Can the liberal thinkers today be directly traced back to liberals in the past such as Kant, Locke, and JS Mill? Waht ideas directly link them? Who are some the most well known liberal philosophers today?
There are several threads linking liberal thinkers; the most important, obviously, is a belief all individuals are equal. The ‘classic’ liberal of the past is the modern libertarian, rather than the modern liberal. The prevailing belief was that government should essentially keep its nose out of anything the people didn’t need done for them.
A conception of the good, for example, was unnecessary. The government wasn’t supposed to be enforcing religion or anything else. In other words, if people want wrestling on every channel, the classic liberal would give them wrestling on every channel, even if it isn’t good for them.
The modern liberal ideal of a ‘safety net’ was less cherished then. Some, like John Rawls, argued for it; Rawls envisioned an “original position”, in which people existed behind a veil of ignorance- they didn’t know what the society they were going to live in would be like, what traits would be valued, and thus, who would be poor and who would be rich.
Placed in this position, said Rawls, people would agree that no matter what their new society valued, everyone should still get a fair share of stuff and an equal right to justice, and they’d set up laws that would do so, no matter which people ended up prospering.
If I tried to cover the basic ideas of every early liberal it would take pages and pages. A whole book, really. I recommend Liberalism at the Crossroads , although I can’t remember who edited it.
I looked up Liberalism at the Crossroads it was edited by Christopher Wolfe.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0742532712/qid=1076447906//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-4764784-1264157?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Is libertarianism a type of liberalism?
He did, but I don’t know why you’re calling John Rawls a “classic liberal of the past”. He proposed his “veil of ignorance” theory in 1971, and just died a little over a year ago. He’s definately a modern liberal.
That depends on what you mean by liberalism. The word does not have a universally accepted meaning.
When people speak of liberalism, they usually mean one or more of the following (lets see if I can do this without getting this thread moved to GD):
- The belief that the government should assist the poor through some form of redistribution of wealth. The form this takes may range from social programs financed by progressive taxation to outright socialism.
- The belief that the government should be righting past wrongs, through programs such as affirmative action and reparations paid to descendants of former slaves or displaced indigenous peoples.
- The belief that a large, intrusive, bureaucratic government is desirable for three reasons;
a. It “primes the pump” of the economy by creating jobs and economic activity (Keynsian economics)
b. It can regulate and control both economic and non-economic activities.
c. It can be used to engineer desirable societal outcomes (e.g., encouraging the arts by funding NEA and PBS, or discouraging smoking by levying additional taxes on tobacco products). - The belief that a small, non-interfering, government is desirable (the opposite of definition 3). This can be further broken down thusly:
a. The belief that the government should not interfere in economic activity (laisse-faire economics).
b. The belief that the government should respect civil liberties and not interfere in its citizen’s private lives. Ideals such as freedom of speech and separation of church and state are embodied in this belief. - The belief that progressive societal change is desirable. This definition is meaningless because of the lack of any universal agreement on what the optimal form of society should be. Under this definition, the extreme right and the extreme left would both be considered liberal – both want to make considerable changes to society, but their end goals differ.
Some mix of 1, 2, & 3 best describes modern liberalism. Definition 4 is the definition of classic liberalism or libertarianism. Libertarianism is generally considered to be a conservative philosophy since it rejects definitions 1, 2, & 3, and also because definition 4a (an unregulated economy) is associated with conservatism.
Liberalism at its heart is the idea that individual liberty (freedom) should be the principle goal of society. Early liberals identified liberty mostly as positive–the freedom to do something. The major obsticles to liberty were seen as other individuals and the government. The government should stop other individuals from impeding your liberty (as they might do by robbing you, beating you, cheating you, etc.) and do as little else as possible, so as not itself to impede your liberty as a tyrant would.
Later liberals began to recognize other ways in which the liberty of individuals might be impeded by things such as racism, poverty, lack of education, lack of health care, etc. They began to define liberty negatively, as freedom from these debilitating conditions, and began to support projects by various agencies, including the government, aimed at eliminating or alleviating these social conditions.
Classic liberals rejected this new definition of liberty, and argued that government programs to shape society were an unneccessary intrusion of government into the lives of individuals that lessened the liberty of individuals. Since they practiced an older, more conservative form of liberalism, they became known as “conservatives.” The name “liberal” began to be applied exclusively to supporters of the newer way of thinking. This obscures the fact that (in the US at least, and much of the rest of the world) we are (almost) all liberals. I would prefer the term “progressive” for more left leaning (“modern”) liberals, but for the fact that it reenforces the perception now that “liberal” is now a dirty word, rather than showing its universality.
The morphing described by Alan Smithee bloomed into fruition around the time of the Wilson administration. (Great username, by the way!)
This thread was started by a returning troll, so I’m closing it.
Lynn
For the Straight Dope