Liberalism's Success Is Producing Its Own Moral Decline
As a trend of the past few years, I’ve noticed the phrase “the failure of capitalism” or “the collapse of democracy” cropping up in more and more places. I wanted to get a solid grip on this.
I dug through several books on the topic, and this one struck me as the most reasonable and rationally argued, so I liked it. I’m putting together this summary as a memo for myself.
Why Liberalism Failed
The author is Patrick J. Deneen. He is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He has previously taught at Princeton University and Georgetown University as well.
The content is substantial and would run long, so I’ll split this into several parts.
The Argument
Liberalism (or liberal democracy) emerged after medieval aristocracy and swallowed the world. In the 19th century a current of skepticism toward liberalism took hold, and various alternative systems of governance were explored (communism was one of them), but liberalism triumphed over all of them and appeared to have seized hegemony as the world’s sole political system. Yet several distortions have recently begun surfacing one after another, and once again a period is arriving in which liberalism is being shaken. The main points are “ever-widening inequality,” “individuals growing ever weaker while the state grows ever stronger,” and “moral decline.” And there is an extremely serious concern that these are not the result of liberalism having failed, but rather the result of liberalism having succeeded — that liberalism was destined from the start to end up this way, and yet the world has arrived at this point without discarding it and without being able to construct a sufficient alternative. Left alone, this will surely continue as is.
Here I’ll organize things around the point of “moral decline.”
The Sheer Impossibility of Democracy
Plato, Socrates, the “noble lie.” The ruling class deceives the lower classes, and if it deceives itself as well, that is the ideal system. Liberalism was the realization of this.
Edward Purcell Jr. (1973) He pointed out the low intelligence quotient of soldiers during World War I and warned of the precariousness of democracy. The decline in citizens’ education and the thinning of public-spiritedness are precisely proof of liberalism’s success. Having produced a foolish populace in this way, the system grants them freedom alone while politics tilts toward elite leadership: bureaucratic rule.
Aristotle described democracy as “degeneration.” Among today’s liberal elites there are those who go along with that claim as well. Voters are ill-informed and ignorant, so in short, isn’t a system fully controlled by elites the ideal one?
Political Conflict as Strategic Entertainment for Wasting Energy
For example, progressive liberalism removes classical liberalism and designs state intervention meant to ideally advance individualism through a new state, yet it insists on remaining strictly hands-off regarding morals and lifestyle.
Isn’t it time we noticed that both sides are, in the end, doing the same thing?
This structure of conflict generates waste, and that waste gets used to control citizens so their gaze never turns to what really matters. The prime example is “the wasting of the populace’s energy through regular elections.” People throw themselves into choosing between one of the two major parties, and that makes them feel as though everything has been settled.
The Fateful Confrontation Between Liberal Democracy and Nature
Francis Bacon The idea of humans dominating nature.
John Dewey The savage and the civilized man. The savage merely adapts to nature. The civilized man overcomes it.
Postmodernism Nature isn’t such a big deal, and we can escape its influence. Therefore differences of race or birth carry no meaning (this sounds good on the surface but the reasoning is mistaken) — it is unjust for the defeated to blame something else, since it’s ultimately their own fault. In other words, this affirms that those who are discriminated against are not entirely without some responsibility of their own.
19th century Rousseau, Marx, James Mill, Richard Rorty. Human malleability. Affirmation of biotechnology that improves people.
Technological progress was thought essential to overcoming nature, and unleashing self-interest was thought to be the correct way to advance technology. As a result, the era of paying the price for technology’s victory has arrived. And yet we still believe that science will ultimately triumph over nature.
The Loneliness That Liberalism Brings
Stephen Marche We are choosing to become lonely of our own accord. Separation into suburbs. Front porches disappear, and backyard patios become popular.
Smartphones have made it extremely difficult to secure time for reading, reflection, and meditation. The technology that was supposed to connect us is generating isolation instead. What was supposed to be freedom has, in reality, left us feeling powerless, lacking confidence, and lonely.
Sherry Turkle Social media. Connected yet lonely. It undermines the physical proximity and shared responsibility that community requires. People even lose the ability to know how to form bonds at all.
Liberal Education as Prescription Medicine
Clark Kerr, president of the University of California (1963) The disappearance of the idea of the university. Research outcomes get sorted by whether or not they are useful.
Elite universities originally had a role to play as the front line of anti-culture.
What universities were originally “supposed to do”: study epic poetry, masterpieces of tragedy and comedy, the reflections of philosophers and theologians, the Bible, and so on. Instead, curricula exist purely to produce talent that the practical market demands.
“Refinement” requires cultivation (from the Latin etymology).
Aristotle, “Politics” First, correct habits regarding food and sexual conduct must be instilled as custom.
It is because of the convention of culture that people can engage responsibly with nature.
An anti-culture that places weight on custom rather than theory is itself one countermeasure.
Do universities feel any responsibility for the Lehman shock or economic crises? Those who lit the fuse were students who graduated from elite universities with excellent grades and were hired at top companies — students who fully carried out the template that they themselves believed was “for the best.”
Universities pull talented people from the regions, process them, then export them to yet another place or country. The regions grow weaker and lose their strength.
Liberal Arts
Liberal arts were originally something that the freest of citizens were meant to pursue once liberated from various constraints. Now they are disdained, treated as a slave’s discipline. People do nothing but study how to make money and the various techniques for doing so. Before the modern era, freedom was believed to come only at the end of a discipline of cultivating virtue through acquiring a liberal education. Plato, Aristotle, Christianity, Cicero, Dante — despite some differences among them, they all intend the same thing. Human beings are not born free. Acting exactly as one pleases is, if anything, a state of servitude — selfish and in defiance of conscience.
Statements by America’s second president, and the mottos of early public universities at the country’s founding, reveal a strong awareness of liberal arts.
The Degradation of Character
Gratitude toward the past and obligation toward the future disappear, and pursuing immediate gratification becomes the norm. Rather than being the source that cultivates virtue, “culture” collapses into a synonym for pleasure, vulgarity, and diversion, promoting consumption, desire, and indifference, and overflowing with harmful behavior aimed purely at maximizing the self.
To despise the past is to throw the present and ourselves into the trash, telling people of the future that we are garbage. And yet liberalism does exactly this.
Tocqueville, “the severing of time.” It becomes difficult to build something toward a distant future. Gaining a great deal in the short term fits human instinct, so it tends to be prioritized. Individualism makes it impossible to know what one is to the people of the future (the severing of the chain).
Hobbes, “social contract theory.” Tradition and culture are excluded as unjust. Norms disappear and disorder follows.
Nicholas Carr As time spent on the internet increases, the brain’s synapses rewire in a way that erodes patience (people grow irritated if screens don’t switch smoothly and quickly). Decline in language ability, memory, and concentration.
People turn to racism precisely because there is no longer anything to confront — no healthy conflict of the kind that exists within a community, no disagreements within a community that must be reconciled precisely because they occur within that community. The only conflict left that is simple to grasp is one based on skin color or race, and so people gravitate toward that.
When hearts drift away from democracy, politics comes to be perceived as something distant, a symbol of corruption. This stress gets directed into opposition movements, but those involved don’t actually possess any alternative social philosophy — they are merely venting anger and resentment.
None of this stems from liberalism having been betrayed or from liberalism being incomplete. Rather, it is a perfectly foreseeable negative spiral in which the more faithfully liberalism is followed, the sicker things become.
Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/10/371/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.