You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
Introduction
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
Liberalism
In this course, Professor Jeremy Jennings (King’s College, London) provides an overview of Liberalism from its origins to the present day. In the first module, we provide a broad introduction to liberalism as a political philosophy, focusing in particular on its origins in the sixteenth century and its evolution between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. In the second module, we look more closely at the development of liberalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, focusing in particular on the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Mary Wollstonecraft. In the third module, we think about the contribution to liberalism of John Stuart Mill, before turning in the fourth module to the application of liberalism to the economic sphere. In the fifth module, we think about the emergence of new liberalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, focusing especially on the work of John Maynard Keynes, J. A. Hobson, and Leonard Hobhouse, before turning in the sixth module to consider the development of liberalism in the post-war period and the works of Raymond Aron, Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin and (especially) Friedrich Hayek. Finally, in the seventh module, we focus on one of the most important work of political philosophy in the last fifty years – John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
Introduction
In this module, we provide an broad introduction to liberalism as a political philosophy, focusing in particular on: (i) the historical context for the rise of liberalism; (ii) the difficulty of finding a single definition of liberalism; (iii) some of the key concerns in liberal political discourse, e.g. liberty, rights, the rule of law, etc. (iv) the changing fortunes of liberalism as a political ideology between the 19th and 21st centuries; (v) the ideological opponents of liberalism.
Hello.
00:00:05My name is Jeremy Jennings. I'm
00:00:06a professor at King's College London.
00:00:07And today, I want to talk to you about the history
00:00:09of liberalism.
00:00:11I want to begin by giving you a few general ideas
00:00:13about liberalism so that you can frame
00:00:17what is going to come next.
00:00:19The origins of liberalism are found deep in European history.
00:00:22It is specifically European history,
00:00:25probably going back to Rome, the earliest sort
00:00:27of Christian period and so on.
00:00:29A simple way of explaining why liberalism emerged when it did
00:00:32is to say that it's very, very much a response to--
00:00:37it was very much a response to the emerging
00:00:40religious pluralism and diversity, which caused
00:00:45the wars of religion in Europe.
00:00:49And somehow or other, they had to be brought to an end.
00:00:51And liberalism was a response to that.
00:00:53Natural words liberal and liberalism,
00:00:57however, do not appear until the early 19th century.
00:01:00In 1899, we know that in Sweden, there was established a Liberal
00:01:04Party.
00:01:07And something like that also appeared in Spain
00:01:08around that time.
00:01:11So it's very difficult to talk about liberals and liberalism
00:01:13before the 19th century.
00:01:16The word itself has had a variety of different meanings.
00:01:19So for example, if you would talk
00:01:26about liberals and liberalism in the United States,
00:01:27that would be seen as being something
00:01:29on the left of the political agenda.
00:01:31In Britain when we talk about liberals and liberalism,
00:01:33we think that's the middle of the political agenda, the sort
00:01:36of moderates and so on.
00:01:38In France, on the other hand, liberalism
00:01:39tends to be seen as being right wing.
00:01:42The other thing is that what we mean--
00:01:45everywhere what we mean by liberals and liberalism
00:01:48has changed over time.
00:01:51And it's changed partly because of the debates which
00:01:52liberals have had about the things which matter most
00:01:55to them.
00:01:59Now what I want to do now is just
00:02:00mention a few of the general themes
00:02:02which you find in liberal political discourse
00:02:05in which liberals have debated during this time.
00:02:09Most importantly, of course, is that liberals
00:02:14tend to believe that liberty or freedom is
00:02:17the most important thing that we should strive for.
00:02:20So when liberals are faced with the choice between freedom
00:02:23and/or justice or freedom and equality,
00:02:26liberals will tend to choose liberty or freedom.
00:02:29Of course, that begs the question,
00:02:33what do we mean by liberty?
00:02:35What do we mean by freedom?
00:02:36But freedom is absolutely central to what
00:02:38liberals believe in.
00:02:40Life without liberty is not a life worth living.
00:02:41Liberals have also tended to believe that we as individuals
00:02:46possess rights, civil rights, civil rights for example
00:02:51to things like religious toleration, freedom of speech,
00:02:56and so on.
00:02:59But again, there's been a big debate
00:03:00about what those rights are and where those rights come from.
00:03:02In addition to civil rights, we can
00:03:06talk about political rights, we can talk about economic rights,
00:03:07we can talk about sexual rights, and so on.
00:03:10So that's been a big issue of debate.
00:03:12Following on from that liberals also
00:03:15tend to believe or to have tended to believe
00:03:17in constitutional government.
00:03:19The idea that if you're going to have a government,
00:03:21it should be a government which obeys
00:03:23certain set of known rules.
00:03:26Why is that important?
00:03:28It's important because liberals, one of the things liberals fear
00:03:30is arbitrary government, the abuse of power by governments.
00:03:33This is a famous quotation.
00:03:38First, liberal Lord Acton who said all power
00:03:41corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
00:03:44So liberals are very keen to have constitutional government.
