It is particularly noteworthy that David Walsh’s The Growth of the Liberal Soul, originally published nearly thirty years ago and now released with a new introduction, anticipated virtually all the criticisms of the liberal tradition asserted by Alasdair MacIntyre, Patrick Deneen, and the many others who claim liberalism has failed. The difference is that Walsh, acknowledging the relevance of their critique, nevertheless reaffirms the virtues of the liberal tradition, showing that it has more grounding in the classical and Christian resources than is currently acknowledged.
The liberal tradition produced achievements that are essential to preserve, even as it faces a crisis that must be recognized if the crisis is to be resolved. Walsh argues that the “growth” of the liberal soul thus has both positive and negative implications: “Liberals must acknowledge that the corrosive effects of liberalism itself, with its ceaseless demands to expand the rights of liberty, ha[ve] dissolved the sense of the limit that must be preserved through the protection of liberty.”
The first chapter on the crisis of liberal politics offers a comprehensive diagnosis acknowledging the crisis is real, that the “first leg of the crisis” is the loss of the “liberal ethos” understood as a grateful exploration of the implications of the classical-Christian tradition, not a repudiation of them. As the liberal tradition has evolved into a project to take control of our destiny, the classical and Christian background is now seen by many on the left to be a barrier to further enlightenment. On the right, that background is taken to be a profound critique of the project. Both express alienation from the liberal tradition.
The liberal expansion of individual choice-making as an end in itself has deprived us of a “liberal center,” illustrating that the liberal tradition is its own worst enemy. Another way to put it is that the “enlightenment project” emerged out of the classical-Christian background, intending to fulfill the humanitarian aspirations expressed in the old tradition. But increasingly, the sources of the values which the liberal tradition sought to fulfill were forgotten or rejected. Walsh asks, “Without the liberal faith in a common human rationality, however vaguely defined, can we continue to enjoy the political institutions that presuppose it?”
In other words, the liberal tradition originates in an act of faith that mutual recognition and voluntary cooperation among choice-making individuals do not require authoritarian, hierarchical control. Such faith implies an effort to make mutual recognition of our common humanity, expressed in the biblical tradition, more visible in the way we interact and reform the political structures we have inherited. Thus, liberalism at its best should be seen not as a rejection of Christianity or classical politics, but as a commitment to advance their virtues, requiring enhanced appreciation of what we have inherited, not embarrassed repudiation of the West’s traditions.
Walsh expresses hope in observing that “we must not make the mistake of so many critics and defenders who identify the collapse of theoretical liberalism with the disintegration of the liberal inspiration.” He points to the remarkable stability in practice of liberal democracies despite the intellectual crisis and the extent to which the ideal of liberal democracy has achieved global significance. Success in these respects has allowed neglect of the roots of our success as if they are not or never were necessary.
The current struggles do not prove the end of liberalism. Walsh calls us to reexamine and acknowledge the resources that can mitigate the crisis.
Walsh also turns his attention to some of the most prominent defenders of the liberal tradition, including Michael Oakeshott, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, and John Rawls. While he admires their intellectual efforts, he also diagnoses their reluctance to invoke the foundations of the liberal tradition, even though they are aware of them. Some are reluctant to acknowledge a religious foundation, and others outright reject it. Walsh asks, “Is there not something strange about a tradition that when pressed to defend itself is unwilling to acknowledge the roots of its own convictions?”
Even though they are each in their own way eloquent defenders of the liberal tradition, Walsh takes their defenses to be inadequate. Characteristically, Walsh offers a sympathetic and fair account of each and the value of their arguments before criticizing their reluctance to acknowledge the foundation on which their arguments must ultimately rest.
His largely favorable account of Oakeshott’s thought shows a particularly compelling argument for immersion in the tradition and its practices: “Even when the tradition has broken down, as he recognizes it has for so many people today, the only sources of renewal are the elements of the tradition that still retain their vitality.” Walsh endorses this but sees that the habits of liberal thought must be shored up with compelling expressions of the foundation upon which those habits must rest. “Growth in virtue does not have to await the resolution of the theoretical disputes nor, as we have seen, can the philosophical elaborations arrive at any coherence without relating them to concrete moral practice.”
Walsh appeals to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and, interestingly, to Hegel, whom he considers to have understood well the interrelation of theory and practice. Walsh remarks in his new introduction that he wishes he had paid more attention to Hegel in this regard because he sees in Hegel’s political philosophy recognition of the interrelation of principle and practice.
Aristotle guided both Thomas Aquinas and Hegel in showing that philosophic reflection on politics arises in response to unresolved conflicts in political practice, seeking the principles of the best order for human beings implicit in their political practices. The tensions of politics catalyze theoretical clarification, describing responsible expectations, resisting unrealistic aspirations that promote extreme responses liable to disillusionment that deepens rather than mitigates conflict. Theory and practice must inform each other.
These reflections culminate in Walsh’s affirmation of the right to life as fundamental. He sees that the right to life is threatened by what might be called the sociological point of view and cost-benefit analysis:
The confusion of contemporary liberal reflection is best illustrated by its inability to recognize that in allowing the individual to set a value on his life we have also consented to the principle that his life is only of limited value. … [T]he deepest appeal of the liberal tradition, as we have seen, is that it evokes the most profound respect for what a human being is. … [W]e no longer have a consensus on what is good for human beings, but that there are no longer fixed human beings whose good is to be sought.
In other words, whether intentionally or inadvertently, we increasingly look on human beings as objects in nature, as resources to be used for independently chosen purposes, whose lives may be assessed for their social utility. “What humanity is to be is itself something to be decided.”
The quest for self-sufficiency or autonomy in the liberal tradition is repeatedly surprised by and has difficulty responding to questioning of it. “The liberal superstructure has fallen because the moral and spiritual convictions on which it had rested have been shaken. … Without the sense of an order beyond itself in terms of which its rightness can be seen, liberal democracy loses the landmarks that hold it fast. If it rests on nothing but itself, liberal order rests on nothing.”
Walsh recognizes that there is no easy correction. He is clear as to what we have lost and need to recover. The critiques of liberalism, both left and right, often resemble each other in rejecting the capacity of the liberal tradition for renewal.
Walsh is a courageous witness to the continued presence of the great tradition. He urges recovery of the symbiotic relation between theory and practice as “mutually illuminating.” This means reigniting respect for the classical-Christian tradition as an indispensable resource to guide the evolution of the liberal tradition: “The liberal tradition presupposes and has rested on a much deeper and more substantive spiritual order; its impressive durability cannot be accounted for simply on the basis of an expanding inclination to enlarge the privacy of differences … the unarticulated suspicion that there are no common grounds between us … no longer a reason or a tradition that is shared.”
The crisis is revealed most dramatically for Walsh in the abortion controversy, which undermines the status of human beings: “The scandal of the abortion holocaust in all of the developed world and outside of it is an affront even to the many who are willing to defend the freedom to practice it.” To take it upon ourselves to decide membership in the human species means that we have “lost any landmarks by which to steer our course[,] … we are at the mercy of all the forces that blow upon us. … The acceptance of our freedom to control the beginning and end of human life calls into question the whole notion that there is anything valuable about human beings at all that might not be drawn into the calculus of costs and benefits.”
Walsh concludes that the current struggles do not prove the end of liberalism. He calls us to reexamine and acknowledge the resources that can mitigate the crisis. To declare that liberalism has failed, that we already live in a postliberal world, only leads us further into alienation from the foundation that awaits our return to it.