Essays in The Liberal Idea of Freedom [antikvár]

On the Crisis, So-Called, of LiberahsmWhen one speaks, as in certain quarters it is currently fashionable to do, of the crisis of liberalism, he refers, most commonly, to one or perhaps both of two things. He means doubts as to the validity of liberalism as a doctrine or idea, or he refers to the instability of states that allegedly rest upon the liberal principle.If it is the first doubts as to the idea of liberalism I fail to see that the mere existence of such doubts constitutes a crisis. Every idea, from that of the nature and destiny of man to the latest panacea for world salvation, has always been challenged by some men; but to the believers this is no necessary sign of error or of crisis. And in the present instance it may signify nothing more than a certain confusion in the minds of those who call themselves or others liberals but who may, in fact, be using a common label to denote different things. Alternatively, it may call attention to a lack of popular support, in which case the problem is one of producing intellectual conviction or an appropriate visceral response. It is, so to say, a crisis in opinion or emotion. It may even, as in the case of a distraught John Stuart Mill who was driven almost to suicide when he came to question the tenets of his utilitarian faith, take the extreme form of a crisis in the mind and heart of an individual man. But it is not necessarily a crisis that reflects an inconsistency or other deficiency in the intrinsic merits of the doctrine. Such a deficiency, if it exists at all, must be established on independent grounds. But if I read the arguments of the critics correctly, and as I hope the essays collected in this volume will show, the indictment of liberalism fails to disclose any such independent deficiency.Nevertheless, the critics are quite firm in their insistence that liberalism is in a state of crisis. This they hold to be so self-evident as hardly to require demonstration. They must refer, then, not to liberalism as an idea but to the preservation and perpetuation of so-called liberal states. This, however, requires demonstration on at least two preliminary grounds. They must show, first, that those states which are labeled liberal states are in fact liberal states, which presupposes an acceptable definition of liberalism itself. And they must show, secondly, that such