User:Nasty Housecat/liberalism

Roots in Humanism
Precursors of liberalism appeared in the Renaissance Humanism of the 15th and 16th century. The Humanist divergence from orthodox Christianity grew into a strongly secular world view which rejected clerical authority and was deeply skeptical of supernatural explanations and justifications. Humanist respect for reason and free-will set the stage for "proto-liberal" political thinkers such as Spinoza, who defended secular governments and Machiavelli, who advocated a republican form of government that would defend liberty and the right to personal property.

Regarded by many liberals as "the father of liberalism," Thomas Hobbes set the stage for liberal political philosophy with his theory of the social contract. Hobbes argued that in a "state of nature", without government, each person would have an unconstrained right to everything whatsoever leading to a "war of all against all". To escape this condition, men would cede their natural rights to a sovereign authority who would protect them. This formulation, articulates the core philosophical problem of liberalism, namely, the justification of  political organization in a world in which man is naturally free and possessed of natural rights. The social contract as way to explain the voluntary acceptance of political authority captured the fundamental principles of liberal theory: that freedom and natural rights cannot be surrendered, that political power flows from the consent of those governed, and that the legitimate role of government is the preservation of liberty and protection of personal property.

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John Locke and the Enlightenment
The roots of liberalism are firmly planted in the set of ideas which came to be collectively known as "The Enlightenment." Beginning in the mid-1600s,

Philosophy
Liberalism—both as a political current and an intellectual tradition—is  mostly a modern phenomenon that started in the 17th century,  although some liberal philosophical ideas had precursors in classical antiquity. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius praised "the  idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of  speech, and the idea  of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the  governed". Scholars have also recognized a number of principles familiar to contemporary liberals in the works of several Sophists and in the Funeral Oration by Pericles. Liberal philosophy symbolizes an extensive intellectual tradition that has examined and popularized some of the most important and  controversial principles of the modern world. Its immense scholarly and academic output has been characterized as containing "richness and  diversity," but that diversity often has meant that liberalism comes in  different formulations and presents a challenge to anyone looking for a  clear definition.

Major themes
Though all liberal doctrines possess a common heritage, scholars frequently  assume that those doctrines contain "separate and often contradictory  streams of thought". The objectives of liberal theorists and philosophers have differed across various times, cultures, and continents. The diversity of liberalism can be gleaned from the numerous adjectives that liberal thinkers and movements  have attached to the very term liberalism,  including classical,  egalitarian, economic,  social,  welfare-state, ethical,  humanist,  deontological, perfectionist,  democratic, and institutional,  to name a few. Despite these variations, liberal thought does exhibit a few definite and  fundamental conceptions. At its very root, liberalism is a philosophy about the meaning of humanity and society. Political philosopher John Gray identified the common strands in liberal thought as being individualist, egalitarian,  meliorist, and universalist. The individualist element avers the ethical primacy of the human being against the pressures of social collectivism, the egalitarian element assigns  the same moral worth and status to all individuals, the meliorist  element asserts that successive generations can improve their  sociopolitical arrangements, and the universalist element affirms the  moral unity of the human species and marginalizes local cultural  differences. The meliorist element has been the subject of much controversy, defended by  thinkers such as Immanuel Kant,  who believed in human progress, while suffering from attacks by  thinkers such as Rousseau, who believed that human attempts  to improve themselves through social cooperation would fail. Describing the liberal temperament, Gray claimed that it "has been inspired by skepticism and by a fideistic certainty of  divine revelation ... it has exalted the power of reason even as, in  other contexts, it has sought to humble reason's claims". The liberal philosophical tradition has searched for validation and justification  through several intellectual projects. The moral and political suppositions of liberalism have been based on traditions such as natural rights and utilitarian  theory, although  sometimes liberals even requested support from scientific and religious  circles. Through all these strands and traditions, scholars have identified the following  major common facets of liberal thought: believing in equality and individual  liberty, supporting private property  and individual rights, supporting the idea of limited constitutional  government, and recognizing the importance of related values such as pluralism,  toleration,  autonomy, and consent.

