Abstract
This paper begins with a critical part and concludes with a constructive part. First, with reference to a definition of liberalism and using immanent critique, I show deficiencies in the claims of four selfprofessed postliberals to have articulated non-liberal positions. Then, I argue that postliberal political theory consists in acknowledging that in political contexts some voluntary groups as such can be moral, not merely political, agents. Analysis of what moral autonomy is for persons as empirical (not noumenal) agents reveals that that account can be transposed to some groups. A key common element among the four rejected positions is their emphasis on the normative authority of some practices as over against principles. My proposal congeals that normative emphasis on the social into group-moral authority. Recognition of some voluntary groups’ episodic moral authority over their members is non-liberal but not anti-liberal.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Since postliberal theory will not be anti-liberal it will have significant affinity with liberalism. Nevertheless, some boundaries for hydra-headed liberalism must be established. The liberal tradition stemming from Locke and Montesquieu now encompasses a wide range of overlapping versions and varying emphases: bourgeois (Rorty), capabilities approach (Nussbaum), communitarian (Taylor), deliberative (Gutmann), libertarian (Nozick), multicultural (Kymlicka), perfectionist (Macedo), pluralist (Berlin), procedural/political (Rawls), postmodern (Mouffe), republican (Sandel), substantive (Galston). As ‘boundary-setting,’ this list is somewhat incomplete and partly misleading. It is misleading in that Galston, for example, terms himself a ‘pluralist liberal.’ Galston 2002. But there is precedent in Galson’s own work for denoting him a ‘substantive’ liberal. I take both the more recent book as well as his previous Liberal Purposes to represent a strain of liberalism that is consistent with pluralist and perfectionist liberalisms but which gives relatively greater emphasis to substantive purposes like ‘civic education.’ See Galston 1991, pp. 241-56. Again, this is consistent with acknowledging ‘‘social rationality’ (the kind of understanding needed to participate in the society, economy, and polity)—[which] would allow the state to intervene against forms of education that are systematically disenabling’ 2002, p. 24. Galston says explicitly that the ‘purposes’ that inform his recent ‘liberal pluralism’ are the same ones he earlier endorsed (p. 23). And his discussion of education (pp. 93-109) seems to me much better characterized as ‘substantive’ liberalism than as ‘pluralist.’ For Galston’s further uses of the term ‘substantive’ see citations in note 9. Again, some ‘deliberative’ liberals may give conceptual priority to democracy over liberty, and so prefer to be labeled ‘democrat’ before ‘liberal.’ But none limit basic liberties for the sake of democracy. In that sense, if we take the aim to protect basic liberties as necessary for liberalism, then the ‘deliberatives’ are as committed to liberalism as any of the others. Thus, the boundaries that these contemporary liberalisms set demarcate them from anti-liberals, like radical egalitarians and traditionalist communitarians, and from both left and right illiberalisms, like Jean-Paul Sartre’s Maoism and Leo Strauss’s Platonism, by their insistence on the normative primacy of liberty, or, as Kantians would put it, on the primacy of persons’ moral autonomy.
Since my argument is advanced in the domain of political theory, not either political policy or ‘science,’ I will not have space to develop an account of the typical kinds of political contexts in which postliberal agents act. However, such an account would refer to the autonomy of some environmental, humanitarian-relief, and new-social-movement groups that have the episodic moral authority over their members which is entailed by the form of postliberal political theory I advocate. See, for example, Dryzek et al 2003. For new social movements more generally, see: Eyerman 1991; Johnston 1995; Morris 1992; Melucci 1996. Jorge Valadez argues that globalization undermines the self-determination and sovereignty of many communities and nation-states. Valadez 2001, p. 140. Various traits of communities, subcultures, and identity groups are, in part, self-protective reactions both to globalization and to what Habermas has called late-modern society’s ‘colonization of the lifeworld.’ Postliberal groups have come into existence in order to be proactive not only with respect to liberty, privacy, and domestic ‘colonization,’ but also because their attention has been caught by trans-border problems such as environmental degradation. Valadez argues that developing ecological consciousness in pluralistic societies could contribute significantly to social solidarity among, and not just within, communities by requiring individuals to bring the cognitive, affective, and normative dimensions of their beings into cooperative relations with others (p. 352).
Young 1990, pp. 226-56.
Beiner 2003
Hampton 1997, pp. 169-216.
Tallise 2005.
Beiner 2003, p. 26.
Williams 2002.
Galston 1991, p. 44; see also pp. 49, 259, 279.
Gutmann 2003, p. 72.
More recently, she has stepped further from non-liberalism toward a more emphatic combination of deliberative and postmodern liberalisms. Young 2000. Her twin ideals of social justice (p. 31) stamp her position as emphatically liberal since they so clearly reflect what Rawls called ‘full autonomy.’ Rawls 1993, pp. 77-81. What Young terms ‘self-development’ is a necessary condition of the Rawlsian good; what Young terms ‘self-determination’ is, if we add a sense of justice, a necessary condition of the Rawlsian right.
Rawls 2000, p. 366.
Dworkin 1988, p. 52.
Davidson 2005.
For her use of this term, see Rawls 2001.
Clearly, an anti-liberal danger exists if group membership is not wholly voluntary.
Of course, liberals acknowledge arguments from ‘necessity,’ for example, individual autonomy being trumped in conscription for just war.
