The Nature of Liberal Politics

Indifference, Moderation, or Recognition

It is now standard to divide liberal theories between comprehensive and political accounts. Comprehensive liberal accounts defend liberal principles and institutions based on a conception of the good indicating what individuals and society should aim at. Comprehensive accounts therefore tightly articulate ethics and politics. How society and its members should be governed, and how coercive power should be distributed and harnessed is at least partially determined by views about how people should live and what makes life valuable. Most of the liberal theories developed until late in the 20^th century are comprehensive in this sense. They tend to mix utilitarian and perfectionist considerations, as well illustrated by John Stuart Mill’s liberalism culminating in his harm principle. But he is far from being alone in this.[1]

Such kind of comprehensive liberalism is far less popular today.[2] This is partly due to a range of exogenous socioeconomic and political factors that are favoring an increased degree of social, cultural, and religious diversity. As a matter of fact, members of the same society tend to share less and less a conception of the good life, thus making it less plausible to ground liberal institutions and principles on a comprehensive doctrine. Actually, these factors may not be completely exogenous. The very prevalence of liberal institutions in a society favors social experimentation and innovations, mixing of populations, and tolerance towards nonconventional views and practices. All this contributes to more diversity both in behavior and beliefs about what is good and valuable. Finally, there is also the influence of John Rawls on mainstream political philosophy. In the 1980s, Rawls operated a “political turn” consisting of the reinterpretation of his theory of justice as a “political conception” instead of a “comprehensive doctrine.” Rawls was indeed well aware of what he called the “fact of pluralism” in liberal societies. He considered that his theory of justice (“justice as fairness”) as developed in A Theory of Justice was too much relying on substantive moral values and ideals unlikely to be shared by reasonable persons in a pluralist society. The Rawlsian project was thus to show that liberal principles of justice are “freestanding,” that is, not grounded in any specific moral or epistemological view, but that can nonetheless be endorsed by any reasonable person as part of their comprehensive view about what is good. Full and public justification of liberal principles of justice is achieved when it is mutually acknowledged that everybody shares the same reasons to abide by them.

“The Verdict of the People” (1855), George Caleb Bingham

The influence of Rawls means that the current dominant view is to see liberalism foremost as a political doctrine rather than a broader moral one. The idea of “political liberalism,” even if it is not understood along strict Rawlsian lines, entails the related notions of neutrality and restraint. Liberal neutrality means that the liberal state should not take a stance on how people should live their lives and on which values should be promoted, at least within the framework constituted by liberal principles and the institutions that realize them. Liberal restraint indicates that the state should refrain from actively favoring some ways of life over others on the grounds that they display the state’s favored conception of the good and its related values. The role of the state is to make sure that persons are free to live as they see fit, as long as it does not compromise others’ freedom and eventually other requirements of justice. Some contemporary liberal perfectionists reject neutrality and restraint, but they really are in the minority.[3]    

One of the criticisms that can be addressed to liberal theories that endorse the notions of neutrality and restraint is that complete neutrality and restraint are not plausible as political principles in a twofold sense. First, the promotion of liberal principles such as principles of justice, or of liberal institutions such as the rule of law, may not be completely separated from the defense of “comprehensive” value judgments about the good. There are many versions of this objection, but a relatively straightforward one is to point out that to determine what counts as a “fair” distribution of resources, you have to determine what the resources that should be fairly distributed are, and for that, you must take a stance on what is good for individuals.[4] Second, there may be cases where it seems that we ought to take a moral stance on some issue that is disputed within a liberal framework. The case of abortion may be a good example, as well as the case of conscription in times of war. Here, there are ethical considerations (preserving valuable lives, preserving the common good of the nation) that may be so pressing that it is justified to weigh them directly against liberal political principles. If this argument is valid, then neutrality and restraint cannot be all there is about liberal politics.     

I think we can discern in contemporary liberal philosophy three different ways to respond to the limits of neutrality and restraint as part of the liberal conception of politics. These approaches reflect an ethos or a “spirit” that indicates that liberalism is not only political but also necessarily moral and thus comprehensive. Hence, they confirm that neutrality and restraint are difficult to achieve.

The first approach is to argue that liberalism is tied to a politics of indifference, in opposition to the kind of “politics of recognition” that characterizes illiberal views. This point is made in particular by Chandran Kukathas in his book The Liberal Archipelago.[5] As I’ve explained in a previous essay, Kukathas’s account of the liberal society is based on the absolute priority given to freedom of association and freedom of conscience as fundamental liberal rights. From there follows a view of the liberal society where people are free to choose the moral and political principles they abide by and the rules that they follow. This results in a very strong version of the notion of liberal restraint:

“The liberal state should thus take no interest in these interests or attachments – cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic, or otherwise – which people might have. It should take no interest in the character or identity of individuals; nor should it be concerned directly to promote human flourishing: it should have no collective projects; it should express no group preferences; and it should promote no particular individuals or individual interests. Its only concern ought to be with upholding the framework of law within which individuals and groups can function peacefully. To be sure, upholding the rule of law may require intervention in the affairs of individuals and groups (and this may, unavoidably, have bearing on individual and group identity); but liberal politics is not concerned with these affairs in themselves. Indeed, it is indifferent to particular human affairs or to the particular pursuits of individuals and groups. Liberalism might well be described as the politics of indifference.”[6]   

Compared to Rawls’s, Kukathas’s version of political liberalism just gives up the idea that justification can proceed based on principles of justice. Kukathas tries to restrict the substantive content on which an agreement must prevail to the bare minimum: freedom of association and conscience, and by implication tolerance. At first sight, this leads to a more plausible version of the neutrality and restraint notions because here we just assume that individuals will vote with their feet; the state does not have to take a stance on moral values because it is assumed that people themselves are free to choose how to live. Note however that the politics of indifference is more than about politics, i.e., determining when coercion is legitimate. It encapsulates a definitely ethical or moral view about how to live – not only individually but collectively. Proof of that is that in Kukathas’s liberal society, many people will feel disgust or resentment toward others’ behavior and more generally will disapprove of their ways of life. Not interfering in this case is not only a matter of political restraint,[7] it is really a (very demanding) personal ethics of live and let live that not everyone is ready or even able to endorse.

The second approach is the opposite. It consists in calling for a return to the perfectionist roots of liberalism and reclaiming for liberalism a politics of recognition and identity. This view is for instance defended by Nils Karlson in his book Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism.[8] As part of his multi-ways strategy to fight populism, Karlson argues that classical liberals should embrace and promote the “liberal spirit.” The liberal spirit that Karlson would like liberals to promote is decidedly Millian. It emphasizes the value of self-development and individuality. Maybe counterintuitively, promoting the liberal spirit should give rise to identity politics:

“Such identity politics is a politics of pluralism of personal and social identities. Importantly, it is a politics that respects and recognizes the diverse ways people choose to live their lives. The classical liberal institutions provide the necessary framework for individual self-development, meaning, community, and virtue, where people themselves can find out what is valuable… In such a society, family, friends, and clubs in civil society, moreover, provide communities that form the basis of social cohesion and social norms, which also may be supported by policies that support social mobility.”[9]

An implication is that the notion of “liberal nationalism” now makes sense, while it is hardly understandable within a politics of indifference. The nation can be seen as providing the needed background to make individual flourishing possible. If that is true, then the state is legitimate in promoting a form of collective, national identity, for instance through education. This may sound like a complete retreat from the ideas of neutrality and restraint, and it indeed largely is. In the context of the rise of populism, it might well be a more plausible kind of liberal politics than Kukathas’s as it is more reflective of the psychological and social mechanisms that lead individuals to endorse principles and institutions.

There is a third approach to liberal politics that, true to its own nature, is a somehow moderate one. This is the politics of moderation that is displayed by a range of liberal authors of the 20^th century such as Raymond Aron and Isaiah Berlin. This politics of moderation is tightly related to the acknowledgment of the “liberal predicament” that Joshua Cherniss discusses in his book Liberalism in Dark Times.[10] The liberal predicament refers to the fact that the way liberals conceive politics puts them in a difficult position when faced with ruthless political actors ready to push for their views about what is good through all necessary means. Cherniss characterizes the predicament as follows:

“how to combat anti-liberal movements, which are not constrained in the way that liberal movements and regimes are, without either sacrificing political efficacy or betraying basic liberal principles in the name of defending them? Faced with ruthless anti-liberal attacks, to remain a good liberal (in the sense of adhering to liberal principles) threatens to make one a failed liberal. Yet to become ruthless in the fight against ruthlessness threatens to leave one no longer a liberal at all.”[11]   

As Cherniss documents, in the context of their struggle with this predicament, “tempered liberals” developed a particular conception of politics, itself grounded in a “political ethos.,” that is, “a ‘stance’ or ‘bearing,’ formed by patterns of disposition, perception, commitment, and response, which shapes how individuals or groups go about acting politically.”[12]    

In general, the tempered liberals displayed an acute sensitivity to what Aron calls the limits of political knowledge. This is due to their explicit acknowledgment of value pluralism and its implications. Political conflicts reflect a more fundamental and radical conflict between incommensurable values. This conflict cannot be arbitrated on a rational basis and any “solution” to it is necessarily burdened by uncertainty, not only empirical (history is not written in advance and is open-ended) but also moral. Responsibility and moderation are the only plausible answers. Political decision-making cannot blindly follow ideas at the risk of leading to catastrophic consequences and a lot of suffering. Politics must be guided by an ethics of responsibility that is always attentive to the possible consequences of any act. This conception of politics is related to what Cherniss calls a “moral of prudence”, that is, an ethos making one responsive to the specificities of each particular situation.

Liberal neutrality and restraint take a different meaning under the politics of moderation of tempered liberals. The idea is not that the state should abstain from taking a stance on issues appealing to substantive values determining what is a good life because no agreement is possible. Neutrality is rather grounded on the limits of the knowledge on which the state can act to justify such a stance. Crucially, the limits of what the state knows are not only about “comprehensive” issues but also encompass issues about justice. Considerations of justice do not have a special status compared to “comprehensive” considerations. They are on the same par and politics is about balancing them in a cautious way. If the state must refrain from interfering too much with people’s business, it’s because this is the best way to resist irresponsible dogmatism and, ultimately, authoritarianism. Obviously, the drawback of the politics of moderation is that it doesn’t give a blueprint for state intervention, nor give indication on what is the appropriate stance on each specific issue. Its value lies however in its underlying ethos, calling for prudence, epistemic humility, and responsibility.

To conclude, it is interesting to see that once it is agreed that liberal neutrality and restraint as understood in Rawlsian political liberalism are not satisfactory, all the alternatives correspond to particular conceptions of liberal politics, each of them grounded in a deeper ethics or even referring to an ethos. This gives an indication of where to look to renew liberalism.

---

[1] This is in particular well documented by Alan S. Kahan, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 2023).

[2] There are a few exceptions, e.g., Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Clarendon Press, 1986).

[3] Joseph Raz, “Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 19, no. 1 (1990): 3–46. ; Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism Restraint, Reissue édition (Cambridge (GB): Cambridge University Press, 2008).

[4] For instance, Rawls’s concept of primary goods is itself related to a “thin” conception of the good.

[5] Chandran Kukathas, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2007).

[6] Ibid., p. 249-50.

[7] Indeed, Kukathas has few things to say about the political framework through which the state would make sure that everyone’s freedom of association is respected.

[8] Nils Karlson, Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism, 1st ed. 2024 edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

[9] Ibid., p. 105.

[10] Joshua L. Cherniss, Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2021).

[11] Ibid., p. 5.

[12] Ibid., p. 6.