# Whither Liberalism? **URL:** **By** Loren E. Lomasky **Published:** June 1, 1987 --- “Has it really been no more than fifteen years since John Rawls’s Theory of Justice heralded the renascence of substantive political investigation in Anglo-American philosophy?” Has it really been no more than fifteen years since John Rawls’s _Theory of Justice_ heralded the renascence of substantive political investigation in Anglo-American philosophy? Since then, the spinnings of theory have been turbo-charged. First came the wave of “Rawlsians,” among whom, with due qualifications, one can include Nozick and Dworkin. Snapping hard at their heels were the “new communitarians.” Now comes the sorting-out stage in which liberal individualism must directly confront the claims of moral community. It’s increasingly difficult to keep track of the players; Chandran Kukathas (“Liberalism and Its Critics,” _Humane Studies Review_, Winter 1986-87) provides us an exemplary scorecard. Indeed, he has said so much so well about the current condition of liberal political theory that I suspect it is rash of me to do more than append a simple “Bravo!” What may require some additional explanation, though, is what enabled the pace of activity to be so frenetic. Might some of the debate’s momentum have been borrowed from a source already at hand? I want to suggest that what we are seeing is but the latest version of an enterprise that is almost two centuries old: it is the attempt by moral philosophy to exorcise the ghost of old Immanuel Kant. It is no secret to anyone that Rawls describes his construction as Kantian. The alternative rewritings of liberalism to which Kukathas refers lack the systematic foundation-building that distinguishes _A Theory of Justice_. But when they seek theoretical support, it is to Kant whom they turn. Dworkin posits a fundamental right to equal regard and respect; the language resonates with Kantian overtones. Nozick explicitly credits Locke with having stated what rights we have. Still, when Nozick tosses out a few hints to explain why, in the first place, it is reasonable to suppose that individuals are protected by rights serving as side constraints blocking encroachments, it is not Locke whom he invokes but Kant. The Kantian connection can be further specified. For each of these philosophers, what is morally central about individuals is their _autonomy_. The dignity of persons is to choose, and to do so with a radical freedom unconstrained by prior ties to community, tradition, or kin. (It is significant in this regard how little is seen in their works of children/family.) The Rawlsian agent sequestered behind a veil of ignorance epitomizes this enthronement of autonomy. An idealized autonomous individual confronts the world as if _de novo_. He is an Adam on the seventh day of Creation—or a Kantian ego imperially surveying the world from a noumenal perch. It is intolerable for such a being to be bound by prior conventions of the society in which he finds himself, including, importantly, established patterns of property holdings. In this regard, the example of J. S. Mill is instructive. _On Liberty_ may be the premiere liberal manifesto of the previous century, but its attempt to combine a defense of liberty with endorsement of unbridled autonomy (borrowed from Kant via Continental romanticism) is unstable. John Gray has shown us how the combination breeds Mill’s later socialism. More recently, Rawls and Dworkin have announced that property relations are infinitely malleable. Even Nozick’s libertarianism contains a principle of rectification that, apparently, leaves almost all extant claims to property very much in jeopardy. The communitarians clearly position themselves against the Rawlsians as opponents of so expansive an autonomy. Individuals, they remind us, draw on a social capital for their loyalties as much as for their language. If callings and virtues satisfactory for a human life were not available to be unselfconsciously assumed, we could not invent them. Bellah and MacIntyre, in particular, profess to find the social stock dangerously depleted. They prescribe, more than a little implausibly, policies of studied reaction. (Bellah, _et al_, seem to be satisfied with nineteenth-century arrangements; MacIntyre would retreat to medieval modes.) Even the less apocalyptic communitarians call for enhanced attention to the traditions, practices, and codes whose familiarity enables persons to take their moral bearings. Conspicuously absent, though, is acknowledgment of firm rights to property as having a significant role in marking the contours of the moral landscape. That is probably because the communitarians only marginally locate themselves within the liberal tradition. More prepossessing founts of inspiration for them are Marx and the monastery. Where then stands classical liberalism? Between a rock and a hard place. The new communitarians are neither willing nor able to supplement their critique of Kantian autonomy with an equivalent critique of property arrangements perpetually up for grabs. However, there are other, non-Kantian quarters within the tradition of liberalism to which theorists can turn. Philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, especially David Hume and Adam Smith, provide a conception of moral community within which individuals are to enjoy not a metaphysically extravagant autonomy but rather a more homey entitlement to direct their lives according to their own lights. The essentially social faculty of _sympathy_ assumes a prominent position in their work. So too do robust protections of property holdings. Similarly, the strand of liberalism that descends from Aristotle via the natural law tradition has been too little seen in contemporary discussions. Return to these non-Kantian roots may provide for classical liberalism much needed invigoration. We shall see. In the meantime, Chandran Kukathas has helped us better understand the current uneasy status of liberal theory. _Loren E. Lomasky is chairman of the Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Duluth, and author of Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (Oxford University Press, 1987)._