Episode 21: Raymond Geuss discusses political liberalism
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What does “political liberalism” actually mean and why is its definition so ambiguous?
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman.
And I'm Mark Hopwood.
With us today is Raymond Goyce, professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and he's here to talk with us about political liberalism. Raymond Goyce, welcome.
Hello, welcome.
In what sense are we using the term liberalism? What does political liberalism refer to?
I in general think it's important to take a historical approach to concepts and in particular a historical approach to ethical and political concepts. And I mean by that not that somehow you shouldn't think about the usefulness of those concepts, you shouldn't think about their validity in some sense, But in addition to analyzing them, analyzing our current usage and asking what use those concepts are, in addition to that, you should also think about the origins of these concepts and where they come from and their history. Because I think that it's neither the case that, as it were, in politics we start from nowhere and we can treat these concepts as if they came from nowhere and we can treat these concepts as if
They simply referred to whatever institutions we have around at the moment. That's not right. Nor is it right that they're simply historical things that have no internal logic and can't be evaluated. So I want very much to reject the dichotomy between analysis and history and to say, that there's nothing wrong with thinking that you can do both of those things together, and that means not allowing either one of them to be lost from sight. So in the case of liberalism, I think it's one of those concepts that now is used in such a wide variety of senses that it practically has no meaning at all. It's very, very hard to find someone who doesn't describe his or her position as in some sense liberal, just as it's very hard to find any regime in the world now that doesn't in some sense call itself democratic.
So the term has become so amorphous that it practically means nothing. And I think that's a big problem. difficulty with using it as a central way of thinking about our society and certainly it's a difficulty in using it as not just a central way of thinking about our society but as a normative concept that will direct us. I think concepts like that we have to try to get as clear about them as we can and we have to think about the sharp edges that they might have to the extent which they have such sharp edges and so I think it's very important not to take it for granted. If you think about it historically, it seems to me, you can see that the thing we call liberalism is the result of a long historical tradition in which a number of different components which originally were rather different from one another come together and come to seem to be naturally connected.
And I think this is in general the way in which a lot of history, the history of ideas works. Different things get put together and they get put together to form what seem to be natural or obvious units. And as they come to seem natural units, they secrete around themselves a certain kind of appearance of self-evidence. They seem to be obvious. And you can understand why that's the case. That's a good political strategy. It's a good political strategy if you have a certain position to try to convince people that the position is coherent and that the parts naturally hold together. So it's natural that somehow these political concepts will, politicians will cover over the discrepancies in the history of these things.
So, for example, democracy and liberalism. We think of democracy and liberalism as more or less the same sort of thing. But of course, liberalism is committed usually to some notion of toleration, some notion of the ability of individuals to make their own lives. And as you know, democracy originally had nothing to do with toleration. It had to do, in the Greek world, with the power of the community to do whatever it wanted to do, including, for example, ostracizing some individual on no grounds.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does “political liberalism” actually mean and why is its definition so ambiguous?
0:01–4:55
2
How does Geuss use a historical approach to reveal the multiple strands that form liberalism?
4:55–9:08
3
Why does Geuss argue that liberalism has become an amorphous, almost meaningless term?
9:08–12:26
4
What are the five historical strands (toleration, voluntariness, power‑fear, individualism, laissez‑faire) that compose modern liberalism?
12:26–15:51
5
Why does Geuss criticize the liberal emphasis on consensus as a political norm?
15:51–19:26
6
How does the concept of “neutrality” fail to provide substantive political guidance, according to Geuss?
19:26–22:54
7
What is the relationship between liberalism, hypocrisy, and the real‑world exercise of power?
22:54–27:09
8
How can art, literature, and poetic imagination help us rethink liberal politics and imagine alternatives?
27:09–32:26
Speakers
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