Thread by @ZoharAtkins

The noble lie on which liberalism is founded is the belief in the sovereign self.

The right says we aren't sovereign b/c we've been brainwashed by liberal / libertine culture.

The left say we aren't sovereign b/c we've been brainwashed by capitalism, racism, and/or patriarchy.

The question is whether you can defend liberalism without believing in the sovereign self.

I learned from reading @lukeburgis that Peter Thiel's orthodox libertarianism was disturbed by Girard's teaching that we are fundamentally imitative creatures, meaning our sovereignty is not self-standing.

I learned from reading interviews with @amiasrinivasan that some forms of feminism believe "consent" between adults in sexual ethics is necessary, but insufficient, for similar reasons. Our desires are warped and not always self-justifying.

If you follow gnostic reasoning to conclusion, consent is meaningless in a world where we are already unfree.

Isaiah Berlin believes that gnostic reasoning leads to totalitarianism, because it introduces the idea that a vanguard knows better than we do about who we really are.

I agree w/ Burgis and Srinivasan, and with many important existentialist thinkers, like Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Arendt, Sartre, that we are not transparent to ourselves. I also am partial to the holistic metaphysics that on the whole lead to anti-liberalism. But...

Pointing to the foundational contradictions of liberalism is not enough to warrant throwing out the myth of the sovereign self altogether.

So I think this makes me what Sloterdijk and Zizek would call "cynical." A liberal who can no longer believe in the rationality of liberalism, but must now believe even though or because it is absurd.

For what it's worth, I think a lot of Western critics of liberalism are also cynical, from the other side, enjoying the fruits of a world based on the myth of the sovereign self and then from a place of abundance criticizing it.