Dominant ideas and traditions
Early liberals, including John Locke and Baruch Spinoza, attempted to determine the purpose of government in a liberal society. To these liberals, securing the most essential amenities of life—liberty  and private property  among them—required  the formation of a "sovereign" authority with universal jurisdiction. In a natural state of affairs, liberals argued, humans were driven by the instincts of  survival and self-preservation,  and the only way to escape from such a dangerous existence was to form a  common and supreme power capable of arbitrating between competing human  desires. This power could be formed in the framework of a civil society that allows  individuals to make a voluntary social  contract with the  sovereign authority, transferring their natural rights  to that authority in return for the protection of life, liberty, and  property. These early liberals often disagreed in their opinion of the most appropriate  form of government, but they all shared the belief that liberty was  natural and that its restriction needed strong justification. Liberals generally believed in limited government, although several liberal  philosophers decried government outright, with Thomas Paine writing that "government even in  its best state is a necessary evil". As part of the project to limit the powers of government, various liberal theorists—such as James Madison and the Baron de  Montesquieu—conceived the notion of  separation of powers, a system designed to equally distribute  governmental authority among the executive,  legislative,  and judicial  branches. Finally, governments had to realize, liberals maintained, that poor and improper  governance gave the people authority to overthrow the ruling order  through any and all possible means—even through outright violence and revolution, if needed. Contemporary liberals, heavily influenced by social liberalism, have  continued to support limited constitutional government while also  advocating for state services and provisions to ensure equal rights. Modern liberals claim that formal or official guarantees of individual rights are irrelevant when individuals lack the material means to  benefit from those rights, urging a greater role for government in the  administration of economic affairs.

Beyond identifying a clear role for government in modern society, liberals  also have obsessed over the meaning and nature of the most important  principle in liberal philosophy: liberty. From the 17th century until the 19th century, liberals—from  Adam Smith  to John Stuart Mill—conceptualized liberty as  the absence of interference from government and from other individuals,  claiming that all people should have the freedom to develop their own  unique abilities and capacities without being sabotaged by others. Mill's On Liberty (1859), one of the classic texts in liberal philosophy, proclaimed that  "the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own  good in our own way". Support for laissez-faire capitalism  is often associated with this principle, with Friedrich  Hayek arguing in the The Road to Serfdom  (1944) that reliance on free markets would preclude totalitarian  control by the state. Beginning in the late 19th century, however, a new conception of liberty entered the liberal intellectual arena. This new kind of liberty became known as positive  liberty to distinguish  it from the prior negative  version, and it was  first developed by British philosopher Thomas Hill  Green. Green rejected the idea that humans were driven solely by self-interest,  emphasizing instead the complex circumstances that are involved in the  evolution of our moral character. In a very profound step for the future of modern liberalism, he also tasked social and political institutions with the enhancement of  individual freedom and identity. Foreshadowing the new liberty as the freedom to act rather than to avoid suffering from the acts of others, Green wrote the following:

If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had been other than it has been...one might be inclined to wish that the term 'freedom' had been confined to  the...power to do  what one wills.

Rather than previous liberal conceptions viewing society as populated by selfish individuals,  Green viewed society as an organic whole in which all individuals have a  duty to promote the common good. His ideas spread rapidly and were developed by other thinkers such as L. T. Hobhouse  and John Hobson. In a few short years, this New Liberalism had become the essential social and political program of the Liberal Party in Britain, and it  would encircle much of the world in the 20th century. In addition to examining negative and positive liberty, liberals have tried to  understand the proper relationship between liberty and democracy. As they struggled to expand suffrage rights, liberals increasingly understood  that people left out of the democratic decision-making process  were liable to the tyranny of the majority,  a concept explained in Mill's On Liberty  and in Democracy in America  (1835) by Alexis de Tocqueville. As a response, liberals began demanding proper safeguards to thwart majorities in their attempts at suppressing  the rights of minorities.

