LIBERALISM'S VIRTUES?
BROWN, BRIAN A.
Liberalism's Virtues? The Misunderstandings, of Modern Thought By Brian A. Brown Peter Berkowitz is a sharp thinker and a clear writer, so it came as no surprise that Harvard denied him...
...These days, that's just the kind of liberal question that gets you denied tenure at a liberal institution...
...The story of his tortured tenure bid, however, makes a good example of what Berkowitz believes is wrong with liberalism...
...We ought to have learned from Aristotle and the classical tradition, Berkowitz declares, that "democracies perish by forming citizens who love to an extreme the freedom to do as one pleases...
...The job of Aristotelian politics is not just the perfection of the soul, but the promotion of the qualities of mind and character necessary to sustain imperfect regimes...
...And in turn, the nongovernmental institutions—family, church, synagogue, and voluntary associations—that liberalism requires have been weakened...
...He acknowledges that Mill's defense of individual liberty ("the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any other of their number, is self-protection") is "ultimately incoherent" and "suffers from a fatal romanticism...
...Berkowitz hopes that this process can be reversed—after all, liberal intellectual history, he writes, "provides an illuminating and underappreciated source of instruction about the necessity of virtue...
...Secret committees and backroom politics may seem a bad fit at an institution known for preaching openness and tolerance, but liberals these days have forgotten how to be liberal...
...With John Locke, the necessity of virtue "rests neither on premises about human perfection nor on beliefs about God's order but, rather on the logic and requirements of liberal constitutional government...
...Immanuel Kant, too, has been misunderstood on virtue, according to Berkowitz...
...of individuality and equality...
...Thomas Hobbes, for instance, attacked Aristotelianism because, he believed, the indeterminacy of virtue as an end would lead subjects to follow their own path, disobey laws and the sovereign, and threaten the peace...
...Berkowitz ascribes part of contemporary liberalism's aversion to virtue to a misreading of Aristotle...
...But Hobbes, Berkowitz asserts, was actually concerned about an early form of relativism and even promoted a form of virtue "in terms of an earthly and immediate goal—peace...
...Berkowitz, for instance, suggests some tough questions need to be posed: "What impact," he asks, "do the changing role of women, the increase of single-parent households, and the rise of same-sex marriages have on the function of the family...
...Some view Locke as hostile to virtue, Berkowitz tells us, because he attacked the notion that there are certain "innate principles 'stamped upon the Mind of Man.'" But Locke, in fact, argued that government requires citizens who "practice virtue in private life and bring specific social and moral virtues to political life...
...Aristotle did understand virtue in terms of our highest ends, but also, Berkowitz maintains, in terms of our intermediate and lesser ends...
...But they nonetheless accepted "virtue as a critical category of moral and political philosophy...
...There are obvious obstacles to doing so...
...Berkowitz's intent in all this is to convince us to stop neglecting the link between virtue and liberalism...
...The problem is that liberalism has taken its natural aversion to virtue, stemming from a fear of any one idea of the good becoming dominant, to an extreme...
...They still required the virtuous qualities of mind and character "to submit to coercive laws that reason can show to be in one's best interest...
...Because of Aristotle's emphasis on human excellence, scholars "equate virtue with the idea of human perfection and then reject virtue on the grounds that the idea of human perfection is politically irrelevant or morally destructive or no longer intelligible...
...Lacking fair-mindedness, self-restraint, and other "appropriate qualities of mind and character," liberals are making it difficult to maintain a "political order capable of securing the personal freedom of all...
...But Berkowitz suggests that Kant merely meant that his devils didn't need "purity of motive in the performance of the moral law...
...And no wonder there's a misunderstanding considering the German's famous pronouncement that even a "nation of devils (so long as they possess understanding)" could constitute a liberal republic...
...Berkowitz even tries to claim John Stuart Mill for the side of virtue...
...To survive, a democratic political regime must somehow form citizens able to resist the regime's own tendencies—which requires that we determine how the virtues necessary to the preservation of liberalism may be sustained in a manner consistent with liberalism's fundamental premise, the natural freedom and equality of all, and in harmony with the liberal scruples about limited government, but in moral and political circumstances very different from those in which modern liberalism was made...
...It's true that later thinkers rejected "the idea that the state should be devoted to the promotion of human excellence...
...The Misunderstandings, of Modern Thought By Brian A. Brown Peter Berkowitz is a sharp thinker and a clear writer, so it came as no surprise that Harvard denied him tenure...
...But Mill also qualified his "one very simple principle," Berkowitz points out, by demanding that citizens possess a form of moral maturity...
...The role virtue once played has been taken over by radical versions Brian A. Brown lives in New York and is a 1998 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow...
...The associate professor makes no mention of his academic troubles in his new Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism...
...If liberalism's children—deliberative democrats, feminists, and postmodernists—would only see "the virtues necessary to sustain their favored priniciple and the vices encouraged by it," they would find it easier to resist radicalization...
...The maintenance of good government and liberty requires "the most exacting sort of discipline" from the individual, which is fostered by "voluntary associations, the family, a state-supervised education, and even religion...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 34
