The Myth of Liberalism

284 Pages·2015·1.497 MB·English

by  John Safranek

The Myth of Liberalism
The Myth of
Liberalism
John P. Safranek
The Catholic University of America Press | Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2015
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Safranek, John P.
The myth of liberalism / John P. Safranek.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8132-2793-1 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Liberalism. 2. Liberalism—
Philosophy. I. Title.
JC574.S24 2015
320.51—dc23 2015023770
To my wife, Eileen, whose encouragement and love made
this possible. And to my children, Bridget, Grace, Jacob,
and John, whose joy sustained me through this endeavor.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1. The Modern Philosophers and Freedom 1
2. Autonomy 25
3. Equality and Freedom 43
4. Rights and Freedom 77
5. The Contradiction of Liberalism 103
6. Liberalism and Utilitarianism 141
7. Liberalism and Some Logical Considerations 162
8. A Classical Understanding of Freedom 191
9. Recapitulations—Modern 210
10. The Premodern Alternative 237
Bibliography 259
Index 267
Acknowledgments
Parts of this book originally appeared elsewhere in modified form:
John P. Safranek and Stephen J. Safranek, “Can the Right to Autono-
my Be Resuscitated After Glucksberg?” 69 U. Colo. L. Rev. (1998), reprint-
ed with permission of the University of Colorado Law Review.
John P. Safranek and Stephen Safranek, “Finding Rights Specifically,”
111 Penn St. L. Rev. 945 (2007), reprinted with permission of the Penn State
Law Review.
John P. Safranek and Stephen Safranek, “Licensing Liberty: The Self-
Contradictions of Substantive Due Process,” 2 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 231 (1998),
reprinted with permission of the Texas Review of Law and Politics.
I am greatly indebted to a number of colleagues, friends, and
family for their support of this endeavor. I am grateful to Sean Cun-
ningham, James Kalb, and Brian Van Hove, SJ, who meticulously ed-
ited and substantively improved the manuscript, and to Jude Dough-
erty, Carson Holloway, Russell Reno, and Thomas Cavanaugh,
whose suggestions greatly assisted me. The external reviewers, Chris
Cullen, SJ, and John Hittinger, offered a number of criticisms that
improved this work. Fr. Cornelius Buckley, SJ, has been a perpetual
source of encouragement, support, and friendship over the life of
this project. My daughters, Bridget and Grace, provided assistance
with the index. I am thankful for the cooperation of my brother, Ste-
phen, who collaborated with me on a series of articles that generated
the present work. This book could not have been written without his
help. I am even more grateful for his lifelong companionship.
Several graduate school professors at the Catholic University
of America contributed various ideas that were incorporated into
ix
x Acknowledgments
this work: the late Thomas Prufer, Monsignor Robert Sokolowski,
and Russell Hittinger. Raymond Dennehy at the University of San
Francisco provided an undergraduate philosophical foundation for
those later studies.
I owe the opportunity for my graduate studies in philosophy to
my mother, sister Margaret, and brother William, who cared for my
incapacitated father during my absence in graduate school.
Introduction
The right of the subject’s particularity, his right to be satisfied, or in
other words the right of subjective freedom, is the pivot and center of
the difference between antiquity and modern times.
—W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right
The concept of liberty is central to contemporary Western life
from cradle to grave. Children are raised with the idea of per-
sonal liberty, adults assert the autonomy to abort or divorce, and the
elderly live out their days asserting rights to life, death, or dignity.
And no political philosophy has esteemed personal liberty as much
as modern political liberalism.
And although Westerners universally employ the idiom of lib-
erty, the meaning of personal liberty in liberal thought is disputed
even by its proponents. Thomas Morawetz claims, “The concept of
autonomy is the bulwark of liberal theory in law and politics.”1 Ron-
ald Dworkin asserts that “equality is the nerve of liberalism.”2 Ju-
dith Shklar states that liberalism means, “Every adult should be able
to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as
many aspects of his or her life as is compatible with the like freedom
of every adult.”3 The existence of various descriptions of liberalism
1.Thomas Morawetz, “Liberalism and the New Skeptics,” in In Harm’s Way, ed-
ited by Jules L. Coleman and Allen Buchanon, 122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
2. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1977), 183.
3. Judith Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited
by Nancy Rosenblum, 21 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
xi
xii Introduction
presents a problem for its critics. Even if one can undermine one or
several forms of the liberal argument, others arise, like the heads of
Hydra.
A second interesting aspect of liberal scholarship is the failure of
any liberal scholar to justify personal liberty. Although most liberal
scholars agree on a canon of rights—namely, free speech, free press,
association, and sexual liberty, none has offered a justification for
liberalism acceptable to their liberal colleagues. No sooner is one
proposed than other liberal scholars effectively undermine it. And
yet their canon of rights remains intact.
A third noteworthy aspect of liberalism is its languid utility
in settling contested matters of public policy. One liberal theorist
claims that “liberalism is a search for principles of political justice
that will command rational assent among persons with different
conceptions of the good life and different views of the world.”4 And
yet with each passing decade, more rather than fewer public issues
are disputed in Western polities. The question of same-sex mar-
riage, which would hardly have arisen but for specifically liberal
principles, was hardly an issue in the public square two decades ago.
Liberalism has not only failed to provide principles of political jus-
tice that command rational assent, but it seems to have stoked the
fires of civil strife.
This book is an attempt to explain these features of contempo-
rary American liberalism, but even more, to critique and challenge
its understanding of personal liberty. Persuasive critics have accused
liberalism of fostering an atomistic, self-absorbed, impoverished,
or hedonistic view of human nature and the political life. Although
many liberals dispute these claims, they could accept these criti-
cisms as accurate but not decisive because such claims do not un-
dermine their argument for individual liberty. Liberals could con-
cede the atomistic or hedonistic character of their theory but still
4. John Gray, Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 91.