By JUDE DOUGHERTY
Simpson, Peter L.P. Political Illiberalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015. Pp. xi + 236.
The book gets its name as a contra-positive to the political liberalism of John Rawls and his followers. Simpson’s illiberalism is grounded in the conviction that the human good can be identified, that politics is primarily about the promotion of the human good, and about securing the wisest government that reason is capable of achieving. Politics is necessarily about what Simpson calls “comprehensive visions of the good.”
Finding his roots in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, it is axiomatic for Simpson that the good of any being is the completion of its nature. From that viewpoint, not all conceptions of human nature and of the human good are equally valid. Consequently, the state cannot remain indifferent to competing claims with respect to the good.
The liberal idea of freedom falsely entails a neutral state, a state neutral between competing claims of the good. Neutrality, it is claimed, allows each person the freedom to pursue the vision of the good life he prefers. The state has the monopoly of force necessary to ensure that this pursuit of individual goods does not end in violence or in the war of all against all. A necessary condition for the liberal view to prevail is the political marginalizing of religion. Religious authorities, from the liberal perspective, must not be allowed independent political power and certainly none against the state.
Simpson targets the political liberalism of Rawls for ignoring the facts of history and the actual workings of liberal states. “What does it mean to be free,” Simpson asks, [for] “it has become virtually axiomatic in the modern world that freedom is only possible under modern arrangements and that it hardly existed before.”
The modern secular state in its essentials, he claims, is indistinguishable from despotism. A realistic conception of the human good requires the devolution of authority to local communities, on the one hand, and a proper distinction between the spiritual and temporal powers on the other.
Politics, Simpson maintains, follows on one’s conception of law and one’s understanding of the role of law in society. Fundamentally, politics is about the organization of peoples into certain kinds of communities. The liberal myth about politics starts with some imaginary state of nature or “original position” as with Rawls.
The obvious place to start, says Simpson, is not with Hobbes or Rawls but with the brute facts of nature. Human beings come to be through birth from parents, and for many years the child is totally dependent on parents or other adults for everything from food, clothing, and shelter to education and character formation.
There is no choice exercised by the child over such things. The child is born into a human community; the family and families themselves are part of a larger community. There is no war of all against all or original position to be adopted. The state-of-nature doctrine and the liberalism it has spawned have also ignored the spiritual direction of human existence.
The dominant issue to be decided with respect to political authority, Simpson maintains, is the limitation of its competence over morals and what is conceived as the common good, and consequently about how the coercive power of the state may rightfully be used.
In the company of Plato, Simpson believes that politics is primarily about guidance, that is, about enlightening the mind and restraining the will. Morals are an important part of community life. People need to behave morally if they are to live well. It is here that spiritual authority can support temporal authority by teaching morality and, one might add, by encouraging obedience to legitimate authority.
To the extent that liberalism has removed religion from political life it is little different from Communistic or other totalitarian regimes that rest on a comprehensive vision of life that excludes God.
Obviously how one views political authority matters. One understanding of political authority coerces means but not ends; the other coerces ends but not means. Liberty, in Simpson’s view, follows the latter.
Given the richness of this volume, which can barely be indicated here, one may wish that it be required reading for every entering college freshman, if he hasn’t encountered it in high school.
+ + +
(Dr. Dougherty is dean emeritus of The School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress