Jeremy Waldron on Liberalism and Autonomy
POSTLIB 4
This post explores yet another theory of “what liberalism is” in an attempt to define liberalism and to show how postliberalism differs from it. (I know, I know. I do plan to write on other topics.) Here I examine Jeremy Waldron’s theory of liberalism as the idea that a political community’s social structures must be justifiable to all citizens.
Jeremy Waldron defines liberalism as a philosophy according to which “all aspects of the social should be made acceptable or be capable of being made acceptable to every last individual.”[1] This idea is somewhat similar to the principle that government rests on the “consent of the governed,” which is articulated in the Declaration of Independence. If one cannot justify the regime under which one lives, with its attendant political structures, one does not consent to that regime. I will call this idea the theory of “universal justification.”
Waldron argues that the necessity of universal justification flows from liberals’ “commitments” to “a conception of freedom” and “the agency of individual” people. Yet it is unclear how Waldron’s definition distinguishes between liberal and non-liberal theories. In practice, no liberal theory is actually endorsed by all people. Waldron must mean that a liberal political theory must only in theory be capable of being endorsed by all people. And yet, there is no reason why certain non-liberal political philosophies cannot be “made acceptable to every last individual” too. We might think that a universally justifiable political order will be one that is rational. Since all humans can reason, all (non-defective) humans should be able to recognize the value of a rational distribution of political authority, even one that isn’t “liberal.”
But Waldron means much more than this by “universal justification.” For a political order to count as justifiable to everyone, he thinks, all people must be able to see themselves as autonomous individuals outside of the existing order. Waldron thus ends up smuggling in a conception of radical autonomy to bolster the theory of universal justification. Non-liberal theories fail not because they cannot be rationally justified, in other words, but because they cannot be justified to people who exhibit certain “liberal” characteristics. It is precisely the universality and necessity of such characteristics that postliberals contest.
Waldron’s commitment to radical autonomy comes across in his rejection of what he describes as the “positive” or “Hegelian” approach to liberty or freedom. On the “positive” view of liberty, freedom is connected to the social order. In other words, “real freedom (sometimes, freedom for the true self) just is submission to and participation in the order of a good society.”[2] A person is free if he is able to submit himself to a good social order and to perform the duties and enjoy the rights associated with it. And social orders ought to try to shape and mold citizens to understand and appreciate the objective moral order upon which their regime is based.
This is, in fact, how most postliberals (and pre-liberals) have characterized liberty or freedom: the freedom to be virtuous without impediment. On this view, freedom is not an ultimate end but rather a means to the end of a flourishing life. A slave or servant (typically) cannot practice virtue or engage in the highest human pursuits in an unimpeded fashion. People under a tyrannical government generally are deprived of the right, for instance, to worship God, to raise a family, or to pursue am honest trade. But humans should not seek to be liberated from the requirements of virtue or attempt to fashion their own purposes for life, postliberals insist, since these are predetermined.
Here is how Waldron criticizes the “positive freedom” view:
The trouble with this, from a liberal perspective, is that it seems to rule out the possibility of an individual standing back from that form of social order and subjecting it to critical evaluation. If a person's true self is thought to be partly or wholly constituted by the social order, then that self cannot ask the critical question “Is this the sort of order I accept? Is it one that I would have chosen?” Or, if this question is asked, it is to be regarded as the alienated bewilderment of one who is divorced from his true self, rather than as a genuine exercise of freedom. This view of freedom, then, is at odds with the liberal insistence that all social arrangements are subject to critical scrutiny by individuals ….[3]
For Waldron, we cannot scrutinize our own society if the “social order” shapes our character and self, either partially or wholly. We must be able, mentally, to stand “above” or “outside of” our own society in order to judge it.
Waldron’s argument mirrors that of Daniel Klein and Daniel Mahony. They argue that the “integralist” conception of the common good (which is similar to the postliberal conception in crucial respects) “often seems more coercive than constitutionalist and forgets that in decisive respects virtue must be freely chosen. The integralist version of the concept lacks sufficient confidence in people, in their private affairs, to conduct themselves responsibly, or to learn to do so.”[4] What they share with Waldron is the idea that humans ought to think for themselves and not rely on society of on authority figures to think for them.
To an extent, this critique makes sense. If citizens were so brainwashed by the state that they could not consider alternatives to the existing social arrangements, then we would hardly consider them to be free, even if their social order happened to correspond to an objective moral order. To be virtuous, we must know what virtue is and act with the intent of being virtuous.
Nevertheless, as Waldron cashes out his view that humans must not be shaped by society, it becomes clear that his theory of liberalism depends on a faulty “anthropology” (i.e. a view of human nature).
For one thing, in order to assess the justice of one’s social order, Waldron’s theory requires people to exhibit “an impatience with tradition, mystery, awe and superstition.”[5] Humans must think of themselves as capable of “grasping” and even deliberately “manipulating” our world. This is a fundamentally naturalistic perspective that leaves no room for the sublime or the supernatural.