I doubt that Aristotle, Aquinas, or Montaigne could have been autonomous in the modern sense, not because that concept had not come into existence, but because the nature of subjectivity was not yet developed in the right ways. For a sketch of the history of subjectivity, see Habermas 1979. For the history of autonomy, see Schneewind 1998.
In this and the following paragraph I appeal to views for support which may not otherwise be consistent with one another. This seems to me to show that such an account of autonomy has the sort of strength that Rawls referred to as an overlapping consensus. For ‘second-order reasons,’ see Velleman 2000 and Herman 1993. For ‘reflective equilibrium,’ see Rawls 2001. For possibly ‘counterfactual intersubjective contexts,’ Herman 1993 and Habermas J 1990 and 2003. For ‘narrative intelligibility,’ see Velleman 2000 and Taylor C 1995.
Two exceptions are Habermas 2003 and Reath 2006. Although Reath does not use the expression ‘intersubjective,’ those aspects of the ‘social’ that he identifies are very close to what Habermas articulates in ‘Introduction.’ It would be productive to contrast Habermas’s intersubjective autonomy with the more robust intersubjectivity of postliberal group autonomy explained below.
Thus, autonomy has both a somewhat externalist character (‘what’) as well as a somewhat internalist character (‘why’). How postliberal theory can contribute to the internalist/externalist debate is for another paper.
That a group can be a moral agent I have shown elsewhere relying on reasons that appeal to the nature of some groups. Beggs 2003. Briefly, the earlier argument held that if a group has practices of solidarity and consistently practices a fair decision procedure in arriving at its practical conclusions, then such a group has sufficient characteristics for us to attribute moral agency as such to it.
Cf., Gilbert 1996.
Berlin 2000, 289.
Williams 2005.
Though it is, after all, a voluntary group, more should be said about the strength of the members’ obligation to remain. As a first approximation, I would say that the force of the member’s promise and, so, the strength of their obligation to remain members is proportional to the comprehensiveness of the group’s moral perspective. But, since the latter can never approach ‘entirety,’ then the strength of the obligation to remain can never be as binding as, say, the promises of spouses.
References
Beggs D (2003) The idea of group moral virtue. J soc philos 34:3
Beiner R (2003) From community to citizenship: The quest for a post-liberal public philosophy. In: Beiner R (ed) Liberalism, nationalism, citizenship: Essays on the problem of political community. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver
Berlin I (2000) The originality of machiavelli. In: The proper study of mankind: An anthology of essays. Straus and Giroux, New York
Brandom R (2002) Tales of the mighty dead: Historical essays in the metaphysics of intentionality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Davidson D (2005) Truth, language, and history. Oxford University Press, New York
Davidson D (2001) Subjective, intersubjective, objective. Oxford University Press, New York
Dryzek JS, Downes D, Hunold C, Schlosberg D with Hernes H-K (2003) Green states and social movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway. Oxford University Press, New York
Dworkin G (1988) The theory and practice of autonomy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Eyerman R, Jamison A (1991) Social movements: A cognitive approach. Pennsylvania State Press, University Park
Galston W (2002) Liberal pluralism: The implications of value pluralism for political theory and practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Galston W (1991) Liberal purposes: Goods, virtues, and diversity in the liberal state. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Gilbert M (1996) Living together: Rationality, sociality, and obligation. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Gutmann A (2003) Identity in democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Habermas J (2003) Introduction: Realism after the linguistic turn; rightness versus truth: On the sense of normative validity in moral judgments and norms. In: Truth and Justification. MIT, Cambridge
Habermas J (1990) Moral consciousness and communicative action. MIT, Cambridge
Habermas J (1979) Communication and the evolution of society. Beacon, Boston
Hampton J (1997) Political philosophy. Westview, Boulder
Herman B (1993) The practice of moral judgment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Johnston H, Klandermans B (eds) (1995) Social movements and culture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Melucci A (1996) Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge University Press, New York
Morris AD McClurg Mueller C (eds) (1992) Frontiers in social movement theory. Yale University Press, New Haven
Rawls J (2001) Justice as fairness: A restatement. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Rawls J (2000) Lectures on the history of moral philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Barbara Herman (ed)
Rawls J (1993) Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York
Reath A (2006) Legislating for a realm of ends: The social dimension of autonomy. In: Reath A (ed) Agency and autonomy in Kant’s moral theory. Oxford University Press, New York
Schneewind JB (1998) The invention of autonomy: A history of modern moral philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Tallise RB (2005) Democracy after liberalism: Pragmatism and deliberative politics. Routledge, New York
Taylor C (1995) Philosophical arguments. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Valadez J (2001) Deliberative democracy, political legitimacy, and self-determination in multicultural societies. Westview, Boulder
Velleman JD (2000) The possibility of practical reason. Oxford University Press, New York
Williams B (2005) Conflicts of liberty and equality. In: In the beginning was the deed: Realism and moralism in political argument. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Williams B (2002) Truth and truthfulness: An essay in genealogy. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Young IM (1990) Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Young IM (2000) Inclusion and democracy. Oxford University Press, New York
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Taylor Jackson and Rich Dagger for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Two anonymous referees of this journal asked excellent questions which helped me to articulate the argument more clearly and fully.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beggs, D. Postliberal Theory. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 12, 219–234 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9139-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9139-1