00:03:48Again, part and parcel of that is the idea
00:03:52that society should adhere to what's called the rule of law
00:03:55so that all of us, all individuals in society
00:03:59will know what their rights are and will
00:04:02know that their rights will be recognized and protected.
00:04:03Follows on from this, the liberals
00:04:09have also tended to believe in what we usually
00:04:11describe as limited government.
00:04:13That's to say they start from the assumption
00:04:16that things are best done by individuals rather
00:04:19than by governments.
00:04:22Now we will see in the course of these discussions
00:04:23that that's been a big area for discussion amongst liberals.
00:04:28And over time, liberals have come
00:04:32to accept a greater role for the state, greater
00:04:34role for government.
00:04:37But it's important to understand why that happens.
00:04:38Liberals have also tended to believe
00:04:42in what is usually described as the benefits of the markets.
00:04:44The commercial society capitalism as it's
00:04:47come to be known.
00:04:50They tend to believe that the best
00:04:51way to distribute resources in a society
00:04:53is to leave that up to the market
00:04:57and leave it up to the mechanisms of supply and demand
00:04:59and so on.
00:05:04Again, that is inspired by the intuition
00:05:04that governments, when they interfere,
00:05:09tend to get things wrong.
00:05:11But again, that has been a subject of major debate.
00:05:12Liberals also tend to share an attitude of what
00:05:17we might call moral skepticism.
00:05:20They tend not to be dogmatic about what they believe.
00:05:22They tend not to believe that a set of dogmatic truths exist.
00:05:25Again, the difficulty there is the charge leveled
00:05:30against liberals is that they endorse a sort of relativism
00:05:34or a sort of moral indifference, selfishness on all
00:05:38of those sorts of things.
00:05:42And again, that is something that liberals have
00:05:43had to deal with over time.
00:05:47Now, it's important to realize that liberalism, as I said,
00:05:50it sort of emerges really as an identifiable movement,
00:05:53an identifiable idea at the beginning of the 19th century.
00:05:56It's important to realize that the 19th century was really
00:06:00the liberal centrists, in the 19th century that we have
00:06:03in a sense the best books on liberalism are written
00:06:07and where liberalism as a political movement
00:06:10was probably at its strongest.
00:06:13If you know anything about British political history,
00:06:14you know about Gladstone, the great prime minister
00:06:17of the 19th century, Gladstone was a liberal, very important
00:06:20political figure of his day.
00:06:25And that was echoed elsewhere in Europe.
00:06:26So liberalism is very much a 19th century movement.
00:06:29It starts to really struggle in the 20th century
00:06:32when we see the emergence of mass politics.
00:06:35Again, this is something that liberals are going
00:06:37to be very concerned about.
00:06:39We'll see liberals have a very ambivalent attitude
00:06:41towards democracy and the power of the masses.
00:06:44So liberalism very much both politically and intellectually
00:06:47goes on the defensive in the 19th century.
00:06:51As we might see at the end of these discussions,
00:06:54I think there's very much a reaction now
00:06:57against liberalism.
00:07:00The view is very much that liberalism is in decline,
00:07:01Western liberalism is very, very much in decline.
00:07:04It's also important to realize that from the beginning,
00:07:07liberalism has faced a whole series
00:07:10of ideological opponents.
00:07:12And these come from the left and the right.
00:07:15The left of course has been able to characterize liberalism
00:07:19very easily as the sort of ideology
00:07:22of the capitalist classes, the ideology of the bourgeoisie.
00:07:26This is an ideology which suits their interests precisely
00:07:29because it enables them to become rich and not
00:07:32concern themselves about the welfare of the workers.
00:07:36This is actually a misconception.
00:07:39But this has been a standard criticism of liberalism
00:07:41that it's a sort of an ideology of the unrestrained market
00:07:45exploitation and so on.
00:07:49A recent manifestation of this or the latest manifestation
00:07:51of this is just putting those three letters NEO
00:07:54before liberalism to produce neoliberalism,
00:07:57which is generally associated with all the inequities
00:08:00of global capitalism.
00:08:04But liberalism has also been criticized from the right
00:08:06as well, and partly because the right conservatives tend
00:08:10to believe in authority, they tend to believe in tradition,
00:08:14they tend to believe in custom, and so on.
00:08:17And they see liberalism very, very much
00:08:19as an ideology, which is corrosive
00:08:22of the natural order, the natural hierarchy of society.
00:08:25And that's been a criticism of liberalism,
00:08:30which we've had very, very much from the beginnings
00:08:32of the 19th century onwards.
00:08:35So liberalism is very much seen as the enemy
00:08:37by both the left and the right.
00:08:39Now what we're going to do next is
00:08:43look in more detail at the origins
00:08:45of liberal political thinking.
00:08:49
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jennings, J. (2020, February 11). Liberalism - Introduction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/liberalism/introduction-5e7a8660-a6a3-445f-a451-77e9161d5068
MLA style
Jennings, J. "Liberalism – Introduction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 11 Feb 2020, https://massolit.io/courses/liberalism/introduction-5e7a8660-a6a3-445f-a451-77e9161d5068