{"id":703,"date":"2020-12-30T19:15:24","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T03:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/?p=703"},"modified":"2020-12-31T10:38:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T18:38:49","slug":"the-ends-of-liberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/2020\/12\/30\/the-ends-of-liberalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ends of Liberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brooks on Recent Books Touching on Liberalism:\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/12\/24\/opinion\/sidney-awards-2020.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Francis Fukuyama wrote \u201cLiberalism and Its Discontents<\/a>\u201d in American Purpose<\/em>, which is the best single primer to the long-running debate about the liberal order.<\/p>\n

\u201cClassical liberalism can best be understood as an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity,\u201d Fukuyama writes. It does this by \u201cdeliberately not specifying higher goals of human life.\u201d It leaves people free to decide their own values, their own form of worship. Liberalism is thus perpetually unsatisfying to those trying to build a perfectly just or virtuous society because it is neutral about many ultimate concerns. There\u2019s a void that often gets filled with consumerism.”<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

2PR or Not-To-P [GL]:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The contradiction between domestic- and foreign-focused becomes clearer when one recognizes that liberals do not apply the same ultimate-judgment-free standard outside of their own societies. The right to protect, that is to invade other countries (R2P), is in fact based on deliberately<\/em> specifying higher goals and values, e.g. that democracy as practiced in the “West” is inherently superior to other forms of governance.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Postliberal Epistemology<\/a><\/p>\n

Tara Isabella Burton takes the argument one level deeper in her essay \u201cPostliberal Epistemology<\/a>\u201d in Comment. Liberalism, she argues, was based on a view of the human person now being rejected on left and right. A person, Enlightenment liberalism holds, is essentially rational and disembodied. If people use reason properly, they will come to the same logical results.<\/p>\n

For more and more millennials, in particular, she argues, this view is insufficient: \u201cIn rendering human rationality disembodied, it also renders human beings interchangeable, reproducible, not incarnations but instantiations of a vague generic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brooks on Recent Books Touching on Liberalism:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/12\/24\/opinion\/sidney-awards-2020.html Francis Fukuyama wrote \u201cLiberalism and Its Discontents\u201d in American Purpose, which is the best single primer to the long-running debate about the liberal order. \u201cClassical liberalism can best be understood as an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity,\u201d Fukuyama writes. It does this by … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Ends of Liberalism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[119,120],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-liberalism","tag-r2p"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/alteritas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}