Gongol.com Archives: September 2024
September 16, 2024
A philosophical current that has gained some traction and influence in recent years has adopted the peculiar label of "postliberalism". Within this tent, there are some objectively intelligent and often persuasive thinkers who try to make the case that the "common good" must be made to prevail over individual freedom. ■ If we understand the word "liberalism" not in the odd sense that the American left/right scheme misuses it, but instead in the way it makes sense in a universal way, then we recognize it as a philosophy that values individual liberty as the most important value for a government to preserve, protect, and defend. ■ That isn't to say that individual freedoms are the most important of all values a society can uphold -- only that the purpose of forming a government, which can do lots of things to the individual (like imprisonment, conscription, or even execution), is to protect those liberties. ■ Other things have to go along with freedoms in order for a system to work, but those things have to be chosen. Humans know we're meant to be free. We have to be taught how to be responsible. The institutions that teach concepts like duty have to be flexible, because what's needed from dutiful people changes over time. ■ And thus, the problem with people who say they want more things like responsibility and duty, but who call themselves "postliberals": There is no post-liberalism. There is either liberalism or illberalism. ■ There is no logical consistency to thinking that there is something "after" personal liberties, free inquiry, and the intrinsic worth of the individual. There are complementary virtues (like duty and responsibility) that go along with liberty, but governments can only be good if they are constrained. Specifically, they must be constrained from harming personal liberties. That is the soul of humanity's liberal experiment. ■ Anyone who insists that they can solve complex (some would say impossible) problems like maximizing the "common good" by telling people how to live isn't choosing something "after" liberalism; they're choosing something before or other than liberty.
