Virtue And The Making Of Modern Liberalism

Virtue has been rediscovered in the United States as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from both parties, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of our character. William Bennett's moral guide for children, A Book of Virtues, was a national bestseller. Yet many continue to associate virtue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate morals. Peter Berkowitz clarifies the fundamental issues, arguing that a certain ambivalence toward virtue reflects the liberal spirit at its best. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as classical political philosophy, he makes his case with penetrating analyses of four central figures in the making of modern liberalism: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill. These thinkers are usually understood to have neglected or disparaged virtue. Yet Berkowitz shows that they all believed that government resting on the fundamental premise of liberalism--the natural freedom and equality of all human beings--could not work unless citizens and officeholders possess particular qualities of mind and character. These virtues, which include reflective judgment, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration do not arise spontaneously but must be cultivated. Berkowitz explores the various strategies the thinkers employ as they seek to give virtue its due while respecting individual liberty. Liberals, he argues, must combine energy and forbearance, finding public and private ways to support such nongovernmental institutions as the family and voluntary associations. For these institutions, the liberal tradition powerfully suggests, play an indispensable role not only in forming the virtues on which liberal democracy depends but in overcoming the vices that it tends to engender. Clearly written and vigorously argued, this is a provocative work of political theory that speaks directly to complex issues at the heart of contemporary philosophy and public discussion. New Forum Books makes available to general readers outstanding, original, interdisciplinary scholarship with a special focus on the juncture of culture, law, and politics. New Forum Books is guided by the conviction that law and politics not only reflect culture, but help to shape it. Authors include leading political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, theologians, historians, and economists writing for nonspecialist readers and scholars across a range of fields. Looking at questions such as political equality, the concept of rights, the problem of virtue in liberal politics, crime and punishment, population, poverty, economic development, and the international legal and political order, New Forum Books seeks to explain--not explain away--the difficult issues we face today.

One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.

This spirited analysis--and defense--of American liberalism demonstrates the complex and rich traditions of political, economic, and social discourse that have informed American democratic culture from the seventeenth century to the present. The Virtues of Liberalism provides a convincing response to critics both right and left. Against conservatives outside the academy who oppose liberalism because they equate it with license, James T. Kloppenberg uncovers ample evidence of American republicans' and liberal democrats' commitments to ethical and religious ideals and their awareness of the difficult choices involved in promoting virtue in a culturally diverse nation. Against radical academic critics who reject liberalism because they equate it with Enlightenment reason and individual property holding, Kloppenberg shows the historical roots of American liberals' dual commitments to diversity, manifested in institutions designed to facilitate deliberative democracy, and to government regulations of property and market exchange in accordance with the public good. In contrast to prevailing tendencies to simplify and distort American liberalism, Kloppenberg shows how the multifaceted virtues of liberalism have inspired theorists and reformers from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison through Jane Addams and John Dewey to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then explains how these virtues persist in the work of some liberal democrats today. Endorsing the efforts of such neo-progressive and communitarian theorists and journalists as Michael Walzer, Jane Mansbridge, Michael Sandel, and E. J. Dionne, Kloppenberg also offers a more acute analysis of the historical development of American liberalism and of the complex reasons why it has been transformed and made more vulnerable in recent decades. An intelligent, coherent, and persuasive canvas that stretches from the Enlightenment to the American Revolution, from Tocqueville's observations to the New Deal's social programs, and from the right to worship freely to the idea of ethical responsibility, this book is a valuable contribution to historical scholarship and to contemporary political and cultural debates.

Civil society is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary political theory. These debates often assume that a vibrant associational life between individual and state is essential for maintaining liberal democratic institutions. In Uncivil Society, Richard Boyd argues-through a careful reading of such seminal figures as Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Mill, Tocqueville, and Oakeshott-that contemporary theorists have not only tended to ignore the question of which sorts of groups ought to count as "civil society" but they have also unduly discounted the ambivalence of violent and illiberal groups in a liberal democracy. Boyd seeks to correct this conceptual confusion by offering us a better moral taxonomy of the virtue of civility.

Two expert authors combine a compelling critique of contemporary liberalism with post-liberal alternatives in politics, the economy, culture and international affairs, to provide the fullest account so far of the post-liberal alternative in Western politics.

Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs character-forming influences if it is to succeed. In light of the growing apprehension about moral decline, civic strife, and basic incivility, this brilliant volume explores the question of how the public morality and civic virtue upon which our liberal democratic society depends, and which seems in short supply, can again be rejuvenated and sustained.

In contemporary liberal thought, "tolerance" has come to be redefined as a synonym for ethical neutrality: refusal to judge among competing views of goods and evils. The result of this extreme relativism has been a foundations crisis in law, politics, education, and other areas of social life. In this lucidly written and brilliantly argued volume, J. Budziszewski attempts to reserve the self-destruction of modern liberalism by showing that true tolerance is not only consistent with taking stands about objective goods and evils, but actually requires doing so.Tolerance, falsely understood as ethical neutrality, has the paradoxical effect of crippling policy choice by divesting it of the moral and practical framework on which it depends. By painstakingly and exhaustively dissecting each of the many neutralist arguments, Budziszewski demonstrates that real neutrality is logically impossible. Confronted by alternative views, the neutralist at best obscures his own underlying judgments, and at worst abandons all possible defense against fanatics who oppose both true equality and true tolerance.True Tolerance is both a rigorous critique, and a polemic undertaken in the name of a positive, twenty-first century vision of liberalism. Budziszewsky outlines a view of true tolerance that assumes a relationship with an older liberal tradition and a codependence with other virtues, including humility, mercy, charity, respect, and courtesy. This vision is rooted in historical experience and rational conviction about what is good. In the spirit of liberal and classical theorists of virtue from Aristotle to John Locke to Alasdair MacIntyre, the virtue of true tolerance is much more than a readiness to follow known rules; it includes a developed ability to distinguish good rules from bad, and to choose rightly even where there are no rules or where rules seem to contradict each other. Accessibly written and intended for a wide readership, True Tolerance will be of special interest to political theorists and activists, and to sociologists and philosophers.

Modern liberal societies are submerged in conflict and disagreement. People disagree about almost everything—not only about matters of justice, but also about issues that are more private. They disagree on how to interpret freedom and equality; they disagree and even experience conflict with issues regarding the use of a veil, or children wearing crucifixes in public spaces; they also enter into conflict and disagreement regarding issues such as homosexuality, extramarital sex, drugs, euthanasia, abortion, suicide, and experimentation on animals. All these issues can be understood as moral problems, but we also have disagreements concerning other topics that are unrelated to moral issues. For modern liberals, the existence of such conflicts is due to the possibility of people, bearing the right to disagree, expressing themselves in a free and equal way. This freedom is indeed one of the biggest triumphs in the history of liberalism: many societies have come to be constituted by autonomous and free individuals who have the capacity to choose their lives and the values that will guide them. In the middle of this panorama, tolerance plays an extremely important role for liberal thinking. Without tolerance, disagreements and conflicts will hardly coexist or be resolved in a peaceful manner. Liberals say that despite the fact that there is a plurality of values and diversity within the different lifestyles, we should tolerate all those who do not agree with our own values. On this view, tolerance becomes a key element for the flourishing and progression of moral life. Yet, liberals should ask themselves: is modern liberalism’s structure of practical reason compatible with the moral ideal of tolerance? René González de la Vega argues that liberal deontological theories cannot give proper answers to the main problems raised by the moral ideal of tolerance. Tolerance and Modern Liberalism: From Paradox to Aretaic Moral Ideal will be of interest to students and scholars of political and moral philosophy, political theory, and law, including those who focus on human rights and on deontological liberalism.

"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.