Liberalism Rekindled: Breakthrough Research Grant

Liberalism is in crisis. Such liberalism – the political philosophy roughly characterized in terms of a commitment to individual liberty and autonomy, basic equality, some rationalist and universalist aspirations, and some version of liberal democracy – is not just, in some parts of the world, losing grounds. It has also become harder to defend it philosophically. Objections have arisen both from the right and the left, and some of these objections cannot be easily dismissed. One possible response to this predicament is to abandon liberalism altogether. But the current research project is motivated by the thought that liberalism’s underlying values and commitments remain, pretty much, true as ever. It’s just that the way to defend liberalism is not to respond to some leading objections to it in a minimal way. The way forward is to fully understand the insights underlying such objections, and reconceive liberalism in a way that fully accommodates them.

Discussing one central example will, I hope, give a better feel for this project and its value. It is a central tenet of liberalism – and arguably, of any remotely plausible moral and political philosophy – that consent often makes a normative difference. But – as feminist critics of liberalism as well as many others have been emphasizing for a while – things get very complicated very quickly here: Whether a consent is valid may depend on the conditions in which it was given. It may depend on what the alternative options were. It may depend on the specific history of the one giving the consent, the one accepting it, and of their relationship. And when it comes to politics the role of consent faces other difficulties as well. What is needed, then, on top of specific discussions of some such problems for consent, is a holistic picture of the normative role of consent, one that will stay loyal to underlying liberal values, but that will accommodate the insights of relevant critiques. What is needed, then, is a unified theory of flawed consent.

Consent – though central – is but one part of this project. Other topics to be discussed – with the same spirit of remaining loyal to underlying liberal values, but in a way that takes very seriously some of the problems with traditional versions of liberalism that critics have been highlighting –include: The relation between truth and power, for liberals seem to be right that politics is not just about raw power, and that truth is indispensable in normative political philosophy, but critics are right that thoughts of power have to take center stage, at least when we’re doing non-ideal theory; The liberal attitude towards communities, and specifically, towards illiberal ones; The relation between political philosophy (of the kind engaged in this very project) and real-life politics.

While the philosophical literature does contain, of course, discussions of some of these and related specific topics, there is no contemporary discussion of the more general topic of this research project – nothing resembling an overall assessment of (comprehensive) liberalism, with the hope of vindicating its underlying commitments in a way that is suitable to what we now know, both about the world and about liberalism’s problems. Filling this gap will, I hope, be the unique contribution of this research project.

 

More specific topics will include: Flawed Consent, Power and Truth, Freedom of Speech, Liberalism and Identity, Liberalism and Democratic Theory, The Relation between Political Philosophy and Politics.