A Study Guide for Political Theories for Students: LIBERALISM

By Gale and Cengage

Designed with busy students in mind, this concise study guide examines major political theories and is organized into the following easily digestible sections: overview, history, theory in depth, theory in action, analysis and critical response, topics for further study, and bibliography.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781535831116

Book preview

liberties.

HISTORY

Liberalism is a doctrine that emerged from the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It became particularly strong in England, but also in the U.S., France, and later, other Anglophone societies like Australia. In each of these countries it assumed slightly different forms.

The major philosophers of liberalism belong to a number of groups of theorists. The first includes several theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who preceded liberalism proper but who anticipated its doctrines. These were followed by the political and economic theorists of classical liberalism in the mid–nineteenth century. Later, other liberal theorists modified those doctrines of the classical liberals and are often called social liberals. There also emerged in the twentieth century defenders of classical liberalism including, in the economic sphere, the Austrian School.

A History of Liberal Theory: The Precursors of Liberalism

Until the seventeenth century, most European political philosophy was chiefly set in theological terms. One of its principal concerns was the achievement of God's will on earth and the protection of the Christian religion.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement during the eighteenth century which believed humans had the ability to discern truth without appeal to religious doctrine. This marked: the beginning of scientific history; the need to justify doctrine by reason; freedom is necessary to advance progress; historical criticism as necessary to determine the historical legacy; the need for critical philosophy; and the use of ethics as separate and independent from the authority of religion and theology. It also entailed a suspicion of all truth claiming to be grounded in some kind of authority other than reason, like tradition or divine revelation.

In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) the leading German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) asserted all that can be known, is things as they are experienced. Other Philosophers attempted to know God as he is in himself by reasoning up to Him. This was, according to Kant, a vain attempt. God could not be experienced by man. Kant did not entertain the possibility that God could break into the realm of history and reveal himself.

But Kant was not an atheist. He postulated the existence of God, but denied the possibility of any cognitive knowledge of him. It was man's conscience that testified of God's existence, and He was to be known through the realm of morality. Kant published another work, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), which set forth his conception that religion could be reduced to the sphere of morality. For Kant, this meant living by the categorical imperative— which he summarized in two maxims: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law; and Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.

In other words, every action of humanity should be regulated in such a way that it would be morally profitable for humanity if were elevated to the status of law.

The Federalist Debates and the U.S. Constitution

In terms of political philosophy, the defining moment of the seventeenth century was the English Revolution. The two revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century, in America and then in France, established substantial monuments to the intellectual debates about constitutionality. The Thirteen Colonies in America revolted against the English Crown and enforced their Declaration of Independence (1776) in a revolutionary war. There then ensued debate among and between the former colonies about what system of government should prevail. This was resolved at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1786–1787, in favor of the Federalists.

What form of government best suited a commercial civilization in the New World? Somewhat ironically, the British Constitution figured largely in discussion of that issue because the Americans appreciated that the British, whatever their other failings, had made most progress in that respect. The interpretation Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755) and the founding fathers of the American state placed on the English Constitution, was that the separation of powers limited the power of the state and should be adopted as a principle of American government. The next great debate concerned which interests could be represented, and this was progressively resolved in favor of universal franchise in the New World, and then in the other liberal states.

Montesquieu has been called the godfather of the American constitution. In eighty–five Federalist Papers, 1787–1788, Montesquieu's temper and spirit is omnipresent and is often cited by anti–Federalists and Federalists alike. The anti–Federalists contended that Montesquieu had argued that a republic which extended over too large a territory would come unstuck. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton (1757– 1804) and James Madison (1751–1836), responded by arguing that Montesquieu had