Abstract
Contemporary liberal discourse is dominated by the competition between political (Rawls) and perfectionist (Raz, Dworkin) models. The ignored third party to this conversation is that of what Rawls calls the “modus vivendi” view, or what I refer to here as vulgar liberalism.1 Both political and perfectionist liberals, as well as critics of liberalism, take it as more or less obvious that this model is deeply deficient. This chapter tries to show that this is not so, and that there is a good deal to be said in defense of “merely” vulgar liberalism.
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Notes
John Gray has recently written a number of essays giving eloquent voice to this idea under the label of “pluralism.” See especially Enlightenment’s Wake (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
These lenses are the same ones Hobbes attempted to provide in Leviathan, and which are spoken of explicitly in Chapter 18: “For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their Passions and Self-love,) through which, every little payment appeareth a great grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses, (namely Morall and Civill Science,) to see a farre off the miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoyded;” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1968), p. 239. Similar lenses serve Judith Shklar in her sympathetic portrayal of “the liberalism of fear,” the point of view from which one “…may, thus, be less inclined to celebrate the blessings of liberty than to consider the dangers of tyranny and war that threaten it;” Judith Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Nancy Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 27; see also George Kateb, “Hobbes and the Irrationality of Politics,” Political Theory, vol. 17, no. 3 (August, 1989), pp. 355–91.
Such an approach is sketched in Thomas Spragens, Reason and Democracy (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 254.
Jean Hampton, “Should Political Philosophy be Done Without Metaphysics?,” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4 (July, 1989), p. 807.
Ronald Dworkin, “Liberalism,” in Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 113–43; Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice and the Liberal State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980); for a discussion of Rawls in terms of his relation to the “neutrality enterprise,” see Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 117–34.
William Galston, “On Liberalism,” Polity, vol. 23, no. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 320–1.
William Galston, “Defending Liberalism,” American Political Science Review, vol. 76, no. 3 (September, 1982), p. 621.
Brian Barry, “How Not to Defend Liberal Institutions,” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 20, pt. 1 (January, 1990), p. 8.
Ronald Dworkin, “Foundations of Liberal Equality,” in Grethe B. Peterson, ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 11, 1990 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), p. 6.
William Galston, “Liberal Virtues,” American Political Science Review, vol. 82, no. 4 (December, 1988), pp. 1277–91; “Public Morality and Religion in the Liberal State,” PS, vol. 19, no. 3 (Fall, 1986), pp. 807–24; “Civic Education in the Liberal State,” in Nancy Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 89–102.
Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 12–13.
Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Charles Larmore, “Political Liberalism,” Political Theory, vol. 18, no. 3 (August, 1990), pp. 339–60; John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 3 (Summer, 1985), pp. 223–51; John Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 1–27; John Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 17, no. 4 (Fall, 1988), pp. 251–76. For a discussion see Margaret Moore, “Justice for Our Times,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 23, no. 3 (September, 1990), pp. 459–82.
I grant, though, that in the long run this may actually work out to be the opposite of a perverse incentive; that to which the parents pay lip service may become that which the children believe. “Modern pluralistic regimes have typically come into being, it is increasingly recognized, not because of some preexisting wide consensus on ‘basic values,’ but rather because various groups that had been at each other’s throats for a prolonged period had to recognize their mutual inability to achieve dominance. Tolerance and acceptance of pluralism resulted eventually from a standoff between bitterly hostile opposing groups;” Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 168.
For critical discussion of the view that “solving problems” is the appropriate task of political theory, see Tracy Strong, The Idea of Political Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 110–15.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980 (1690)), ch. 7, par. 93, p. 50.
James Madison, “Federalist #51,” in C. Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers (New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 322.
Kant, speaking of human nature; “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 46.
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© 1997 Patrick Neal
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Neal, P. (1997). Vulgar Liberalism. In: Liberalism and Its Discontents. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14362-7_9
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