Liberalism and Human Flourishing
Abstract
Liberalism is not sufficiently concerned with, or is opposed to, securing the material conditions and taking the positive steps necessary for people and society to flourish. This inadequacy arises from questionable or mistaken assumptions, argument and emphasis. A more humane political philosophy is both required and achievable.
Liberalism espouses individual freedom, opportunity and religious tolerance. It requires the state not to oppress its citizens. There is much to applaud in this philosophy. But without adequate economic and social goods, freedom and opportunity have no substance. Without an active state, many remain imprisoned by their circumstances.
Firstly, the consequences of liberalism in action are examined. Liberalism emphasises individual freedom over social responsibility, is attached to private ownership, has faith in the efficacy of markets and distrusts the state. The effects, argued here, are concentrated wealth, leading to abuses of power and stagnating economies; wretched poverty for many, with lives bereft of opportunity and hope; and markets which malfunction, characterised by boom and bust, monopoly and environmental destruction.
Next, scrutiny falls on the key liberal ideas implicated in these adverse effects: rights, property, redistribution and the limited state. Robert Nozick espouses, with little foundation, a narrow set of absolute freedoms, which permit coercive exploitation and apalling conditions. John Rawls also emphasises liberties, but founded in a social contract. Yet, neither he nor Nozick adequately explain the absence of positive rights. Liberals attach extensive rights to private ownership, but fail to justify them, because accounts of legitimate property acquisition and transfer are unconvincing. Nozick's argument against redistribution and "patterned distributions" is fatally flawed. Rawls' specifications of equality of opportunity and the "difference principle" help the least well-off, yet are insufficient to prevent inequality increasing. Nozick's argument for a minimal state is defective. Liberals, generally, in wishing to limit the state's oppressive potential, fail to see its potential for good.
Finally, an alternative approach is sketched, which seeks to avoid these adverse consequences and philosophical flaws. This new political philosophy makes no claim to moral objectivity; rather it is based on a practical morality, which reflects the self-interest and altruism in our nature. The right and the good are interdependent. Rights and outcomes are ranked according to their contribution to human flourishing. The philosophy advocates an active state, financed largely by progressive taxation.
Liberalism favours the favoured. The new philosophy, by contrast, seeks a society in which all can flourish.
© 2018 C P Blundred