Besides liberty, liberals have developed several other principles important to the construction of their  philosophical structure, such as equality, pluralism, and toleration. Highlighting the confusion over the first principle, Voltaire  commented that "equality is at once the most natural and at times the  most chimeral of things". All forms of liberalism assume, in some basic sense, that individuals are equal. In maintaining that people are naturally equal, liberals assume that they all possess the same right to liberty. In other words, no one is inherently entitled to enjoy the benefits of liberal society more than anyone else, and all people are equal subjects  before the law. Beyond this basic conception, liberal theorists diverge on their understanding of  equality. American philosopher John Rawls emphasized the need to ensure not only equality under the law, but also the equal distribution of  material resources that individuals required to develop their  aspirations in life. Libertarian thinker Robert Nozick  disagreed with Rawls, championing the former version of Lockean  equality instead. To contribute to the development of liberty, liberals also have promoted  concepts like pluralism and toleration. By pluralism, liberals refer to the proliferation of opinions and beliefs that characterize a stable  social order. Unlike many of their competitors and predecessors, liberals do not seek conformity and  homogeneity in the way that people think; in fact, their efforts have  been geared towards establishing a governing framework that harmonizes  and minimizes conflicting views, but still allows those views to exist  and flourish. For liberal philosophy, pluralism leads easily to toleration. Since individuals will hold diverging viewpoints, liberals argue, they ought  to uphold and respect the right of one another to disagree. From the liberal perspective, toleration was initially connected to religious toleration, with Spinoza condemning "the  stupidity of religious persecution and ideological wars". Toleration also played a central role in the ideas of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Both thinkers believed that society will contain different conceptions of a good ethical life and that people should be allowed to make their  own choices without interference from the state or other individuals.

Relation to other ideologies
As one of the first modern ideologies, liberalism has had a profound impact on the ones that  followed it. In particular, some scholars suggest that liberalism gave rise to feminism,  although others maintain that liberal  democracy is  inadequate for the realization of feminist objectives. Liberal feminism, the dominant tradition in feminist history,  hopes to eradicate all barriers to gender  equality—claiming that the continued  existence of such barriers eviscerates the individual rights and  freedoms ostensibly guaranteed by a liberal social order. British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the pioneer  of liberal feminism, with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  (1792) expanding the boundaries of liberalism to include women in the  political structure of liberal society. Less friendly to the goals of liberalism has been conservatism. Like liberalism, conservatism is complex and amorphous, laying claims to several intellectual traditions over the last three centuries. Edmund Burke, considered by some to be the first major proponent of modern  conservative thought, offered a blistering critique of the French  Revolution by assailing the liberal pretensions to the power of  rationality and to the natural equality of all humans. However, a few variations of conservatism, like conservative  liberalism, expound  some of the same ideas and principles championed by classical liberalism, including "small government and  thriving capitalism". Even more uncertain is the relationship between liberalism and socialism. Socialism began as a concrete ideology in the 19th century with the writings of Karl Marx,  and it too—as with  liberalism and conservatism—fractured  into several major movements in the decades after its founding. The most prominent eventually became social democracy,  which can be broadly defined as a project that aims to correct what it  regards as the intrinsic defects of capitalism by reducing the  inequalities that exist within an economic system. Several commentators have noted strong similarities between social liberalism  and social democracy, with one political scientist even calling American liberalism "bootleg social democracy". Another movement associated with modern democracy, Christian  democracy, hopes to  spread Catholic social  ideas and has gained a  large following in some European nations. The early roots of Christian democracy developed as a reaction against the industrialization and urbanization associated with laissez-faire liberalism in the 19th century. Despite these complex relationships, some scholars have argued that liberalism  actually "rejects ideological thinking" altogether, largely because such  thinking could lead to unrealistic expectations for human society.