The Making of Modern Liberalism

Alan Ryan is a world-class scholar of political theory. This substantial collection of his essays on modern liberalism is a must buy for all students of modern political philosophy. I have read two of his previous books (Property and Political Theory and his political biography of Bertrand Russell) and found both very rewarding. I have read several of the essays published in this anthology in other formats, but this is a large book and most are new to me. Nice to have so much excellent work under one cover. Liberalism, with all its faults, has been the dominant political ideology in the industrial West for several hundred years. But it has built-in contradictions that frequently erupt as social conflict. The problem is that the cures for the disease, fascism on the right and communism on the left, cause more problems than the disease itself. Ryan's acute analyses gets us to the heart of the difficulties. All the usual suspects are interrogated (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, etc.) with elegance and insight. Highly recommended for all students of political thought (political science, history, philosophy, political economy).

I bought this because I so enjoyed Mr. Ryan's 2 volume voyage through the history of political thought (On Politics).That book was written, by his own admission, for the general reader and is superb. THIS book is a horse of a different color (to use a completely inappropriate metaphor). It consists of papers and lectures addressed to professional colleagues and advanced students. As such it contains many a reference to materials probably well-known to that audience but not to the amateur. This makes for somewhat slow going. Despite this reservation it's an excellent compendium and well-worth the attention of even non-academic.

Ryan is by himself in his comprehensive mastery. I wish he had given some direct attention to David Spitz focus on the liberal conception of freedom resolving by necessary logic to a system of liberties and restraints informed by a hierarchy of values centered on the view that "what defines a man, according to an ancient teaching, is his reason. Now for reason to be exercised, a choice must exist. To deny individual liberty, either in the presentation of alternatives, or the making of choices, is to deny an individual that which constitutes his humanity. Instead of his right to exercise his reason, someone else's reason is exercised for him. He is then not a man but a child. If he is to be a man he must be free-to inquire, to consider diverse possibilities, to choose among them, and to pursue, so far as he can, his own way or style of life." "Individual liberty, and its consequent diversities, becomes then a cardinal principle of liberalism." Popper seems to follow in the Spitz formulation. David Spitz's assertion of dissent as the distinctive hallmark of democracy and defense of civil disobedience as a proper method of social change in a liberal state also mark David Spitz as deserving of attention in any discussion of modern liberalism.

I'm an 85 year old political junkie and student of history. I'm spending much of my retirement time trying to better understand "liberalism" (my side) and radical conservatism (current Republican Party side). This is a book of Ryan's essays over his years of writing about liberalism. I've only read a handful of them but they are quite lucid and informative. If you are an intellect (like me) this is the sort of wonderful book you can keep dipping into wherever you choose, depending on how a topic might grab you. So I'll be reading it on and off for some time.

Finding a universally accepted definition of liberalism is a challenge, since an aversion to dogma is part of what defines it. However, liberalism, with its multiplicity of readings, has many philosophical and political sources, and its defense of the individual and liberty is deeply rooted on solid theoretical grounds. What Ryan presents us with in this book is a compilation of his writings examining many of these sources, as seen through his prism. This is an invaluable collection for anyone interested in political thought, with ample fodder for debate and further discussion, which are incidentally another treasured objective of any self-defined liberal.

These days liberalism comes in for a lot of flak, from both left and right. It is the whipping boy of cultural conservatives and political leftists alike, who see in it pusillanimous equivocation either in face of licentious individualism, cultural or economic. Amid all this sound and fury, the question of how human beings are to live together with their differences remains a perennial one. And this is a central liberal preoccupation. If we reject a state that enforces one way of life, uniformly and tolerating no dissent, then this is question that will always require an attempt at an answer. Alan Ryan has spent his professional life examining the thinkers who have addressed this question - Hobbes, Locke, Mill through to Berlin and Rawls. You may think the inclusion of Hobbes' in this pantheon is an odd one but it is not. He was as much concerned with the question of how to reconcile passionately contested ideas human beings profess with order and stability as much as any modern liberal thinker. The essays on Hobbes' preoccupation with this point are especially stimulating. We learn that Hobbes view of a state of nature and a war of all against all is not predicated on a view of human beings motivated by atavistic blood lusts but struggling with the problem of security and the impossibility of anticipating the motives of others, leading to a `better safe than sorry' strategy that makes a premptive strike the only rational thing to do in a state of nature. Aside from the necessity of maintaining peace in a society in which the members hold views at odds with one another, another prominent concern features in these essays: when is it right to override individual rights for the common good? This tension is traditionally defined as that between liberty and equality but is not contained by it. We see practical examples each day. The National Health Service is predicated on the right on each individual to receive free access to healthcare but by necessity difficult decisions must be made on the allocation of resources. The sense you get from reading this collection is that some of the criticisms made of liberalism, alluded to in the first paragraph of this review, are unfair because liberalism engages with these tough questions in the way that conservative moralists and leftist utopians do not. However, this is not a line of argument that the author explicitly pursues. This is a pity, for it deserves to be made, and made vigorously. The allegation that liberals are muddle-headed falls when some hard truths are thrown back at its detractors: how would they decide to resolve the tensions between individual rights and the common good, for instance? It seems that liberalism's detractors simply deny that these questions arise at all. Being muddle-headed is not good. But being deluded is a lot worse. This collection of essays is mostly thought provoking and stimulating. Some are less so than others. This is not on account of the author's lack of skill but my own varying interest in the thinkers concerned. Mill and Hobbes are more interesting to me than Dewey and Hegel. Another drawback with these essays is the drawback I have found political philosophy shares with other related forms of academic theory: the priority of theory over practice, a feature shared by those philosophical systems allegedly engaged in changing the world, and not just studying it, like Marxism. Whether this is a fault of the book depends on what you are looking for. The book is probably more for those with an academic interest in the thinkers the author covers, and for those who already have some basic acquaintance with philosophical terminology, rather than those with a broad interest in the nitty gritty of politics. However, it will help you spot the assumptions on which political argument (such as it is) is made, which is an education in itself. Whether you are prepared to pay the hefty admission price for this privilege - there is no indication if it will ever come out in paperback - is your decision. Overall, I thought it was worth it.

Interesting collection of essays and update via a lengthy Introduction. Pedantic perhaps but I found it a little disconcerting that such an eminent academic uses the word "pleonasm" liberally(!) in his Introduction to mean "an oxymoron". In fact it means effectively the opposite - a "tautology".