Feature
Liberalism Occupied
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity
by Andrew Latham
Post-liberalism. Beyond liberalism. After liberalism. In recent years, books and articles with titles containing these and similar phrases have proliferated at a breathtaking pace, reflecting a now widely held view that the three-centuries-old liberal era is coming to (has come to?) a decisive end. To be sure, these books and articles often differ significantly in their respective analytical assumptions, political concerns, and practical recommendations. But they share at least one common—indeed, defining—commitment: a belief that, for better or worse, liberalism as a political project is a spent force, and we had better prepare ourselves to endure both its tumultuous death throes and the turbulence that will inevitably accompany the birth of its successor.
But is this an accurate account of where we find ourselves today? Are we really witnessing the demise of liberalism as a world-historical project? Are we as a society actually slouching, via the way station of today's illiberal liberalism, toward the Gomorrah of a definitively post-liberal world?
In a word, no. While it is impossible to gainsay the all-too-evident fact that the liberalism of today is different from that of the seventeenth century, or even that of the first half of the twentieth, claims that these differences are profound enough to signify the end of liberalism underestimate liberalism's ability to adapt itself to changing historical conditions and cultural contexts. Just as liberalism manifested itself as "classical liberalism" in the particular historical circumstances of John Locke's time and, in a very different guise, as "New Liberalism" or "Social Liberalism" in the historical context of John Dewey's time, so it is manifesting itself in distinctive ways in our time.
The challenge today, then, is neither to autopsy liberalism nor to try to limn the contours of some post-liberal political project assumed to be materializing just over the temporal horizon. Rather, the task before us is to specify the cultural forces at work within contemporary American society and to ask how those forces are reshaping the way in which enduring or core liberal ideals and values are being implemented. Once we have done this, it will become clear that the problem today lies not with liberalism per se, but with the gnosticism that in recent decades has replaced Christianity as the cultural matrix within which the liberal project is embedded.
Defining Liberalism
Before we proceed, however, it is necessary to define this thing called liberalism. As the English political philosopher John Gray argues in his classic book Liberalism (1986, 1995), it is a mistake to approach this task as if liberalism has a single unchanging nature or essence. It is better, he says, to treat liberalism as a tradition of political thought that coheres around a distinctive set of themes but that manifests itself quite differently in different historical and national contexts. Gray then enumerates a number of enduring leitmotifs that define the liberal tradition, three of which I think are particularly important:
• Individualism—belief in the moral primacy of the person over and against the claims of any collective;
• Egalitarianism—a commitment to the basic moral equivalence of all human beings; and
• Meliorism—the conviction that the human condition can be improved through the use of critical reason.
To Gray's list I would add one more. Drawing on the work of Pierre Manent, I would include:
Andrew Latham is a Professor of Political Science at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of Theorizing Medieval Geopolitics: War and World Order in the Age of the Crusades (2011), The Holy Lance (2015), a novel dealing with the Third Crusade, and Medieval Sovereignty (2022).
more on liberalism from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham
17.4—May 2004
The Unhappy & Abusive Marriage of Liberalism & Modernism by James Hitchcock
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription
Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more from the online archives
30.3—May/June 2017
on the Misuse of Property Rights to Justify Slavery & Abortion by Robert Hart
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
35.6—Nov/Dec 2022
on the Divine Promise Fulfilled by the Child of Bethlehem by James M. Kushiner
