Two Faces of Liberalism

At one time, philosopher John Gray was a classical liberal who defended the view that negative liberty (freedom from) was the best value to organize a society around. Gray, though, was also well-acquainted with the work of philosophic historian Isaiah Berlin and his value pluralism - the view that "ultimate values" like liberty, equality, solidarity, etc may be real but, in the end, conflicting, neither being 'above' any other in a real way. This led classical liberal Gray to see a possible tension in liberalism: if Berlin is correct, than can negative liberty or any other value that classical liberalism sees as foundational REALLY be so, or might it/they simply be one value among many possible under which humans can flourish?And so we have this book, written in the throes of Gray's gradual move away from classical liberalism. Here, he defends Berlinian value pluralism and uses that to argue that political liberalism simply is not a neutral rule-set for how to live in civil society, but is as value-laden as any other way of life.First, the defense of value pluralism. When we say that ultimate values - liberty, equality, et al. - conflict, they do so in a few ways. First, liberty and equality (or equality and security, etc) may conflict between themselves such that more of one entails less of the other and that's that; individuals or societies can choose the trade-off they want to make, but there may be no real way to say which trade-off is 'correct' (outside of imagining an ideal, which is probably just the imaginer's preference). Second, liberty can conflict with itself in that a liberty of some may well equal a constraint of liberty for others (the liberty of parents may entail a constraint of liberty for their children; the liberty of you to do x MUST entail a restraint on others from doing anything to interfere with your doing of x; and so on). Lastly, there is no clear consensus on what 'liberty' or any other ultimate value means (does liberty mean 'freedom from,' 'autonomy enough to do' or another thing), and no seeming way to clarify what definition of liberty, et al. is the correct definition. As Gray writes, "Rights are conclusions, not foundations," meaning that any talk of ultimate values must appeal to interests, desires, wants, etc - rather than being talked about as abstract principles that have essential definitions. And as long as individuals desires, beliefs, etc, are varied, discussions about ultimate values will face clashes between people and peoples about which are most valuable and what each means in practice.The critique of liberalism is based on the above ideas about value pluralism. Liberals from Nozick to Rawls imagine that what is necessary, first and foremost, in organizing society is to determine the right - the rules of justice whereby we can resolve conflicts so as to live together. But, as trite as it might seem, any idea of the right depends on some conception of the good and since liberalism (thinks it is) silent on the latter - leaving people free to define the good life for themselves - laying down rules of justice doesn't really make sense. In other words, in order for Rawls to give his list of basic liberties that everyone should have in a liberal society, or in order for Nozick to talk about the primacy of a natural right to property and extract procedural justice from it, they must be operating on some idea of the best way to satisfy human needs, wants, desires, etc. But this is what liberals like Rawls and Nozick say they are not doing - to them, they are just laying down the neutral rules which allow everyone to go about their business.More basically, Nozickian property rights, Rawlsian "basic rights" et al. are not first principles, but are the results of highly bounded conventions that arose because the people they evolved through (or at least some of them) found these principles to be conducive to people's interests. Again, rights are conclusions, not premises; to talk of them, as liberals do, as preconditions for society rather than the outgrowths of society (and not inevitable outgrowths, but ones that some societies can justly care not to partake of) treats them as givens rather than always contestable and often contested.In the chapter "Rival Freedoms" Gray turns all of this back on a thinker he knows well - Isaiah Berlin. Berlin took value pluralism to bolster the idea that negative liberty - the right of each to be left alone - to be largely justifiable as the preferred social ordering rule. That is, if values my conflict and there is no objective way to order the good life, it is best for each to have the maximum freedom to order their own lives. But, Gray asks, might there also be many occasions where positive liberty can help people order their own lives better than negative liberty (when one has basic welfare rights, doesn't that increase their ability to order their lives?)? Negative liberty is not sacrosanct, says Gray, unless it somehow necessarily enhances humans' well-being.He also questions Joseph Raz's similar pluralistic philosophy, which Raz says justifies autonomy as a universal value. If each should be free to order their own lives, then surely guaranteeing each person autonomy is the best way to allow everyone to do that. Gray says not, and points out that there are many societies whose members flourish without granting individuals personal autonomy. Here, I think Gray is on shaky ground simply because I question whether, if each person doesn't have autonomy, you can really be sure that those people are flourishing and have well-being, or whether they are simply accepting a situation they would not were they autonomous. In other words, isn't defining whether or not a person is experiencing well-being at least partly about whether that person likes their situation enough to choose it over other possible situations, and if so, doesn't that REQUIRE autonomy? Otherwise, how can we be sure a person has well-being rather than simply staying in a situation they are forced to be in?The last chapter ends with a defense of a somewhat-Oakeshottean view of civil society. Under this view (that Gray calls "modus vivendi"), liberalism should aspire ONLY to create a minimal set of rules that allow various people and peoples to live together in peace. If they don't want autonomy, Nozickean property rights, Rawlsian basic rights, or any other liberal right that liberals think everyone should have, so be it. Just as long as there is some minimum set of rules for when differing people or peoples deal with each other, that should be what liberal theorizing aspires to.Two problems: first, it seems to me that this doesn't really distinguish from a view like Jan Narveson's anarchistic "let's all leave each other alone" social contract. (And as one who questions classical liberalism, I doubt Gray accepts this Narvesonian view). Second, I question whether or not there is a contradiction between liberlaism creating only a minimum set of rules for everyone to keep the peace, and liberalism's allowance of peoples to create more robust sets of within-culture rules, many of which may well certainly violate this minimum set of rules (if modus vivendi liberalism says "don't coerce," can it allow for a cultural practice that rests on coercion, as many do?)Be all this as it may, Gray is a very interesting thinker, and it is fun to watch a former classical liberal question whether classical liberalism (or liberalism generally) is the best way to order society in any universal sense. In later works, Gray gets crusty and pessimistic about practically everything. Here, in his Oakeshottean period, he is very fun to read and think about; not optimistic, not pessimistic, just real and interesting.

Gray has done everyone a great service by skewering the rights based liberal philosophy of thinkers like John Rawls. Though it seems that Gray (like most Anglo-Saxons) is unaware of the Continental critique (think Habermas), he still does a good job of making some readers aware of the Enlightenment project that seems to grip too many people. Luc Ferry does a better job of this in my mind because he nods to the critiques and tries to move towards a solution. Unfortunately it may be that Americans find his Frenchness offensive. In that case Gray's work here has opened the possibility of moving beyond the dialectic of enlightment (sorry Frankfurt School)and towards one of "modus vivendi". It also doesn't share the faults that his earlier book, "False Dawn" had, an overweening attempt to criticize without ever coming to some sort of solution.