The Moral Failure of Liberalism

Remarks on Alan Kahan’s “Freedom from Fear”

This is widely agreed: liberalism, and by extension, the social and political order we call “liberal democracy,” are in crisis. The sources of this crisis are many, some essentially exogenous and others more endogenously tied to liberal thought and the way liberal democracies actually work. Recently, there have been quite a few attempts to understand this crisis by looking at the history of liberalism as an intellectual movement. This is notably the case of Samuel Moyn’s book Liberalism Against Itself which I have discussed in a previous essay here.[1] Alan S. Kahan’s ambitious Freedom from Fear. An Incomplete History of Liberalism adopts a similar approach and ultimately defends the same thesis as Moyn regarding how liberalism got lost.[2] As we’ll see, the comparison stops here however as Kahan’s book has a far broader scope and is in general far more convincing in defending the idea that the key to understanding liberalism’s failure but also to imagine how to revive it is to be found in its past, and more specifically in its utilitarian and perfectionist strands that were dominant in the 19^th century.

As its subtitle suggests, Kahan’s history of liberalism does not cover everything that can be meaningfully related to the liberal intellectual movement. In particular, it is explicitly Western-centered and skips authors and strands that certainly should figure in a complete history of liberalism. But, incomplete as it is, the scope of Kahan’s history is broad, starting with the “proto-liberal” of the 18^th century (Montesquieu, Smith) and ending with a discussion of the contemporary crisis of liberalism and its struggle against populism. In between, the book covers late 18^th/early 19th-century pioneers of liberal thought (Kant, Madison, Constant), 19th-century contributors whose writings have definitively established liberalism as a distinct intellectual movement (Tocqueville, Mill), important liberal thinkers of the 20^th century (Lippman, Hayek, Berlin, Rawls, Friedman…), as well as many other more or less significant authors. Kahan does not only propose intellectual portraits of liberal figures, but he also discusses issues tackled by liberal thinkers that are essential to deal with to understand the trajectory of liberalism, especially in the transition from the “fin de siècle” to the 20^th century (nationalism, feminism, imperialism). Even Locke, who Kahan argues cannot be considered a (proto-) liberal author, is discussed in the first chapter.

A strength of the book is its analytical framework that gives the discussion of the many well-known authors and topics addressed a particular coherence and relevance. The framework reflects Kahan’s main thesis, which is that the history of liberalism can be interpreted as an intellectual and political struggle against a small number of “fears” that have successively emerged as Western societies were industrializing and modernizing. Kahan identifies four such fears, appearing in chronological order: the fear of despotism and religious fanaticism, the fear of revolution and reaction, the fear of poverty, and the fear of totalitarianism. The appearance of each of these fears is related to the emergence of a new stage in the development of liberal thought. Proto-liberals were concerned with the fear of despotism and religious fanaticism and 19^th-century liberalism with the fear of revolution. The growing social significance of poverty at the end of the 19^th century led to the schism between “classical liberals” viewing poverty as a minor issue and “modern liberals” making it the most important concern to be addressed. The fear of totalitarianism largely drove liberal reflections in the 20^th century, from the “liberalism of fear” to the early developments of “neoliberalism.” The fact that the appearance of a new fear does not necessarily eliminate the previous ones largely explains why liberal thought essentially takes the shape of an “oyster” that grows by accretion, giving birth to a large diversity of strands whose ties may appear tenuous at the surface.

A counterpart of the prevalence of fears in the evolution of liberal thought is the importance of hope. Kahan argues that most liberal authors are united by the search for a utopia (which obviously may differ from one author to the other) and the conviction that, even though this utopia might not be achievable in the near future, it gives guidance to fight the fears that threaten the social order and jeopardize individuals’ freedom and well-being. These utopias are built on three pillars: freedom, markets, and morality. From the outset, the deep liberal conviction was that the ideal society where fear no longer rules is a society where individuals are politically free, enjoy the well-being permitted by property and economic exchanges, and hold values and a certain conception of the good life promoting personal autonomy. Kahan’s history of liberalism recounts the dialectical movement between hope and various fears building on these three pillars.  

I shall not discuss here a specific intellectual portrait or issue among the many that figure in the book. In general, I’ve found them very instructive and interesting, even when they concern a well-known author on which the literature is already more than abundant. Maybe because I’m more familiar with recent liberal thought, I found the discussion of 20th-century liberals less deep and insightful than the one on 19^th-century authors such as Tocqueville or Constant. Overall, the scholarship displayed by the book is nonetheless exemplary and impressive. I’m more interested here in the general claim that Kahan makes throughout the book that we can discern a trend seeing liberal authors growingly relying on two or even only one pillar (not the same for all) while earlier liberals were relying on all three. This trend starts in the “short 19^th century” with authors like Bentham, Bastiat, and Spencer. It is reinforced during the fin-de-siècle with authors like Dicey and Léon Bourgeois. According to Kahan, relying on one pillar at the exclusion of the other two became an established characteristic of liberalism in the 20^th century with authors like Rawls, Nozick, Friedman, and Shklar.[3]     

The last chapter, dedicated to liberalism’s contemporary crisis and the rise of populism, argues that this trend accounts for most of the troubles of liberal democracy. More specifically, Kahan argues that liberals went astray when they started to ignore the crucial role of the moral pillar in supporting political and economic liberal institutions. Kahan claims that the rise of 21^st-century populism is mostly “the result of cultural alienation caused by changes in the mores at both the bottom and the top of Western and some non-Western societies (e.g., India).”[4]  It grows from an “illiberal consensus” between the parties of society who are blaming liberalism for the fear and pain they have suffered. More than whether liberalism is really to blame, what matters here is that this perception is largely caused by liberals’ underestimation of the moral pillar. According to Kahan, the resurgence of nationalism, resentment due to a feeling of (cultural and economic) deprivation, or the rejection of meritocracy all have the same common origins in the effective dominance of an individualist and cosmopolitan form of liberalism that is oblivious to the fact that not all the members of society share the corresponding set of values. However, a liberal society needs a moral pillar that provides a common ground that does not exclude anyone and that does not feed the sentiment that some members of the society consider themselves superior to the rest of the population.

