March 7, 2011.
What does “liberalism” refer to?
Used in such a wide variety of senses that it means almost nothing at all now.
Not useful to use the term to think about society or use as a normative concept
A historical approach to the term is valuable
The result of a large tradition of different components fusing together
After many things have fused together (by convenience) it looks like they come together by necessity
This makes the whole framework seem self-evident, which is convenient for your political system to have
E.g. democracy and liberalism seem like they belong together
liberalism has toleration as a core principle
democracy has no such commitment - you could vote to ostracize someone people don’t like.
democracy doesn’t like elections.
Another strand: voluntaryness better than force
Another strand: fear of concentrated power
Another strand: individual > group
Another strand: laissez faire capitalism
Two components of liberalism Geuss is worried about
Neutrality
There is no notion of ‘neutrality’ that is both weak enough to be a sensible notion as well as strong enough to do the normative job liberals want it to do
Neutrality itself cannot be a generator of political value
Consensus
It’s not that lack of consensus is good and it’s good to push people around
Rather, consensus must be treated as an empirical concept
As opposed to a ‘necessary condition of society’ - that’s not true
Making it this weak would be vacuous; would allow one to say “members of concentration camps were in a consensus with their guards, as they formed a social system”
Moving to a more realistic/empirical notion, e.g. everyone checking off the same box in the voting booth, this doesn’t have any normative power
There’s a feeling that every disagreement can be resolved to consensus.
It isn’t proven that it’s always possible, nor if it is possible that it’s good.
Kant argues that we have a natural tendency to overgeneralize from experience
E.g. We see things in our life have causes, and then think everything has a cause, which leads to the concept of God
Likewise, the belief that everything can be resolved by consensus fits this pattern.
This is part of the plausibility of liberalism:
I like to be free, I don’t like to be pushed around, I like us to be in consensus (this is fine)
Now jump to saying this can be done for the whole world
This can’t be taken for granted.
Is the above an accusation that liberalism is hypocritical?
E.g. America was based on consensus while nonconsensually displacing native americans.
Geuss:
‘hypocrisy’ is too strong of a term, which implies a conscious duplicitousness
Human beings are self-centered (we see ourselves as more central than we actually are, want to see ourselves as good) which is at odds with liberal ideal
Should we make incremental adjustments vs revolution to fix liberalism?
Geuss: keen on preserving our abilities to imagine utopias.
We can transform some of those aspirations into practical action.
There is a gap betweeen action and imagination.
Pragmatists eliminate that gap, ‘reduce’ imagination just to action.
Nothing wrong with aspirations that are not immediately realized - they can remain in the culture until they are realized.
So we can pursue both the immediate and more radical changes.
What role is there for art to play in developing our political imagination?
Escaping from politics is a kind of politics, after all
Escape because politics at the moment is intolerable/unworkable.
Two ways:
Political novels like Flaubert’s Salembot
descriptions of radically different worlds
having an imaginative picture of a particular world makes us relate to our own reality differently
Norm-breaking poetry, like Paul Celan:
Language rules are oppressive, conformist
Use words in different ways to break stifling forms of everyday speech