1) I strongly recommend @PatrickDeneen s book "Why Liberalism Failed"
I'm a hard grader and give it 4 out of 5 stars. Please let me know if there are any especially insightful reviews to look at.
Some brief thoughts below:
I'm a hard grader and give it 4 out of 5 stars. Please let me know if there are any especially insightful reviews to look at.
Some brief thoughts below:
2) The essential claim of the book is that liberalism failed because it succeeded. That is, liberalism contains the germs of its own destruction
3) Simplifying here: But the chief characteristics of liberalism for Deneen are timelessness (ahistoricity, really), individualism (rights inhere in individuals), voluntarism (consent).
4) Add to this an associated liberationist impulse. The two main examples of this are classical liberalism's break from old non-voluntaristic hierarchical structures (aristocracy, monarchy). And Baconian scientific liberation from constraints of nature.
5)Deneen often invokes the rootless/ahistorical, voluntaristic/consent-based, individualistic "state of nature" heuristic employed in various ways by liberal theorists Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau (is state of nature truly emblematic of liberalism?)
6) Ever the tenacious Tocuqevillian, the importance of "intermediate institutions" figures prominently in Deneen's account--i.e. churches, guilds, neighborhoods and other communal associations that substitute for aristocratic social bonds as a buffer between individual and state
7) Deneen might resist this, but I would re0state his argument as follows: liberalism fails precisely because the characteristics of liberalism described above, in their mature form, destroy the preconditions for robust and effective intermediate associations (community, Nisbet)
8) The timelessness of liberalism (reflected in state of nature heuristic) weakens tradition and generational bonds of affection and obligation across time; individualism weakens community and contractual voluntarism weakens social bonds (chosen vs given)
9) Just as liberalism enervates social and intergenerational bonds, so does its liberationist impulse dissipate even proper limits on man's nature---robust choice of classical liberalism degenerates into superficial choices of consumer to provide instant gratification
10) Thanks to the fruits of technology, man's nature itself is transformed (attention spans destroyed by latest i-gadget dopamine dispenser etc
11) Deneen powerfully describes our litany of pathologies---consumerism, higher ed, rootlessness, financial corruption, and "diversity" = interchangeable deracinated consumers, through the lens of a mature and corroded liberalism
12) Deneen's description of many failures of contemporary society alone make the book worth reading. Neither the American left nor right can save us, but rather contribute in their own respective ways to liberalism's destructive tendencies (individualism and statism)
13) Deneen does not offer any real "solutions" to these problems. And it is strongly implicit in the thesis' premise that solutinos--should they exist could/would not come from liberalism itself.
14) It is actually to his credit that Deneen doesn't lip-servie some facile solution of the sort that would comfort middle-brow readers eager for a "but we're all citizens" type fix. (Liberalism degrades and destroys citizenship properly understood)
15) Deneen's exhortation to reject ideology (an interesting and important claim in its own right) and self-consciously attempt to cultivate tangible expressions of community points to his work's lacunae (if not deficiencies)
16) Isn't the idea of SELF-CONSCIOUSLY choosing to create or cultivate tradition and communal forms a veded one? Is this not a rather "liberal" approach and subject to teh same pathologies Deneen decries? Furthermore (and I hate to use this philistine term)... is it SCALABLE?
17) Nietzsche was perhaps the greatest philosopher to address the unique challenges attendant to self-conscious creation of culture out of the ashes of a depleted one. (And Heidegger, incidentally, the greatest critic of this approach)
18) Nietzsche's argument (GOM) is structurally similar to yet encompasses Deneen's, in the basic sense that Nietzsche says Western metaphysics itself contains the seeds of its own demise (in its consummation)
19) One need not subscribe to Nietzsche's specific genealogy to ask why Deneen's account should stop at liberalism. In other words, are the developments Deneen describes endogeneous to liberalism PER SE, or essentially related to a deeper and broader happening?
20) And liberalism did not evolve out of a vacuum (or is he being Blumbergian wrt liberalism rather than modernity at large)? What were the deficiencies of its predecessor that lead to its creation? What are the ROOT CAUSES of liberalism?
21) Did we go wrong with Platonic Idealism (Nietzsche), nominalist theology? Rejection of scholasticism? Withdrawal from Being?
22) This question is important because it will condition the effectiveness of whatever response we have to the decline of liberalism. If diagnosis is wrong, said responses could end up inadvertently intensifying the very underlying conditions of present malaise
23) Getting to long and rambly. But it's a good book.
