The liberalism of fear has historically been taken to have such [empowered] listeners. But when it is so taken, it naturally attracts the traditional criticisms, because what it can be taken to enjoin is the extreme limitation of state power, the message that indeed it has traditionally conveyed. And that will not do for us, now, because it is not state power that we have most to fear. And when we ask what it has to tell legislators who are in that situation, it is less than clear what it has to add. [p. 59]
It asks, too, how secure what has been secured is. It is disposed not to be too sanguine about that, particularly since it remembers to look beyond national boundaries. It is conscious that nothing is safe, that the task is never-ending. This part of its being, as Judith Shklar said, is resolutely nonutopian. But that does not mean that it is simply the politics of pessimism which has not collapsed into the politics of cynicism. In the words that Shklar quoted from Emerson, it is very importantly the party of memory. But it can be, in good times, the politics of hope as well.---Bernard Williams, "The Liberalism of Fear," in In the Beginning was The Deed (2005), edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn, [p.61]. [HT Nakul Krishna in The Point]
Posthumously, Bernard Williams (1929 – 2003) has become increasingly remembered as a political philosopher. In part, this is so because various scholars (primarily working in Britain and the European mainland and) influenced by Geuss' version of political realism (their term) have found it convenient to treat Williams as one of their main sources of inspiration. If somebody had told me this around 2003, I would have been genuinely surprised. I think I would not have been alone in thinking that Williams was primarily a moral philosopher in the broadest possible sense of that word (and perhaps anti-moral philosopher) who, of course, had genuinely political interests and had served the public in politically salient matters. Williams the political philosopher is a construction, a very successful construction I hasten to add, by a very astute selection of his writings (by Geoffrey Hawthorn and Patricia Williams). So, while I am about to be critical, the underlying affect is gratitude.
"The Liberalism of Fear" is a lecture delivered at, it seems, Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1994 as the fourth Isaiah Berlin Lecture (see here). Berlin was still alive, and presumably in the audience. One subtext, even framing-device, of lecture is, in fact, Berlin's own status as a political philosopher in the context of the sociology of philosophy (of the 1930s and 40s) in which to situate Berlin's career. Williams leaves no doubt that Berlin is a political philosopher (recall this post!), but he notes, astutely, that "Berlin...led people to agree with him that he got of out of philosophy" and so that he was a political philosopher was "concealed." (53)* I will return to Williams' sociology before long. But it is clear we, the readers of the essay (and perhaps some in its initial audience), are meant to understand that Williams, too, was in a certain sense a concealed political philosopher visible to the astute eye (Berlin).
Joking aside, the point of the passage about the work concealing the political philosopher in the text is to assert that political philosophy has a tight connection with history and that, in fact, its true intelligibility -- Collingwood is in the air -- requires "historical commitments," a "sense of the past," and "strongly developed historical memory." (54-55) A more important point is, by an act of legislative fiat, to inscribe Shklar's "the liberalism of fear" into political philosophy (recall my posts which I presuppose here, and here). I am grateful for Williams' act.
Even so, I fear Williams misunderstands a key point of Shklar's project and, in so doing, his own historical moment. The mistake can be revealed when we re-read this sentence: "that will not do for us, now, because it is not state power that we have most to fear." The problem is not here Williams' attempt to respond to the critic of Shklar who sees in the liberalism of fear only a minimalist, mitigating program. That a response to such a critic is required is easy to feel (I have felt this myself). The problem is also not, primarily, Williams' use of the pluralis maiestatis. But Williams' royal 'we' is manifestly not the we of the powerless and vulnerable, who even in 1994 have plenty to fear from the state,+ even the liberal nation-state. (For a more thoroughgoing analysis of the problematic features of Williams's stance in several of his essays, see Kate Manne's excellent essay here.) In 1994 police brutality, unjust convictions, unfair convictions, improperly rejected asylum requests, and -- as Williams notes -- torture all existed.
More subtly, and here I follow Williams' surprising parochialism by focusing on the US, the accumulation of executive power in the office of the American's president has, despite a post-Nixon lull, continued apace. The main insight that the liberalism of fear accepts from the Republican tradition (I learned it from Sophie de Grouchy), is that latent despotic power, is to be feared greatly. It is galling that critics of President Trump only wake up to this fact, when it is too late.**
Of course, it is quite possible that despite many known evils, Stateside, 1994 was one of the better times to be alive in the history of the world. But, and here's my disagreement with Williams, the liberalism of fear is most needed in (self-proclaimed) "good times;" these are not the main periods when "hope" is required; what's needed is to guard against hubris, to shine a light on the hidden corners that our self-satisfied propaganda misses, etc. And, by contrast, in bad times we don't need the liberalism of fear. Then its message is self-evidently true,++ but we do need a source of hope that can organize our collective longings; this it cannot provide. That is to say, "the liberalism of fear" is a durable, counter-cyclical political philosophy.***
*Initially, I read "let [with a 't'] people;" but Williams' actual way of phrasing it is more interesting (and insightful). Also, the other concealed political philosopher is Rawls. So Williams' thought here is not simple.
+1994 is the year of the Rwandan genocide. Williams alludes to it on p. 59 in terms of President Clinton's inability to "curb outrages elsewhere."
**Before you criticize me with a Tu quoque, please read this piece, to the end.
++I am not suggesting it is the only political theory that can speak to those in bad circumstances.
***UPDATE: After I published this piece, my colleague, Enzo Rossi (one of the leading political realists in political philosophy today) called my attention to this very fine essay, by Katrina Forrester, in the European Journal of Political Theory that anticipates many of my suggestions in more thorough fashion.
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