Why Liberalism Failed

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Ideological Context: Post-Liberal Ideology

One of the things that makes Deneen’s thesis open to widespread critical engagement is that it largely transcends contemporary political categories, especially those found in the United States in the 21st century. In American politics, there are essentially only two mainstream political parties—Democrat and Republican—and they are typically divided along predictable and long-established ideological lines that are seldom, if ever, crossed.

Deneen’s work in Why Liberalism Failed argues that any viewpoint that sees one of these sides as promoting a liberal agenda while the other directly opposes it is misguided. Instead, he asserts that liberalism is the foundational paradigm for the entire American project. Most works engaging in contemporary politics will fall into one of the two prevailing camps, thus opening themselves up to criticism from the opposing side along bipartisan lines. Deneen’s text takes a different ideological approach: It has attracted criticism from all sides and all political affiliations by critiquing the very core of American politics, criticizing the liberal ideology upon which most modern democratic regimes are based.

For instance, from a post-liberal perspective—the category that most accurately describes Deneen’s school of thought—both major political parties are aligned in centering individual freedom in opposition to a classical sense of the common good. While the two parties typically view this absolute right to independent and private activity in radically different ways and for opposing goals, they still ultimately make the individual the sole arbiter of right and wrong, privileging only the right to make choices.

Deneen, on the other hand, argues that any good society actually needs to focus on citizens’ duties to one another rather than solely on their individual rights. Liberalism (as defined and criticized by Deneen) champions personal choice above all—something both Democrats and Republicans largely agree with—while a post-liberal ideology places more focused limits on particular kinds of choices and freedoms, championing the common good at the expense of individual claims in certain cases.

Religious Context: Liberalism and Catholic Social Teaching

Some critics have argued that in Why Liberalism Failed and elsewhere—such as his online journal, The Postliberal Order—Deneen has allowed his religious convictions to bleed into his philosophical and political thought. They argue that his anti-liberal stance is merely a reflection of Catholic Social Teaching in the political sphere and that an anti-liberal critique is therefore simply a religious critique.

Catholic Social Teaching is an ideological movement dating back to the late 19th century. In the mainstream of Catholic Social Teaching, there is a strong current of anti-liberalism thanks to its commitment to three things: first, the primacy of the common good; second, a preferential stance toward the poor; and third, a conviction that human beings need divine help to heal their wounded nature.

Care for the common good opposes liberalism’s conviction that individual freedom and choice are supreme. Likewise, Catholic Social Teaching’s preferential stance toward the poor argues that liberalism’s lack of restraint is actually harmful to a society that rewards individuals who look out for themselves first, even at the expense of others—the ancient tradition of Christian charity is directly opposed to this. Finally, Christian doctrine about human nature needing divine grace to be healed is quite clearly opposed to a secular, irreligious stance of every individual being perfectly free right from the start. While liberal ideology asserts that government exists to keep individuals as free as possible, Catholic Social Teaching views government more as a teacher and guide, helping human beings to become virtuous.

However, one of Deneen’s major lines of thought in this book is that the liberal presumption of political neutrality toward religion is a fiction and that human beings should not (and ultimately cannot) prescind from religious questions at all. He is clear that he views society as fundamentally religious in a certain sense and that every regime will need to make a choice about what kinds of things are allowed and what will not be. He argues that, ultimately, the anti-liberal stance is not a religious belief at all, but a philosophical and political stance that is simply compatible with Catholicism and, as Deneen insists, many other religious traditions as well.