liberal theory

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for conservatism and for tradition in general, tolerance, and ... individualism". John Dunn. ''Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future'' (1993). Cambridge University Press. . Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles. However, they generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern times.Wolfe, p. 23.Adams, p. 11.

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy and the rule of law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition based on the ''social contract'', arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights. While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building.Kirchner, p. 3.

Leaders in the British Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of royal sovereignty. The 19th century saw liberal governments established in Europe and South America, and it was well-established alongside Republicanism in the United States. In Victorian Britain, it was used to critique the political establishment, appealing to science and reason on behalf of the people.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, liberalism in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East influenced periods of reform such as the Tanzimat and Al-Nahda and the rise of constitutionalism, nationalism and secularism. These changes, along with other factors, helped to create a sense of crisis within Islam, which continues to this day, leading to Islamic revivalism.

Before 1920, the main ideological opponents of liberalism were communism, conservatism and socialism, but liberalism then faced major ideological challenges from fascism and Marxism–Leninism as new opponents. During the 20th century, liberal ideas spread even further, especially in Western Europe, as liberal democracies found themselves as the winners in both world wars.

In Europe and North America, the establishment of social liberalism (often called simply ''liberalism'' in the United States) became a key component in expanding the welfare state. Today, liberal parties continue to wield power and influence throughout the world. The fundamental elements of contemporary society have liberal roots. The early waves of liberalism popularised economic individualism while expanding constitutional government and parliamentary authority.Gould, p. 3.

Liberals sought and established a constitutional order that prized important individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association; an independent judiciary and public trial by jury; and the abolition of aristocratic privileges. Later waves of modern liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights.Worell, p. 470. Liberals have advocated gender and racial equality in their drive to promote civil rights and a global civil rights movement in the 20th century achieved several objectives towards both goals. Other goals often accepted by liberals include universal suffrage and universal access to education.

Etymology and definition

Words such as '' liberal'', ''liberty'', ''libertarian'' and ''libertine'' all trace their etymology to the Latin root ''liber'', which means " free".Gross, p. 5. One of the first recorded instances of the word ''liberal'' occurred in 1375 when it was used to describe the liberal arts in the context of an education desirable for a free-born man. The word's early connection with the classical education of a medieval university soon gave way to a proliferation of different denotations and connotations. ''Liberal'' could refer to "free in bestowing" as early as 1387, "made without stint" in 1433, "freely permitted" in 1530 and "free from restraint"—often as a pejorative remark—in the 16th and the 17th centuries. In the 16th century England, ''liberal'' could have positive or negative attributes in referring to someone's generosity or indiscretion. In ''Much Ado About Nothing'', William Shakespeare wrote of "a liberal villaine" who "hath ... confest his vile encounters". With the rise of the Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively more positive undertones, defined as "free from narrow prejudice" in 1781 and "free from bigotry" in 1823. In 1815, the first use of the word "liberalism" appeared in English. In Spain, the '' liberales'', the first group to use the liberal label in a political context, fought for decades to implement the 1812 Constitution. From 1820 to 1823, during the '' Trienio Liberal'', King Ferdinand VII was compelled by the ''liberales'' to swear to uphold the Constitution. By the middle of the 19th century, ''liberal'' was used as a politicised term for parties and movements worldwide.

Over time, the meaning of ''liberalism'' began to diverge in different parts of the world. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'': "In the United States, liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal programme of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and ''laissez-faire'' economic policies". Consequently, in the United States, the ideas of individualism and ''laissez-faire'' economics previously associated with classical liberalism became the basis for the emerging school of libertarian thought and are key components of American conservatism. In this American context, the term "liberal" is often used as a pejorative.

In Europe and Latin America, the word ''liberalism'' means a moderate form of classical liberalism, unlike North America, and includes both centre-right conservative liberalism (right-liberalism) and centre-left social liberalism (left-liberalism). Unlike Europe and Latin America, the word ''liberalism'' in North America almost exclusively refers to social liberalism (left-liberalism). The dominant Canadian party is the Liberal Party, and the Democratic Party is usually considered liberal in the United States. In the United States, conservative liberals are usually called ''conservatives'' in a broad sense.

Yellow is the political colour most commonly associated with liberalism.

Philosophy

Liberalism—both as a political current and an intellectual tradition—is mostly a modern phenomenon that started in the 17th century, although some liberal philosophical ideas had precursors in classical antiquity and Imperial China. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius praised "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed". Scholars have also recognised many principles familiar to contemporary liberals in the works of several Sophists and the ''Funeral Oration'' by Pericles.. Liberal philosophy is the culmination of an extensive intellectual tradition that has examined and popularized some of the modern world's most important and controversial principles. Its immense scholarly output has been characterized as containing "richness and diversity", but that diversity often has meant that liberalism comes in different formulations and presents a challenge to anyone looking for a clear definition..

Major themes

Although all liberal doctrines possess a common heritage, scholars frequently assume that those doctrines contain "separate and often contradictory streams of thought". The objectives of liberal theorists and philosophers have differed across various times, cultures and continents. The diversity of liberalism can be gleaned from the numerous qualifiers that liberal thinkers and movements have attached to the term "liberalism", including classical, egalitarian, economic, social, the welfare state, ethical, humanist, deontological, perfectionist, democratic and institutional, to name a few. Despite these variations, liberal thought does exhibit a few definite and fundamental conceptions.

Political philosopher John Gray identified the common strands in liberal thought as individualist, egalitarian, meliorist and universalist. The individualist element avers the ethical primacy of the human being against the pressures of social collectivism; the egalitarian element assigns the same moral worth and status to all individuals; the meliorist element asserts that successive generations can improve their sociopolitical arrangements, and the universalist element affirms the moral unity of the human species and marginalises local cultural differences.Gray, p. xii. The meliorist element has been the subject of much controversy, defended by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, who believed in human progress, while suffering criticism by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who instead believed that human attempts to improve themselves through social cooperation would fail. Describing the liberal temperament, Gray claimed that it "has been inspired by scepticism and by a fideistic certainty of divine revelation ... it has exalted the power of reason even as, in other contexts, it has sought to humble reason's claims".

The liberal philosophical tradition has searched for validation and justification through several intellectual projects. The moral and political suppositions of liberalism have been based on traditions such as natural rights and utilitarian theory, although sometimes liberals even request support from scientific and religious circles. Through all these strands and traditions, scholars have identified the following major common facets of liberal thought:

* believing in equality and individual liberty
* supporting private property and individual rights
* supporting the idea of limited constitutional government
* recognising the importance of related values such as pluralism, toleration, autonomy, bodily integrity and consent

Classical and modern

John Locke and Thomas Hobbes

Enlightenment philosophers are given credit for shaping liberal ideas. These ideas were first drawn together and systematized as a distinct ideology by the English philosopher John Locke, generally regarded as the father of modern liberalism.Delaney, p. 18.Godwin et al., p. 12. Thomas Hobbes attempted to determine the purpose and the justification of governing authority in post-civil war England. Employing the idea of a ''state of nature'' — a hypothetical war-like scenario prior to the state — he constructed the idea of a ''social contract'' that individuals enter into to guarantee their security and, in so doing, form the State, concluding that only an absolute sovereign would be fully able to sustain such security. Hobbes had developed the concept of the social contract, according to which individuals in the anarchic and brutal state of nature came together and voluntarily ceded some of their rights to an established state authority, which would create laws to regulate social interactions to mitigate or mediate conflicts and enforce justice. Whereas Hobbes advocated a strong monarchical commonwealth (the Leviathan), Locke developed the then-radical notion that government acquires consent from the governed, which has to be constantly present for the government to remain legitimate. While adopting Hobbes's idea of a state of nature and social contract, Locke nevertheless argued that when the monarch becomes a tyrant, it violates the social contract, which protects life, liberty and property as a natural right. He concluded that the people have a right to overthrow a tyrant. By placing the security of life, liberty and property as the supreme value of law and authority, Locke formulated the basis of liberalism based on social contract theory. To these early enlightenment thinkers, securing the essential amenities of life—liberty and private property—required forming a "sovereign" authority with universal jurisdiction.

His influential '' Two Treatises'' (1690), the foundational text of liberal ideology, outlined his major ideas. Once humans moved out of their natural state and formed societies, Locke argued, "that which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world". The stringent insistence that lawful government did not have a supernatural basis was a sharp break with the dominant theories of governance, which advocated the divine right of kings and echoed the earlier thought of Aristotle. One political scientist described this new thinking: "In the liberal understanding, there are no citizens within the regime who can claim to rule by natural or supernatural right, without the consent of the governed".

Locke had other intellectual opponents besides Hobbes. In the ''First Treatise'', Locke aimed his arguments first and foremost at one of the doyens of 17th-century English conservative philosophy: Robert Filmer. Filmer's ''Patriarcha'' (1680) argued for the divine right of kings by appealing to biblical teaching, claiming that the authority granted to Adam by God gave successors of Adam in the male line of descent a right of dominion over all other humans and creatures in the world. However, Locke disagreed so thoroughly and obsessively with Filmer that the ''First Treatise'' is almost a sentence-by-sentence refutation of ''Patriarcha''. Reinforcing his respect for consensus, Locke argued that "conjugal society is made up by a voluntary compact between men and women".Kerber, p. 189. Locke maintained that the grant of dominion in Genesis was not to men over women, as Filmer believed, but to humans over animals. Locke was no feminist by modern standards, but the first major liberal thinker in history accomplished an equally major task on the road to making the world more pluralistic: integrating women into social theory.

Locke also originated the concept of the separation of church and state.Feldman, Noah (2005). ''Divided by God''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 29 ("It took John Locke to translate the demand for liberty of conscience into a systematic argument for distinguishing the realm of government from the realm of religion.") Based on the social contract principle, Locke argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right to the liberty of conscience, which he argued must remain protected from any government authority. In his ''Letters Concerning Toleration'', he also formulated a general defence for religious toleration. Three arguments are central:

# Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot dependably evaluate the truth claims of competing religious standpoints;
# Even if they could, enforcing a single " true religion" would not have the desired effect because belief cannot be compelled by violence;
# Coercing religious uniformity would lead to more social disorder than allowing diversity.

Locke was also influenced by the liberal ideas of Presbyterian politician and poet John Milton, who was a staunch advocate of freedom in all its forms. Milton argued for disestablishment as the only effective way of achieving broad toleration. Rather than force a man's conscience, the government should recognise the persuasive force of the gospel. As assistant to Oliver Cromwell, Milton also drafted a constitution of the independents (''Agreement of the People''; 1647) that strongly stressed the equality of all humans as a consequence of democratic tendencies. In his ''Areopagitica'', Milton provided one of the first arguments for the importance of freedom of speech—"the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties". His central argument was that the individual could use reason to distinguish right from wrong. To exercise this right, everyone must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in " a free and open encounter", which will allow good arguments to prevail.

In a natural state of affairs, liberals argued, humans were driven by the instincts of survival and self-preservation, and the only way to escape from such a dangerous existence was to form a common and supreme power capable of arbitrating between competing human desires.. This power could be formed in the framework of a civil society

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases