After Liberalism?

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Liberalism and Its Future

   1. Frontmatter

   2. The Last Christian Settlement: A Defence and Critique, in Debate with Samuel Moyn

      John Milbank

      Abstract

      In the introductory essay, Milbank analyses the position of Samuel Moyn, professor of history and law at Yale University, on human rights and their relationship with Christianity, as presented in Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). The extraordinary interest of the first chapter lies in its sketch of the historical relationship between Christianity and the different political–economic positions originating in modernity. In the critical dialogue with Samuel Moyn, the value of the theological dimension and the autonomous or relational (or ontological-social) conception of human nature emerges. The question is also essential in the confrontation with Islam in Western democracies. The question about the future of liberalism is thus framed not only in the context of the latest academic debate, but also in the most urgent contemporary issues.

   3. The Politics of Purpose: Christian Alternatives to Liberalism and Populism

      Adrian Pabst

      Abstract

      The historical reconstruction by Milbank is followed by a thoughtful analysis of the present political situation by Adrian Pabst. Together, these two contributions communicate the core of the criticism of liberalism presented in the book The Politics of Virtue. Pabst shows the convergence towards a position that is anti-human from both opposite political sides, which unconsciously support and cause each other. The pars construens of the proposal is the return to the virtuous dimension of politics, understood from an Aristotelian perspective in its reference to the purpose which is human happiness. But this requires overcoming the anthropological reductionism of both individualism and collectivism. The relational dimension is thus invoked as the only possible path for a post-liberal future.

   4. Challenges for Post-liberalism: Can We Have a Politics of Virtue with God on the Bench?

      Brian Griffiths

      Abstract

      Brian Griffiths’ chapter presents a careful analysis of the book The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future by Milbank and Pabst together with a serious response to their criticism of liberalism. In a nutshell, the author discusses the claim that liberalism is in a meta-crisis by presenting both the complexity of the different versions of this doctrine and the inescapable relationship with surrounding culture. Many of the negative observations of Milbank and Pabst, according to Griffiths, can be traced back to this very background. There is therefore convergence on the existence of the crisis of liberalism, but at the same time, disagreement on the causes of this crisis as they are traced back to the cultural dimension external to liberalism itself. This is the essential point of divergence with the proposal of Milbank and Pabst, who consider intrinsic to liberalism itself those cultural elements, such as the libertarian drifts, which Griffiths considers external to it. Through a critique also of the civil economy approach, to which the authors of The Politics of Virtue refer as pars construens, Griffiths highlights the need for an authentically religious dimension, in order to avoid the negative drifts of liberalism itself. In this sense, the discussion on post-liberalism raises an authentically theological question, linked to the assumptions of the cultural context in which liberalism was developed and applied. This refers to what Pierpaolo Donati calls the theological matrix.

   5. Transliberalism: An Alternative to John Milbank and Adrian Pabst

      Martin Schlag

      Abstract

      Martin Schlag analyses the book The Politics of Virtue by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst. For Schlag, liberalism is not in a meta-crisis, even though it is in a deep crisis. For this reason, unlike Milbank and Pabst, Schlag denies that the only possible future is post-liberalism, because he believes that a purification from within the American tradition of liberal constitutionalism is possible, together with a transition to “transliberalism.” The question is, therefore, whether liberalism will have the strength to cure itself. The analysis in The Politics of Virtue is considered excessively negative, since it does not highlight the real progress that capitalism made possible historically compared to an exclusively agricultural economy. In a propositional key, Schlag points to the inherent limits of the Old Whig liberalism of the Enlightenment: the lack of heroic charity and the exclusion of the poor. As way forward, Schlag stresses the role of lay Christians in the middle of the world and the possibility that laypeople have to bring out from within the political-economic life itself the dimension of gift that founds our society even now. Unfortunately, secularism has overshadowed this element, but the negativity highlighted by Milbank and Pabst is not intrinsic to the American founding tradition of liberalism itself.

3. Relational Aspects

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Beyond the Lib/Lab Societal Order: Toward a Relational Society?

      Pierpaolo Donati

      Abstract

      Pierpaolo Donati’s chapter opens the second part of the volume, where he tries to overcome the dialectical opposition highlighted by the first contributions and explores the possibility of working at the cultural matrix level to explore the possibilities of future development of liberalism. Donati, in his careful analysis of the welfare state, shows how not only liberalism is in a meta-crisis, as Milbank and Pabst claim, but also highlights that this meta-crisis involves socialism too. This would be a consequence of the crisis of modernity from which the lib-lab model, i.e., the management of the welfare state based on the correction of market excess (lib) with the introduction of more control (lab) and vice versa, would have developed. The limit of this approach would be the closure on itself of the interaction between the market and the state regardless of the relationship with civil society and the family. Correction of this situation with the introduction of ethical elements at the cultural level, as suggested by Griffiths and Schlag, would be impossible, because the hyper-modern conception of society treats all sub-systems as autonomous, immunizing their relations from a reference to the common good. Donati’s proposal is to replace the dialectical opposition between state and market with a vision of society as a ‘relational complex’ between market, state, family and civil community. From this would arise a relational state and a relational economy, where the ‘well’ of the ‘welfare’ state would not be defined autonomously, but would be founded in the very relationality of the person and her lifeworld. The implementation of relational policies, capable of recognizing the economic value of the family and associations, would not oppose the market economic performance, but would treat the lib-lab trade-off as a particular mechanism. Money would no longer be the end of the economic process, but only a means for the production of relational goods. The transition desired and pointed out by Donati would mark the passage from a hyper-modern society to a transmodern relational society, in which the current crisis of a liberalism forced to remain in the lib-lab dialectic could be overcome by reconfiguring society from the point of view of a relational trans-liberalism.

   3. Oikos. Or the Man-Woman Relationship in the Frame of an Integral Ecology

      Fabrice Hadjadj

      Abstract

      Fabrice Hadjadj’s phenomenological approach shows the relevance of the relational proposal from the anthropological perspective. His chapter discusses in a masterful way the economic role of the relationship between man and woman, highlighting the role that this relationship has for an ecological conception that is not merely romantic, but authentically realistic and effective. Without a home (oikos), the relationship between man and woman cannot develop. For this reason, the future of the world depends on caring for a space that allows the times and spaces of love, which, being generative, can change the world. With great acumen, Hadjadj observes that a mother never gives birth to an iPhone, but that Steve Jobs’ mother gave birth to the founder of the company that produces it. The argument is based simultaneously on the analysis of our present time as mirrored in contemporary literature and classical thought. Without romantic and utopian nostalgia for the past, the author shows a connection that today is absolutely absent from the common narrative, highlighting the value for the real economy of the relationship between man and woman.

   4. Christian Humanism: Fatherhood, Economics, and Relational Ontology

      Giulio Maspero

      Abstract

      In continuity with the first two chapters of the second part, Giulio Maspero’s thesis is that the cultural dimensions to which one must turn in order to find the reasons for the meta-crisis of both liberalism and socialism, highlighted by Donati, are metaphysics and anthropology, specifically the relationship between modernity and fatherhood. The chapter is divided into two parts: The first offers a philosophical–theological narrative that links three main metaphysical systems to different understandings of the role of the father in the societies characterized by those ontological frames. A sketch of the differences implied for the socioeconomic perspectives by these relationships in the cases of Ancient Greek, Jewish, and Christian cultures as follows. In the second part, three phenomenological analyses in very different research fields are presented: René Girard’s work on myths and sacrifice, Michael Tomasello’s cognitive approach to the relational specificity of the human being, and Pierpaolo Donati’s relational sociology. These different approaches seem to converge toward an acknowledgment of the value of relation. This may explain the real difference between two kinds of markets: one characterized by pure competition and imitation, as in consumerism, another marked by the possibility of a true ontological novelty thanks to the relational element. Christian humanism has produced great progress through the latter approach, made possible by Trinitarian revelation. But this means that there is no freedom without relations and no fraternity without a father, who takes care of these relations. So the future of liberalism depends on the concrete ability to develop a culture that makes fathers grow. In this sense, it seems urgent to become aware of the importance of Christian Humanism, with the Trinitarian ontology and anthropology that characterize it, as secularization is corroding the foundations of this possibility, thus exposing us to the real danger of an economic apocalypse.

   5. Post-modernity and Relational Anthropology

      Ilaria Vigorelli

      Abstract

      The chapter by Ilaria Vigorelli is a follow-up to the previous one and revisits the theme of fatherhood, economics, and metaphysics from the perspective of post-modernity. Freedom is the main focus of the chapter, highlighted by the contributions of Byung-Chul Han and Nietzsche’s heritage. The main question is how freedom is linked to the different forms of fatherhood, to different economic systems, and to different metaphysical frames. Is freedom always positive or can it become destructive? What is the relationship between limitations and ends from this perspective? The Nietzschean notion of patricide is critically examined on the basis of its effect on human and social freedom. The theological and philosophical concept of the analysis is relationship and how it is read in the post-modern context.

4. Backmatter