Unsustainable Liberalism

This chapter argues that liberalism has failed because it has drawn down on a preliberal inheritance and resources that at once sustained liberal ideology but which it cannot replenish. It considers the loosening of social bonds in virtually every aspect of life as a reflection of the advancing logic of liberalism and as the source of its deepest instability. The chapter examines two revolutions in the understanding of human nature and society that constitute “liberalism” inasmuch as they introduce a radically new definition of liberty: anthropological individualism and the idea of voluntarism—the unfettered and autonomous choice of individuals—as the basis of politics; and human separation from and opposition to nature. Liberalism, it contends, has not realized its titanic wager that a wholly new understanding of liberty could be pursued and realized by overturning preceding philosophic tradition and religious and social norms, and by introducing a new relationship between humans and nature.