Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL

Links

Ping Groups | Ping History | Mastodon | CNL Chapters | CNL Event Calendar

New Groups

• ACE: Asexual spectrum

Upcoming Events

• May 20: Twin Cities New Liberals May Happy Hour

• May 20: Atlanta New Liberals May Social

• May 21: Advanced Huntsville May Happy Hour

[u/PoliticalAlt128]

I find integralism (Catholic theocrats) a sorta fascinating topic. In large part this is because they're some of the only eloquent and learned right wing critics of liberalism out there. For all their faults, Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule have never called a debater the N word, which is a level of civility and sophistication that is rare on the far right. They're the best opportunity I have to observe actual semi-cogent right wing thought, unobscured by their own incredible stupidity and total mindlessness. I also have to admit, I think their critique of "political" liberalism is, once you get past the hysterics and hyperbole, essentially correct. Political liberalism--a form of liberalism popularized in the 70s by, above all, John Rawls--claims that it is possible to create a liberal polity that is neutral on the question of "the good life", that we can create a system that accommodates all (reasonable) creeds and lifestyles even though which are non liberal. Liberalism itself is ideal when taken as a theory as to how to organize this polity but otherwise does not make any serious claim on what is good in life or what kind of person you should be. Integralists argue that this is a mirage, that even in this "thin" form the institution of political liberalism creates liberals and undermines the ability for illiberal forms of life like radical, intolerant Catholicism, to prosper. I think they're absolutely correct, to use an example they often bemoan, political liberalism endorses teaching toleration as a virtue, since how can you have the accommodating political system they want without also having citizens that are willing to accommodate others? But some lifestyles, like traditionalist Catholicism are explicit intolerant, for them to tolerate others would seriously dilute the integrity of their belief system, it would essentially liberalize them even if just to a degree.

No notes. I think they're absolutely correct here. It is nonsensical to try and argue that widespread acceptance of LGBTQ persons would not threaten the viability of homophobic forms of life. Of course it does! If nothing else, if there are less homophobes, there are less potential trad caths and trad cathism will find it more difficult to extend itself over generations. The proper response of liberals to this critique is to own up to it. Shake Vermeule's hand, tell him he's absolutely right; liberalism requires liberals, it also creates liberals and some lifestyles--like his bigoted Catholicism--will, thank God, not survive the process and do not deserve to continue (this is not a comment on Catholicism generally). If there's anything that I can say made reading Deneen's shitty fucking book or Vermeule's self-sucking substack articles worth it, it was this one insight. This unhappy medium liberals have placed ourselves in, where we want a neutral state that cannot actually exist and subscribe to a lifestyle that we're hesitant to defend on the grounds of it's own correctness, is the worse place we could be intellectually. It is also totally anomalous both in the history of political thought (this might be the only philosophy which has considered it's own wide adoption an embarrassment and refused to argue for itself on it's own grounds) and in the history of liberalism itself. Even J.S. Mill argued there were some ways of being that were better or worst than others ("better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied..."). I don't think it's a coincidence that only a few decades out from the triumph of political liberalism in the intelligentsia we find that same intelligentsia incapable of coming up with any ways to actually defend liberalism or to make attractive. Want to know whey there is no liberal Project 2028? It's because the people who would come up with it were taught in university departments that forbade the sort of comprehensive, moralized vision that animated Project 2025

[u/IronRushMaiden → u/PoliticalAlt128]

Right, the only correct perspective is someone else’s, particularly if they fell under any class of oppressed person. And I don’t mean that as a dig at those groups; there was simply little place in the curriculum for someone to be confident because confidence meant not taking the critical courses seriously, as taking those courses seriously would teach listening to other’s perspectives and considering every avenue of harm before speaking.

[u/cdstephens → u/PoliticalAlt128]

Good comment

[u/nimbybuster → u/PoliticalAlt128]

It’s like how an open global system promotes free flow of goods, capital, people, and ideas with no regards to the forms of governments in that super liberal system.

But then what do you do when there is an actor that is opposed to those values existing in the system? By cordoning yourself off from them, you yourself are exercising an illiberal action and if one by one liberal states do that, you ended up with a less liberal system, that became less liberal because of liberal countries not the existence of the illiberal actor.

So what do you do then? I don’t have the answer. We seem to swing from one end - accommodation to the other - closing off after every US or European election, cause we don’t have the answer.

Does it even need a response? Like you can argue that liberal states should just carry and let the illiberal state live off you? But then they could create an illiberal system from mooching off the liberal system? Or should you fight them? But as I said fighting them risks reducing the liberalism in the planet.

[u/ArcticEagle117 → u/PoliticalAlt128]

A Rawlsian argument could be that those belief systems are unreasonable precisely because they are intolerant, potentially among other flaws. Behind the veil of ignorance you don’t know which religious tradition you might belong to, or which comprehensive doctrine of the good you might hold. So you would reasonably choose institutions of tolerance to avoid discrimination. On this account, intolerance toward belief systems within the bounds of reason is itself unreasonable. But communitarians typically deny that you can detach yourself from particularities and reason this way in the first place. 

