Because that which we seek [to do] is not to resuscitate a theory, but to discover the ideas that permit the momentum [élan] toward freedom and civilization to triumph over all the obstacles resulting from human nature, historical circumstances, the conditions of life on this earth. It is a long-term task that requires sustained efforts, sustained support, and the noble patience of those who sincerely and humbly seek the truth. Before it is achieved, humanity will go through, I believe, a very profound and vast religious experience: it will have to evaluate science and its relationship to philosophy and morality anew, it will have to revise the idea of the State, of property, of individual rights and the national ideal. Civilized men will have to submit the conceptions they found novel before the [first World] war to new scrutiny, determined as they will be to discover those that are and those that are not compatible with the vital needs and the permanent ideal of humanity. It is to these vital needs and to this permanent ideal, and not to the doctrines of the nineteenth century, that one should refer to, so as to undertake the reconstruction of liberalism. Let us also seek not to teach an old doctrine, but to contribute within our means to the formation of a doctrine of which none of us has more than a vague notion at the present moment. And we should think of liberalism not as a thing accomplished in the olden days and dated today, but [rather] as something not yet achieved and still very young.--Walter Lippman (1938), p. 105-6.
The term 'neo-liberalism' is associated with many features of liberal ideology of the last half century. But its associaton with a movement is due to the 1938 Walter Lippmann colloquium in Paris (hereafter the colloquium). This gathering was the brain child of Louis Rougier, himself a fascinating (and somewhat disturbing character) with very strong ties to some of my intellectual paragons, Susan Stebbing and the members of the Vienna Circle, including hosting the International Congresses for the Unity of Science. After the collapse of the first wave of liberalism in WWI and the subsequent rise of communism, fascism, and nazism, the Colloquium laid the groundwork for rethinking liberalism that, after allied victory in war and Pax Americana, led to spectacular rebirth of liberalism in many new institutions, international collaboration, and a period of astounding prosperity (alongside decolonialization and dismantling of European empires.) While we cannot discount possibility of a great war between China and America, our present conditions, while dire for many and grounds for grave fears, are not yet on the same scale of catastrophe as the atmosphere surrounding the colloquim. Many of its participants are exiles,and the sense that major war is imminent pervades the precedings. The previous sentence is not intended to mimize the suffering of those presently facing persecution nor to deny the looming terror consequent to the unfolding environmental disaster due to climate change.
From the 1960s onward the revival of liberalism became associated with three distinct commitments: (i) a propogation of markets in many spheres of life even at the expense of other voluntary forms of collaboration or organization; (ii) a way of life focused on the profit motive and acquisition of more material comforts or the re-distribution of income/wealth; (iii) the sexual revolution and the concommitant welcoming and newfound construction of forms of life, even identities, that previously were repressed by state and church (or both).* What's striking about the proceedings of the colloquium is that none of these trends are foreshadowed in it--with the exception, perhaps, of (i). But because the proceedings are heavily influenced by ordo-liberal thought, even the most rigorous defenders of markets at the colloqium are committed to the idea that these presuppose a robust state with its own sphere of autonomy and capable shaping the laws required for a market economy.
So, with that in place it is worth looking at the religiosity of Lippmann's conception of liberalism. By this I do not just mean that he thinks that a liberalism worth having will preserve a kind of autonomy for religious associations, churches, and religious ways of life. Rather, I mean that (a) the very idea of liberalism worth having itself involves a spiritual transformation over extended or historical time. And, in particular, that (b) the destination of liberalism is, in a certain sense not yet known. This has strong resonance with a form of Kantian religion (recently ably articulated by Sam Fleischacker in his The Good and the Good Book (Oxford, 2015)) in which the working out of the content of religious faith is itself a matter of uncertainty over the outcome combined with great deal of trust in the guiding ideals (or holy book). At the end (c) there is a promised land that is, in part, the consequence of a revolution in thought (informed by science, experiments in living, and moral discovery).
This is a liberalism that is grounded in the vital needs of people and principles of humanity. It's pretty clear that for Lippmann these needs are not merely material, although it would be a mistake to shun those material needs. A liberalism that leaves people to suffer is inhumane (and politically unappealing). But these needs also presuppose something spiritual and intellectual. Now, here too, religiosity rears its head. Because rather than privatising those vital needs to churches and voluntary associations alone, it is clear that Lippmann thinks the to-be-discovered-values of liberalism itself need to be, if not themselves sacred objects, at least vessels toward such religiosity. Here Lippmann sounds more like the great Victorian liberal, T.H. Green (and Lippmann's contemporary Niehbur) or the youthful Rawls, than, say, Milton Friedman.** The achievement of a liberalism worth having is, like the future of scientific development, a multi-generational project that requires self-command, delayed gratification, and a faith in the trustworthiness of the ideal of humanity.
In the last half century liberalism has been increasingly understood, by its advocates and enemies, as somehow anti-religious. This has been a disaster politically because it has driven too many religious into the arms of strongmen and false prophets of security or national glory. In so far as liberalism is hostile to inherited privilege and unquestioned authority this perception of mutual animosity is not without reason. In so far as it caters to a certain skeptical mindset one may superficially believe this to be anti-religious. But such skepticism is itself an expression of religiosity--a willingness to suspend judgment, to consider no question fully settled, a regimented self-doubt, the rejection of conformist consensus these all require faith (even if desparing faith) that illumination can come from the most unlikely sources. One can reject Lipppmann's masculine confidence in civilization, while still recognize that he glimpsed an essential truth, that the articulation of liberalism requires a form of religiosity that awaits its inventors.
*Regular readers know that my embrace of (i-ii) is very qualified and that I believe the one-sided propagation of markets and an out of control financialization of all forms of life was the internal ondoing of the second wave of liberalism. (Recall (recall here; here, and here; see also here, here, here, and here).
**I write these paragraphs in Tübingen, one of the intellectual centers of the reformation, where I am attending a workshop on the colloquium.
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