Liberalism and its Discontents

"The Center May Not Hold"

Lots going on behind the scenes here as I continue to think and fret about what to say re: “Leviathan” — going back to Hobbes’ original, playing off John Gray’s postliberal pessimism, and wading into the Climate Leviathan book, which envisions one option to deal with climate crisis (not the authors’ preferred) as the imposition of a global governmental arrangement — a global Leviathan — that positions current Powers-that-be to “deal with the crisis” yet also maintain their hold on power.

In the meantime, trying to come to grips with all this, I’ve discovered the work of Devin Stauffer (U Texas at Austin), whose video on Hobbes and the State of Nature I shared the other day. Prof. Stauffer has a gift for explaining and teaching, which I admire and which may be helpful to folks who aren’t exactly steeped in political philosophy. Over the weekend I watched another lecture by him, this time a more contemporary take on the state of our present politics, where the “center” that’s held our American political system together since the beginning — (classical) liberalism — is fraying. I’m linking it in below. “Discontents” have arisen on both left and right. Stauffer is giving the keynote address at a conference from 2022 on this very theme “Liberalism and its Discontents,” with his talk entitled “The Center May Not Hold.”

Our political consensus may indeed be disintegrating to the point of falling apart. Perhaps most of us sense this. Perhaps some of us (many) even root for it to happen! Stauffer hopes it is not the case, since although we can certainly by now see that liberalism has darn “ugly feet” — it is by no means a perfect system — if we lose it, we may come to rue the loss. On the other hand, to keep a center intact may require, in an almost equally frightful prospect, an enemy sufficient to offer us an existential challenge, something along the lines of Nazism or Communism in the 20th century, or the Civil War in the 19th century. It may take a threat of this magnitude to force us to retrench and reappreciate the genuine advantages of a liberal system we’ve otherwise forgot. Sometimes we just don’t value what we have until we’re faced with the real possibility of it going away.

Without an existential challenge, and given the inherent tendencies of liberalism to unravel from within, it’s all too possible we’ve become too fat and happy to care.

(This, by the way, is a good biblical theme. When Israel becomes fat and happy, trouble soon ensues. Humans tend to remember God when they get into trouble and to forget him when times are good. People get religion quickly when the Enemy appears — but prefer to shuck off inconvenient religious duties and burdens when life is copacetic.)

In any case, see what you think. As with his previous video, highly recommended.