Moreover, Waldron conceives of humans as atomistic and autonomous. He writes, for instance, that “being governed” is not “natural to human persons” but is rather “something people invent and take upon themselves, for reasons, in an act of free choice.” While we may find it “hard to imagine anyone choosing to live outside all political frameworks,” there is nothing “perverse or unnatural” about such a choice.[6] In fact, the condition of living outside of society is seen, by the “social contract” tradition, as the natural condition of all people, at least as a theoretical starting point. Moreover, Waldron implies that a good liberal person should be unwilling to commit himself fully to his role in society, since a permanent role is incompatible with the individualism required of liberalism. It is for this reason that liberalism conceives of “consent” as both a necessary and sufficient condition to justify political rule.
This anthropology is misleading, however. All social orders exert a dramatic impact on how people act and think about themselves, which will distort one’s assessment of social orders dramatically. Political philosophers throughout history have recognized that we are shaped by our upbringing but not determined by it, and it has therefore engaged in an extended conversation over the “best regime” and the best way to pursue happiness and human flourishing. Liberalism misses the social aspect of human nature. Trying to create a social order that does not imprint a set of values on people—that leaves people “untouched”—is bound fail.
Furthermore, Waldron seems to think that any justification for political rule must be easily comprehensible and supply something that all people readily want. Liberals have historically justified political rule on the basis of “low but solid” goods such as physical security (Hobbes), property (Locke), and personal freedom (Hayek).
The classical view, by contrast, tends to take a rather “elitist” view of human nature that grates against liberal views of equality. Knowledge of the highest good and the best means of obtaining it are not equally distributed among the population. While all humans may be equal in their nature and dignity, many or most people are unable to obtain or practice the highest goods, such as philosophy, virtue, or godliness. Thus, it is best for the community to led by people who excel in these characteristics, even if some people in the society are unable to appreciate them.
This anthropology has implications for the doctrine of consent. Postliberals accept the naturalness of certain forms of rule and ground legitimacy on an objective source in addition to consent. Since many people are unwilling to abide by rules that restrain their selfish or unrestrained desires, the consent of the people is less important to the classical tradition. Postliberals do not view humans as radically autonomous agents who must have chosen a political order for it to be legitimate. Rather, for those working in the classical republican and natural law tradition, the legitimacy of a political order derives from its ability to secure objective human goods for the citizens.
In my view, then, liberalism errs in viewing consent as the marker of political legitimacy. Of course, good laws ought in principle to be recognized as worthy of obedience by all people. A tyrannical or stupid law can never be legitimate. But we should not expect all people to recognize good laws when they see them. Aristotle, for instance, argues that only someone who is already good can appreciate the goodness of good laws.[7]
This difference with Waldron’s liberalism becomes clear when he discusses possible social orders that cannot be universally justified. He speculates that all citizens would not accept a utilitarian social order in which some people incur losses so that others may gain benefits. He seems to accept that people are reasoning based on a self-interested calculation of their own advantage, rather than making the common good their lodestar. Later, he identifies the mutual appreciation of all people’s “pursuit of the good” as foundational to liberalism. In other words, he seems to think that a social order that all would accept is one which permits all people equally to pursue their own conception of the good (i.e. pluralism, which I have discussed elsewhere.) Commitments to hedonism and pluralism contradict the postliberal insistence that the state pursue the common good as classically conceived.
Finally, for postliberals, it is the goal of politics both to enact good laws and to shape the citizens so that they recognize the goodness of the laws. The best regime is the regime which best secures the goods which political communities are supposed to secure. This task includes not only promoting social harmony and a certain level of material prosperity, but also thriving families and well-rounded human beings capable of full human flourishing. For this reason, philosophers such as Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, and Hooker have argued that the political community ought to teach virtue. If it does so, not only are the goods of harmony and prosperity easier to obtain, but also the citizens themselves achieve their fullest happiness.
The performance of this task undoubtedly weakens the ability of citizens to view themselves as independent judges disconnected from social norms, as Waldron wants. Postliberals wonder, however, whether citizens who view themselves in such an abstract way are capable of fully experiencing goods—such as marriage, parenthood, close friendship, and patriotic citizenship—that can only be obtained by immersing oneself in deep ties to others. It is no wonder that, in a maximally liberal society like 21st century America, divorce is rampant, fertility rates have plummeted, loneliness and suicide are increasingly common, and patriotism wanes.
[1] Jeremy Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 37, no. 147 (April 1987): 128.
[2] Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” 131.
[3] Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” 132.
[4] Daniel Klein and Daniel J. Mahoney “The Baby and the Bathwater,” Law & Liberty, August 23, 2022, https://lawliberty.org/the-baby-and-the-bathwater/.
[5] Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” 134.
[6] Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” 135.
[7] Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, 1.3 and 10.9.