The Limits of Liberalism

Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom

Mark T. Mitchell

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780268104320
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful. This false conception of tradition helps to facilitate both liberal cosmopolitanism and identity politics. The incoherencies are revealed through an investigation of the works of Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi.

Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the liberal self—which in turn has produced a false conception of freedom. This book identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place.

Oakeshott, MacIntyre, and Polanyi all, in various ways, emphasize the necessity of tradition, and although these thinkers approach tradition in different ways, Mitchell finds useful elements within each to build an argument for a reconstructed view of tradition and, as a result, a reconstructed view of freedom. Mitchell argues that only by finding an alternative to the liberal self can we escape the incoherencies and pathologies inherent therein.

This book will appeal to undergraduates, graduate students, professional scholars, and educated laypersons in the history of ideas and late modern culture.

NOTES

PREFACE

1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/03/middlebury-students-shout-down-lecture-charles-murray.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber.

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/?utm_term=.9ed2e077965d.

INTRODUCTION: Surveying the Landscape and Defining Terms

1. Two recent books, published after the completion of mine, argue along somewhat similar lines. See Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed and D. C. Schindler, Freedom From Reality.

2. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 12.

3. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 13.

4. Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, 32.

5. Locke, Second Treatise, §4.

6. Locke, Second Treatise, §95.

7. Locke, Second Treatise, §§129, 130.

8. Locke, Second Treatise, §119.

9. Locke, Second Treatise, §97.

10. Locke, Second Treatise, §§6, 12.

11. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.6.

12. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.6.

13. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.6.

14. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.7.

15. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 2.3.

16. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 4.2.

17. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.7.

18. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1.9.

19. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 2.5.

20. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 2.6.

21. Hallowell, The Moral Foundations of Democracy, 66. Of course, Hobbes denied the possibility of any notion of justice (higher law) that preceded the contract, so again, at the very inception of liberalism we see the seeds sown (Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.13).

22. Jouvenel, On Power, 15.

23. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 2.3.

24. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 4.1.

25. Nisbet, The Present Age, 54.

26. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 432.

27. Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 205.

28. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent, 12.

29. See the SCOTUS decision at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/505/833.html.

30. T. S. Eliot understood this characteristic feature embedded in liberalism: “That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. . . . Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation” (Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society, 12).

31. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 3.1.

32. Cicero, Republic 3.33.

33. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.4.

34. Kant, Perpetual Peace, 107–8.

35. See Habermas, “Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years’ Hindsight,” 130.

36. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 515.

37. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 4.

38. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 13.

39. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 13.

40. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 15.

41. Nussbaum, “Toward a Globally Sensitive Patriotism,” 80.

42. Nussbaum, “Toward a Globally Sensitive Patriotism,” 79–80.

43. Nussbaum, “Toward a Globally Sensitive Patriotism,” 82.

44. Nussbaum, “Toward a Globally Sensitive Patriotism,” 83.

45. The “logic of history” is, itself, a confusing notion, for it suggests that history has a particular normative direction. Yet such a determinative direction runs counter to the belief that freedom consists of the infinite expansion of my personal choice. The logic of history is determinate; infinite freedom is not. Both cannot be true.

46. See the text of Obama’s speech at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/address-president-obama-71st-session-united-nations-general-assembly.

47. Giddens, Runaway World, 57.

48. Giddens, Runaway World, 59.

49. Giddens, Runaway World, 62–63.

50. Giddens, Runaway World, 64.

51. Giddens, Runaway World, 62, 67.

52. Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, 9.

53. Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, 17.

54. Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, 26.

55. Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, 47.

56. Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, 65.

57. Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, 54.

58. Shils, “Tradition and Liberty,” 104...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Surveying the Landscape and Defining Terms
• ONE The Seventeenth-Century Denigration of Tradition and a Nineteenth-Century Response
• TWO Michael Oakeshott and the Epistemic Role of Tradition
• THREE Alasdair MacIntyre’s Tradition-Constituted Inquiry
• FOUR Michael Polanyi and the Role of Tacit Knowledge
• FIVE The Incoherence of Liberalism and the Response of Tradition
• Afterword: A Conservatism Worth Conserving, or Conservatism as Stewardship
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index