Misunderstanding Liberalism (2) — A New Paradigm for Human Solidarity

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Continued from here.

Liberalism Is about a New Paradigm for Human Solidarity

The essential point that I am trying to get across in the present post is that the pioneers of liberal thought did not present a philosophy intended to idealise the individual. To the contrary, in recognising her position in the dawning age of individualism, they hoped to outline the contours of a new form of community. Liberal society was to give rise to a form of human solidarity adapted to the specific features of the new individual, who was increasingly detached from preordained status and increasingly had to take responsibility for countless aspects of his life that used to be predetermined for her by tradition, custom, status, and absolute authority.

Liberalism Gives Expression to an Inexorable Historic Trend

While there is a voluntaristic element in the emancipation of the individual — with liberals playing a leading role in demanding rights that strengthen the autonomy of the individual — individualism emerges as a historical force that no one intended, let alone designed, to take the specific forms it was going to take or to advance to the point of total cultural dominance that it has achieved in the Western world.

In that sense, original liberalism was part of a broader historical reaction, rather than an intellectual whim or conceit; it served the general adaptation of mankind to the ascent of individualism whose propagation began to accelerate once the decline of the feudal world had set in, giving way to the rise of the money economy and the opening up of new avenues for social mobility that freed men from the feudal manor, confronting them with a growing frontier of personal options in determining the course of their lives. 

This is also why in its latter career as an ideology, liberalism would become ineffective and marginalised—it no longer gave expression to an inexorable historical trend, but became a flawed commentary to its original meaning, a philosophical whim and conceit with no roots in reality. 

Liberalism Is about a New Form of Human Community — It Is Not about 'Rugged Individualism'

Liberalism is about coordinating the brotherhood of self-interested men. It is about answers to the question: how can we live together, form a peaceful and productive community, when everyone of us enjoys unprecedented scope for autonomous action? In the original liberal vision the "I" is always conceived of in its agreeableness with the "We". Hence, liberalism' s support for a strong state capable of delivering unheard-of public goods, its support for mass political participation, and its support of the right of everyone to pursue their self-interest in peaceable, mutually respectful, and coordinated fashion—as I have argued in Misunderstanding Liberalism (1) —State, Individual, Constitution, Democracy , and Self-Interest.  

Liberalism Is about the Most Politicised World There Ever Was

Ultimately, what I am most interested in presently are the implications of all this for the relationship between freedom and politics (being occupied as I am with writing up the chapter "Politics" of my manuscript Attempts at Liberty).

I had defined politics as activities aimed at gaining social acceptance for one's projects, thoughts, and and values. Politics is the strong human disposition of influencing your social environment in your favour taken to the level of community or society at large. 

The crucial point is this: individualism means that ordinary humans are constantly called upon to express, defend, and assert their interests in a world where everyone else does the same. In pre-individualistic times, we were far more other-directed (fremdbestimmt) than we are today. There is still a non-trivial residual of being other-directed today, but the pressure and the need is stronger and the range of options incomparably wider to act in self-regarding, self-interested ways.

The core impulse of politics, the exertion of influence so as to make people comply with and socially accept one's desires and interests is being exercised by every individual every day  as  a matter of course.  We have become, more than ever, the zoon politikon, the political animal.

Our society is more politicised than any other society before, and this is due to liberty, the form of adaptation that we have stumbled upon to cope with the inexorable individualism of our epoch. This holds true irrespective of the degree to which ordinary citizens actively partake in public politics. We all expect to be entitled to question, challenge, correct and change the social status quo either by exercising our rights in private environments or in the public. To be an individual, a free individual entitles one to practice politics both in our private spheres and in the public arena.

Which ties in with my definition of freedom as an effort at striking a balance between (a) the practice of mass dissension and (b) engaging in rites and rituals of pacification robust enough to prevent mass dissension from becoming explosive and disruptive. It is hard to extend the meaning of freedom beyond achieving such a dynamic equilibrium, and it becomes exceedingly problematic to make claims on behalf of liberty with regard to specific ideological preferences, say, regarding the minimum wage or abortion etc.

Continued here.