Abstract
The word liberal defies precise definition since its usage includes a variety of meanings in a number of different contexts. The word liberal has at least three connotations: (1) personal, (2) political and (3) economic. The difficulty of precisely defining liberalism is further compounded by the fact that it has somewhat different meanings in different historical periods. Nor is there agreement among scholars as to its historical origins since its convictions derive both from ancient and modern sources. Thus one scholar describes liberalism as “the modern embodiment of all the characteristic traditions of Western politics,” 1 while another would define it more narrowly as the embodiment of the political aspirations of a bourgeois middle-class society, as the political counterpart of capitalism.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Frederick Watkins, The Political Tradition of the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. ix.
Harold J. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism (London, 1936).
Liberalism: Its Theory and Practice (Austin, Texas, 1958), p. 23.
Liberalism and Industry (London, 1920), p. 15.
Introduction to Political Philosophy (New York, 1952), p. 207.
“The individual human being, with his interests, his enterprise, his desire for happiness and advancement, above all with his reason, which seemed the condition for a successful use of all his other faculties, appeared to be the foundation on which a stable society must be built.... Not man as a priest or soldier, as the member of a guild or an estate, but man as a bare human being, a ‘masterless man,’ appeared to be the solid fact.” George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, (2nd ed.; New York, 1950), p. 432.
Was istAufklärung? 1784, Werke, ed. by E. Cassirer (Berlin, 1922), Vol. 4, p. 169.
“Enlightenment,” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1937), Vol. 5, p. 547.
The Philosophical Works of Descartes, transi, by Haldane and Ross (Cambridge, 1931), Part 6.
Cf. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955).
Cf. Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Cause,” Illustrations of Universal Progress (New York, 1864).
Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. IV.
Ibid., Book IV, Chap. II.
“The Challenge of Facts,” in Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. by A. G. Keller and M. R. David (New Haven, 1934), Vol. II, pp. 87ff.
Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933), p. 39.
Gorgias, 492.
I have described this process in some detail in The Decline of Liberalism as an Ideology (Berkeley, 1943). Reprinted by Howard Fertig (New York, 1971).
Cf. C. H. Mcllwain, Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, N.Y., 1940).
The New Science of Politics (Chicago, 1952), p. 189.
Theology of Society (London, 1947), pp. 64–66.
The New Science of Politics, p. 131.
Cf. Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968).
See Eric Voegelin, “On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery,” Studium Generale, Vol. 24 (1971), pp. 335–368.
New Science of Politics, p. 109.
Voegelin is not alone in appreciating the importance of Joachim of Flora. See Herbert Grundmann, Studien über Joachim von Flora (Leipzig, 1927)
Ernesto Buonaiuti, Gioacchino da Fiore (Rome, 1931)
Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949).
New Science of Politics, pp. 119–120.
Ibid., p. 122.
“Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History,” unpublished ms.
“Preliminary Reflections on the Open Society: Bergson, Popper, Voegelin,” p. 21.
Harold J. Laski, Faith, Reason and Civilization: An Essay in Historical Analysis (New York, 1944), p. 184.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 143.
Voegelin is by no means alone in recognizing the phenomenon of gnosticism. See Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (Chicago, 1951). In part he says, “Modern totalitarianism is a consummation of the conflict between religion and scepticism. It solves the conflict by embodying our heritage of moral passions in a framework of modern materialistic purposes. The conditions for such an outcome were not present in the age of antiquity before Christianity had set alight new vast moral hopes in the heart of mankind.” p. 110.
B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, 1971), pp. 213–215.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York, 1947), pp. 37–39.
Ibid., pp. 40–41.
“American society, like the great vital societies of the past, was created and maintained by the belief in the universal validity of… objective standards…. Society had not created these standards and, hence, could not abolish them…. The standards were the human formulation of the objective nature of things…. In brief, society was believed to be embedded in, and guided by, self-evident truths, rational and moral, from which society derived whatever truth was to be found in its thought and action…. “It is emphatically not the conception that prevails in America today. In the prevailing view of social life, nothing precedes and transcends society…. A society conceived so as to find the standards for its thought and action only within itself becomes the final arbiter of all things human. The objective criteria of excellence through which civilized man has learned to distinguish a work of art from trash, craftsmanship from shoddiness; scholarship from pretentious sophistication, a good man from a scoundrel, a statesman from a demagogue, greatness from mediocrity — these vital distinctions are blurred if not obliterated by the self-sufficient preferences of the crowd… what the crowd desires and tolerates becomes the ultimate standard of what is good, true, beautiful, useful and wise. What you can get away with, then is morally permitted; what you can get accepted in the market place… becomes the test of truth; art is what people like; what can be sold is useful; and what people will vote for is sound. The honest man and the scoundrel, the scholar and the charlatan, the artist and the hack, the statesman and the demagogue live side by side, and it is not always easy to tell which is which.” Hans Morgenthau, The Purpose of American Politics (New York, 1960), pp. 223–225.
“On the Modern Mind,” Encounter, XXIV (May, 1965), p. 8.
The Logic of Liberty, op. cit., pp. 105–106. It is impossible to do justice to the profundity of Polanyi’s analysis in such a brief reference to his work. Readers are referred to his Personal Knowledge: Towards A Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago, 1958), for an important attempt to overcome the contemporary epistemological crisis.
Totalitarianism (New York, 1968), p. 474.
Quoted by Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York, 1969), p. 12.
Personal Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 244–245.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hallowell, J.H. (1974). Liberalism and the Open Society. In: Germino, D., Von Beyme, K. (eds) The Open Society in Theory and Practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2056-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2056-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-1630-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-2056-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive