Hegel and Liberalism

1997 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Franco
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Rational Freedom ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism

In this article, the venerable but still not entirely resolved issue of Hegel's relationship to liberalism is discussed. In contradistinction to recent communitarian accounts, the Kantian and Enlightenment idea of rational freedom in Hegel's political philosophy is shown to be the basis for Hegel's critique of traditional liberalism. While the Hegelian state incorporates most of the rights and freedoms ordinarily associated with liberalism, Hegel's rationale for these rights and freedoms is never the traditional liberal one. In conclusion, the relevance of Hegel's ideal of the rational state to our understanding of contemporary liberalism and its discontents is assessed.

CRITICAL NOTICE

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Guala
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
General Theme ◽  
Collège De France ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
Critical Notice

The title of this book is rather misleading. “Birth of neoliberal governmentality,” or something like that, would have been more faithful to its contents. In Foucault's vocabulary, “biopolitics” is the “rationalisation” of “governmentality” (p. 261): it's the theory, in other words, as opposed to the art (governmentality) of managing people. The mismatch between title and content is easily explained: the general theme of the courses at the Collège de France had to be announced at the beginning of each academic year. It is part of the mandate of every professor at the Collège, however, that his lectures should follow closely his current research. As a consequence it wasn't unusual for Foucault to take new directions while he was lecturing. In 1979, for the first and only time in his career, he took a diversion into contemporary political philosophy. His principal object of investigation became “neoliberal” political economy. More precisely, he got increasingly interested in those strands of contemporary liberalism that use economic science both as a principle of limitation and of inspiration for the management of people.

Can Human Flourishing Be Liberal?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-247
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism ◽  
The Relationship

The renewed interest in virtue ethics raises again a persistent question, namely, the relationship between the virtue ethics theory and liberalism as a political philosophy. Virtue ethicists focus on the good—i.e., human flourishing—and debate what constitutes that good. This focus creates a problem for liberals who are rights-oriented, which is the dominant form of contemporary liberalism.The recent and timely book by Menachem Mautner, Human Flourishing, Liberal Theory, and the Arts, reminds us, however, that liberalism comes in many stripes. There is no one liberalism. Rather, there are many liberalisms. I discuss three aspects of Mautner’s remarkable and important book: first, his conception of human flourishing and its relationship to liberalism; second, his argument that a liberal political order committed to human flourishing ought to promote the arts; and third, his argument that the liberalism of flourishing is better able than neutralist liberalism to compete with religion in providing what Mautner calls “Big Meaning.”

In What Sense must Socialism be Communitarian?

1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Thought

This paper stands at the confluence of two streams in contemporary political thought. One stream is composed of those critics of liberal political philosophy who are often described collectively as ‘communitarians’. What unites these critics (we shall later want to investigate how deep their collegiality goes) is a belief that contemporary liberalism rests on an impoverished and inadequate view of the human subject. Liberal political thought – as manifested, for instance, in the writings of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin – claims centrally to do justice to individuality: to specify the conditions under which distinct individuals, each with his own view about how life should be lived, can pursue these visions to the best of their ability. But, the critics claim, liberalism is blind to the social origins of individuality itself. A person comes by his identity through participating in social practices and through his affiliation to collectivities like family and nation. An adequate political philosophy must attend to the conditions under which people can develop the capacity for autonomy that liberals value. This, however, means abandoning familiar preoccupations of liberal thought – especially the centrality it gives to individual rights – and looking instead at how social relationships of the desired kind can be created and preserved. It means, in short, looking at communities – their nature and preconditions.

Liberalism and the Politics of Compulsion

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC STEARS
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism

This review presents a critical account of the most powerful critique of liberal political thought to have emerged in recent years: a critique it calls the ‘politics of compulsion’. Drawing on the work of a wide range of critics of contemporary liberalism, this article contends that although those who advance this critique are divided in many ways they are nonetheless held together by a series of powerful descriptive and normative challenges to liberal political philosophy as it has developed since the publication of John Rawls's Political Liberalism. The article further demonstrates that most of these challenges centre on the place of coercive power in modern political life and suggests that, although these challenges should not undermine liberals' commitment to their central normative claims, they do nonetheless provide an essential rejoinder to some of liberalism's more complacent assumptions.

Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens, Society, and the Boundaries of Political Theory By John Tomasi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 163p. $55.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 626-627
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism

In a book published almost a decade ago, Ronald Beiner complained that contemporary liberalism suffers for its neglect of the Big Questions traditionally addressed by political philosophy. Preoccupied with narrowly conceived and highly formal questions of (procedural) justice, liberalism had no advice to give about how one should live. (See Ronald Beiner, What's the Matter with Liberalism, 1992.) John Tomasi's provocative new book takes this complaint seriously and attempts to remedy the defect in contemporary liberalism by moving it “beyond justice” to address the normative concerns of persons earnestly striving to lead good and worthwhile lives.

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