The Liberal Predicament: Historical and Logical
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| Author | John Zvesper,Richard Bellamy |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1995.tb00014.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Politics
(1995)
15(1)
pp.
1-7
The
Liberal
Predicament: Historical
and
Logical
Richard
Bellamy
and John
Zvesper
i%ere
are two distinct accounts of the inner
weakness of contempora
y
liberalism: a
his-
torical account, which emphasizes the extent
to which liberal societies have changed,
making liberal arguments seem
less
and less
relezlanl; and a logical account, which
emphasizes
the
extent
to
which
liberal argu-
ments themsehes baare
changed
abandoning
their original conceptual foundations.
7bis
article summm-izes these
two
accounts, and
then argues that liberalism might be more
dejensible
if
these
two
accounts can work in
combination rather than an tagon istica
I&.
The
streragth of
such
a combination is
briejy
illustruted by sketching its .possible implica-
tions for two important liberal debates: mar-
kets and m ulticultu rulism.
Introduction
Lke latter-day Aristotelians, liberal political
thinkers find themselves instinctively attracted
to the middle ground on
many
questions.
There are, of course, well known dangers in
yielding to this instinct, in political practice as
well as in political theory: as is frequently
remarked, many accidents occur in the
middle
of
the road
-
or, as a Texas politician
more colourfully put
it,
there’s nothing in the
middle of the road but yellow lines and dead
armadillos.
We
agree with the implication
of
this remark: liberals need
to
be
more deci-
sive. However,
to
help them be
so,
this paper
engages in a kind
of
meta-liberalism, which
tries
to
find some common ground between
two
distinct ways
of
thinking about liberalism.
We
argue that liberal political thinking needs
to
combine the advantages
of
what we shall
refer to as the historical and the logical
approaches
to
current liberal dilemmas. What
we are urging is perhaps
less
a middle-of-the-
road approach than a way of getting the traf-
fic in both lanes
to
move in the same direc-
tion.
The
Liberal
Predicament
A
few years ago, as the Soviet empire was
breaking
up,
Francis Fukuyama popularized
the view that liberal politics stood at ‘the end
of
History’(Fukuyarna,
1989).
Fukuyama
pro
vocatively argued that liberalism, even though
it
did not reach all parts
of
the human
psyche, was the most satisfylng brand of
poli-
tics, and that therefore liberal politics was the
probable, perhaps even the historically neces-
sary fate of the whole world.
Richard
lkllamy
and
John
Zvesper,
I’niversiv
of
East
Anglia
<
Political Studies Association
1995
Published by Blackwell
Publishers,
108
Cowley Road, Oxford OX4
LIF,
UK
and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142,
USA.
1
To continue reading
Request your trial