The diagnostic and the remedy suggested are very similar to what is developed by Samuel Moyn in his aforementioned book. Both Kahan and Moyn believe that liberalism took the wrong path at the end of the 19^th century when it turned back from its perfectionist roots. Kahan’s book does however a more convincing job because, while Moyn is mostly alluding to this perfectionist liberalism, Kahan’s historical account indicates the shape it has effectively taken in the past in the writings, for instance, of Montesquieu, Tocqueville, or Mill. Kahan also tries to sketch the form that 21^st-century perfectionist liberalism could take. His main source of inspiration here is Joseph Raz’s account that makes individual autonomy the core value of the liberal moral pillar.[5]

This is a bold claim, but I don’t think it will convince many. To start with, perfectionism, and especially Raz’s version is unlikely to reconcile people who hold very different views about the good life. Even if we can discuss the justification of the notions of restraint and neutrality that are at the core of the different kinds of political liberalism (Rawls’s but not only), they at least identify a real concern, i.e., that in pluralistic and complex societies, perfectionist ideals are unlikely to be shared by everyone. It follows that rules (especially laws) that build on them will not be justified to every member of society. Raz himself acknowledges this point. He notes that the primacy given to autonomy can be either transcendental (i.e., it applies to all kinds of societies) or contextual (i.e., it is the case only in specific, “liberal” societies). Raz oscillates between the two interpretations but ultimately favors the latter as he is clear that the possibility of autonomy depends on conditions that “include the existence of a public culture which maintains and encourages the cultivation of certain tastes and the undertaking of certain pursuit.”[6] That’s exactly the point at stake here. The rise of populism suggests that there is nowadays if not a war, at least tension concerning the “public culture” that determines what is worth pursuing in life. Perfectionism is indeed perfectly compatible with illiberal views. The kind of national conservatism that largely feeds current right-wing populism also builds on a form of perfectionism. Kahan’s perfectionist liberalism can work only within a social morality that already endorses a broad set of liberal values.

Even if we grant that Kahan is right about the cause of liberalism’s contemporary troubles, social morality is anyway not something that you can plan and change by decree. The fact of cultural alienation will not suddenly disappear because liberals realize that there is no liberal society without a shared conception of the good life. The relative success of liberalism in the 19^th century has been made possible by the slow convergence of favorable economic, social, and cultural conditions. In the same way, liberalism’s current difficulties are explained by the fact that those conditions are nowadays less favorable, and it is unlikely that a return to perfectionism will change this. To put it in a more Hayekian way, to strive, liberalism needs a fertile moral soil that itself depends on a process of cultural evolution. But cultural evolution is mostly a spontaneous order that can hardly be directed.

It is nonetheless sure that among the necessary conditions for liberalism to strive, is a minimum degree of civility and moderation in political matters. One of the characteristics of America’s democracy that impressed Tocqueville in comparison with post-revolutionary France was indeed the peaceful way in which politics was conducted, largely thanks to shared moral and religious mores. Moderation is the trademark of liberal politics. However, civility and moderation are difficult to preserve in a context where the public political culture tolerates ruthless behavior, does not give any particular value to truth, and builds on a “them-versus-us” logic. The question is therefore to determine what favors the evolution of this culture inimical to liberal ideas and practices.

Reflecting on this question within Kahan’s framework, I would suggest that a new type of fear should be taken under consideration: the fear of resentment. The cultural alienation that Kahan is describing is associated with a feeling of resentment especially directed toward the so-called “elites.” In the populist’s jargon, the word “elites” indeed mostly refers to anyone the People can rightfully resent. There is nothing pathological here. Resentment is one of the “reactive attitudes” that is triggered by the perceived transgression of moral rules. Every social morality functions because individuals are prone to react against norm violators, and resentment is one of those emotions that trigger the reaction. The moral failure of contemporary liberalism is however located in its inability to appropriately account for the roots of a widely shared resentment toward the practices and attitudes of part of the population and the devastating effects on the political morality of liberal societies. In a society of resentful people, politics can hardly be civilized and moderate.

The identification of the fear of resentment is only a tiny step toward finding the appropriate liberal response to populism. Individuals can be resentful for wrong reasons (e.g., they resent the fact that “inferior races” are treated in the same way as they are), and to those, no concession should be made. Part of the resentment that is feeding populist politics cannot be disqualified in such a way, however. Its importance may be a reflection of what the late Gerald Gaus identified as the “sectarian” nature of liberal thought and society.[7] As I said above, it is unclear whether perfectionism can overcome the sectarian problem. Interestingly, the concept of public reason does not appear a single time in Kahan’s incomplete history of liberalism. “Public reason liberalism” offers however an alternative approach to address the fear of resentment and understand how reconciliation is possible based on the three political, economic, and moral pillars. But I shall leave this topic for a future post.

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[1] Samuel Moyn, Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2023).

[2] Alan S. Kahan, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 2023).

[3] Kahan singles out some significant exceptions: Lippman, Hayek, Berlin, and the Ordoliberalism.

[4] Ibid., p. 422.

[5] Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1986).

[6] Ibid, p. 421-2.

[7] Gerald Gaus, "The Open Society And Its Friends," The Critique, 2017, http://www.thecritique.com/articles/open-society-and-its-friends/.