Patrick J Deneen. Why Liberalism Failed. (New Haven; Yale, 2018)
With the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection fast approaching, the narrative has largely focused on those who raided the capitol. Many have characterized this attack as led by “fascists.” But there is a significant movement within Catholic academic circles critical of liberal democracy. One of the most significant of these is Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed.
In the story that Deneen tells, the West loses its way with the thought of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Bacon argued that rather than living under natural law, that is, living within natural limits, humans were to master nature. Hobbes argued that, rather than being nurtured in the polis, humans begin as isolated individuals in a state of nature and only accept limits on their actions in the context of a social contract. This failure to accept limits leads to the contradiction within liberalism.
By “liberalism,” Deneen means the political philosophy that Francis Fukayama claimed had triumphed in 1989. It is these political beliefs which underlies the governments of most Western countries. It is the set of beliefs common both to what he calls “Classical Liberalism” and “Progressive Liberalism.”
Deneen argues that these two halves of liberalism show the contradiction within liberalism. Classical Liberalism, with its emphasis on the free market, promotes the false freedom of unlimited material desires; Progressive Liberalism, with its emphasis on self-realization, promotes the false freedom self-actualization. By pitting the market against the state or the state against the market, these two varieties of liberalism hollow out the intermediate bodies which are, according to Deneen, essential for true freedom.
One of the problems of the liberal tradition, according to Deneen, is that it abandoned the classical understanding of “liberty.” In the classical world, freedom was understood as ‘suppression of one’s appetites'. Self-mastery was the sign of a free person. Self-mastery is learned in the context of the family and the community. The liberal understanding of liberty, Deneen contends, is the unlimited pursuit of one’s desires. On the right, this shows up as the market where goods and services to meet any need is available. On the left, this shows up as such things as sexual license.
Two authorities who Deneen frequently invokes are de Tocqueville and Edmond Burke. As with many critics of progressive liberalism, Deneen cites de Tocqueville’s support of “intermediate bodies,” things such as families, churches and civic organizations which help develop moral and civic virtues. Burke is applauded for opposition to the excesses of the French Revolution.
I find it interesting that Deneen would invoke de Tocqueville and Burke. These figures are frequently cited as major conservatives thinkers. But they were also liberals. Their critiques of the French Revolution were not about the goals of the revolution, but about the means chosen to reach those goals and the social structures needed to maintain those goals. In this way, both figures support Deneen’s contention that both Classical Liberalism and Progressive Liberalism share a common root.
But if Deneen rejects liberalism, both in its classical and progressive forms, what is he for? He is unclear on this point. He ends the book with a call to develop a new political philosophy. In this he can be seen as part of a movement, mostly among Catholic thinkers, which questions liberalism and its values. Representative of this movement are Alistair MacIntyre and Rob Dreher.
The philosophy behind this opposition to liberalism is NeoThomism, which is an attempt to apply the thought, particularly the ethics, of St. Thomas Aquinas to contemporary problems. Aquinas’s philosophy is one of the great achievements of the human mind. He brought together Christian theology with Aristotelean philosophy to create a system which unified physics, astronomy, society, morals and theology. His worldview is reflected in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The problem is that Aristotle’s. and consequently St. Thomas’s, is built on teleology, the study of “ends” or “purposes.” Much of contemporary science has abandoned teleology as means of explaining natural phenomena. While Aristotle argued that things made of earth moved downwards because that was their natural motion, modern science introduced the idea of gravity. It was not the end of earth to gather at the center of the cosmos, in fact, according the Keplerian astronomy, there was no center of the cosmos.
Applying this to ethical and social questions, for the NeoThomist, morals are based on virtues, the habits of action human beings are supposed to embody in order to fulfill their purpose. In liberal society, individuals do not have a natural telos. We each decide the end or purpose of our life. For NeoThomists such as Deneen, this is simply self-indulgence, whether it is self-indulgence in the marketplace or in the bedroom. Consequently, many NeoThomists reject liberalism.
While racism is frequently cited as one of the reasons for the Right’s move toward authoritarianism, one should not under play the role that NeoThomism has among both Catholics and their Evangelical compatriots.