigning version of comprehensive liberalism, which officially denies its own imperial nature and is thus, on a deep level, unable to comprehend itself."
"progressivism is just liberalism which has worked itself pure."
I hope more people in your circles realize where the genuine intellectual ferment is, and where it is not.
Merci! All signs very promising lately, I must say
What are practical steps in facilitating a grassroots approach in society toward connecting or regulating one’s “rights” to the common good? To me this seems to be principally in the domestic arena, where the most fundamental block of politics is asserted
Great piece. Just added a few of your links here from yourself and Mr. Feser to my reading list. I was wondering why the “postliberal” substack page has been somewhat inactive. Glad I found you here.
Sacramental liberationism is a great neologism. I’m going to use that. It shows the nakedly religious nature of our current monoculture.
Thanks much! Yes I’ve moved here. Cheers -
I have a question for you. While you mention theorists like Mill, Marcuse, and others, I want to hear your views on whether you would consider men like Alexis de Tocqueville (von Gentz would also fall in this category of being considered liberal but not seeming to line up with the liberalism you critique) as liberals and if so is it the liberalism you criticize or would that be a variant you find acceptable.
It is also interesting to me, because your theories here explain why overturning Roe v Wade has been such a disaster for American conservativism.
By prioritizing theocracy over Ragion di Stato, the legislation of this activist Catholic Supreme Court disrupted the slow process that had been ongoing creeping restrictions by imposing overt change with highly-publicized consequences of children being forced to bear children and people's lives and future fertility being sacrificed in favor of religious principle. Now that movement is losing repeatedly and soundly at the ballot box, in the case of Ohio leading to an expansion of the right to bodily autonomy. And conservative politicians are responding exactly the way you predict, by attacking the franchise and attempting to dismantle American democracy.
The one thing I think you may be missing is thinking of the polis of America as a single entity, when actually it is many different political units, with many different political traditions. It was founded as a coalition, and expanded as a coalition with successive waves of immigration and the granting of citizen status to those who had been held as chattel slaves.
A clear example of this is trans people. The idea that trans people exist isn't new in places like New York or Chicago: both cities have had traditions celebrating trans people reaching back to at least the 19th century. But it used to be possible in America to pretend such people didn't exist by moving to the countryside, whereas trans people born into such communities could leave and move to one of the communities where transition was available and they were significantly less likely to face violent political repression. Similarly, the Northern states tolerated the extreme violence of chattel slavery until the fugitive slave act required them to tolerate that violence in their own communities.
It is the invention of mass media that disrupted that status quo. It is no longer possible to avoid trans people by moving to rural America, because transition is available everywhere and violent repression is no longer licit. It is no longer possible to avoid acknowledging the equal citizenship of Black Americans by moving South, because President Obama was on everyone's TV for eight years.
Where I think you and I differ is in what should be done about this. It seems like you are advocating for proactively accommodating people's discomfort with the existence of others, and restoring those people's power to coerce others into hiding the messy truth of reality so they don't have to accept that humanity isn't uniform.
Whereas I believe the same institutions that have always supported human society, including churches, can shepherd their individual communities through this transformation into a less-coercive, less-violent society the way they have multiple times throughout human history. It is in community that we can reconcile our experience of moral injury, acknowledging the ways we have hurt ourselves in order to avoid rejection and coming to feel safe and secure in coalition with people both like and unlike ourselves.
For example the "Gender Threat : American Masculinity in the Face of Change" highlights a group of men who have redefined "fatherhood" as being about caring directly for their children. Studies have found that those men have escaped the increased anxiety and self-damaging behaviors the men who still see "masculinity" as being about sexually harassing women are exhibiting as social norms change to no longer accommodate a domination-based definition of manhood.
I agree. But we've said much the same about communism and its language and justifications - of not its form - are still shambling around.
But that image looks just like liberalism to me. It is tolerance, it is diversity, it is acceptance of difference and so on.
I think the image is meant to display the “aggressive sacramental” notion that contradicts the so-called pluralism. Yet as you say by those who promote it, it is perceived as a celebration of diversity, so it seems to be pluralistic. The issue is, pluralism ideologically always leads to contradiction. Because it’s no longer about tolerating an evil, but in a sense transcending the concept of evil. Yet here lies the contradiction: those who do not abide in that, are performing an evil. It’s interesting that the woke movement, as misguided as it is, really does uphold its own ethical stance. Now that relativism is over, secular dogma asserts itself.