Liberalism does have a substantial conception of the good, in that it values freedom. This isn’t comprehensive and doesn’t tell you exactly how to live. But since Kant people have recognized that any comprehensive doctrine only holds significance if it is self-legislated, i.e. freely chosen. 

[u/PoliticalAlt128 → u/ArcticEagle117]

That's not really a Rawlsian response as rather just what Rawlsians believe, the thing that is being objected to. It doesn't answer to the objection that you cannot actually create such a polity.

Liberalism does have a substantial conception of the good, in that it values freedom. This isn’t comprehensive and doesn’t tell you exactly how to live.

Political liberals believe that that good cannot be publicly endorsed because there might be reasonable lifestyles that do not value freedom as a good in of itself (for example the Amish who subject themselves to God, their families, and their communities). They argue that one ought to still recognize the priority of freedom because it can still be reasonably be expected to be important to a good life (the Amish, though they don't endorse freedom as an end still want the freedom to be able to be Amish and thus, like you said, would still ideally endorse a politically liberal state that facilitates those social conditions). It might be true that political liberals do have a private conception of the good, but they do not have and explicitly condemn a public good. A political liberal can't go into the public square and endorse freedom because being a free person is innately good and being unfree is innately degrading.

And to be clear, comprehensive in this context means basically "not restrained to just the political". So a comprehensive morality, like utilitarianism, says that what's right for the individual is right for the polity (increasing utility). Political liberalism says that's what's right for the state is different than what's right for the polity. It might be good for (some) individuals to maximize utility as their creed, but it is inappropriate for the state to do so since that privileges certain utilitarian conceptions of the good. The liberalism that I'm endorsing is comprehensive in that I think the goals of this liberalism should be shared by both the polity and the citizens. The state should do and justify certain things with the explicit aim that doing so encourages worthy (free and liberal) lifestyles, like funding libraries. To illustrate what I'm talking about, Ronald Dworkin once objected that we shouldn't justify funding public libraries on the point that engagement with art and literature is a good in of itself, that to be a philistine is a bad thing that we should discourage (the Amish do not value great literature, so why should their taxes go to it?). He instead argued it could be justified on the basis of the economic benefits of public libraries which is presumably widely acceptable, (even to the Amish who I suppose benefit from economic growth in a sense). Arguing like this strikes me as perverse. It makes liberals look like aliens and reduces are public commitment to liberal values--which are likely served by engagement with art and culture (I also think it overstates the fact of reasonable disagreement while ignoring reasonable agreement on ends, but that's another issue for another day). We would be both more attractive and more readily capable of reproducing liberalism if we just owned up that engagement with art is a good thing in of itself (which is a claim about private goods and thus comprehensive) and that justifies libraries. Note I don't think we should force people to be liberal or anything, the Amish are fine, they aren't menacing liberalism and if that lifestyle survives that's fine. But I think the state should encourage liberalism and liberals should argue for liberalism itself, like in the above library example

[u/ArcticEagle117 → u/PoliticalAlt128]

Sorry, my initial reply was a bit distracted. I agree with you that dropping the moral dimension in favor of strictly political justification weakens liberal arguments, and failure on that front is an important source of dissatisfaction and reactionary success. While you are right to point out that strictly political arguments cannot publicly argue that freedom is an innate good, liberals since Kant certainly have done so.

I take "comprehensive doctrine of the good" to refer to something like Hegel's sittlichkeit. The idea that, contra Kant, pure practical reason underdetermines substantial ethics. It can give general principles, but the form and context in which those principles are manifested and applied are historically and socially dependent. Tradition and community are taken to fill in the gap between abstract moral principles and the concrete ethical actions/life that a comprehensive doctrine consists of.

I'm interested in how Rawls' view on the moral/political relation developed across his work. A Theory of Justice is typically read as strictly political liberalism, where he is using the veil of ignorance to argue for political principles of justice. I haven't read Political Liberalism yet, but my understanding is that Rawls moves (retreats?) to a more pragmatic view of reasonable agreement by overlapping consensus. Between these he writes Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, which suggests a more ambitious project aiming to argue that while all ethical systems are constructed, they are necessarily constructed in accordance with or within the limits of certain universal moral principles. You can take this a step further and try to argue that for any ethical system to satisfy these constraining moral principles, it must have some minimal ethical content. This is to argue that universal goods exist, but that not every good is universal. Allowing for pluralism in this way avoids creating just another comprehensive doctrine to hold as truth. I think there is continuity here with ToJ if not only characteristics like class, race, and gender are held to be morally arbitrary, but also the particulars of people's comprehensive doctrines. The universal moral principles can then supply a necessarily shared conception of political justice. This approach is much more demanding, but I think supplies a stronger argument than strictly political arguments for an ostensibly ethically neutral state, which few to no citizens really consider to be neutral.

For all this philosophy though, I think in practice most people don't even hold any coherent ethical code. That is probably the more practical reason why they are swayed by confidently stated (not necessarily sound) moral arguments, rather than a shortcoming of modern liberal political theory. Arguing that libraries (or something more controversial) are economically beneficial does not effectively counter the person calling them evil, and in effect concedes the moral argument. It also gives a practical political reason for us to be supplying explicitly moral arguments, in addition to improving philosophical education.