Liberalism and its Discontents summary. This is a 4 page summary of Francis Fukuyamas 'Liberalism and its discontents: the challenges from the left and the right.' Essentially, Fukuyama talks about how liberal democracy is under attack, he describes what liberalism and liberal democracies are and...
Liberalism and its discontents: the challenges from the left and the right.
Francis Fukuyama 05 Oct 2020
- 1: Today, there is a broad consensus that liberal democracy is under attack or in
retreat, what is really under greatest threat is the liberal component
- The liberal part refers to a rule of law that constrains the power of government and
requires that even the most powerful actors in the system operate under the same
general rules as ordinary citizens. Liberal democracies have a constitutional system
of checks and balances that limits the power of elected leaders.
- Democracy is being challenged by authoritarian states like Russia and China that
manipulate/dispense free and fair elections. But the more insidious threat arises from
populists within existing liberal democracies who are using the legitimacy they gain
through their electoral mandates to challenge or undermine liberal institutions.
- The underlying discontent of the demos essentially enables populists: they are riding
a wave of discontent with some of the underlying characteristics of liberal societies
- What Liberalism was:
- Classical liberalism is an institutional solution/system for peacefully managing
diversity in pluralistic societies, arose in response to prostetant laws
- 2: While Europe’s religious wars were driven by economic and social factors,
different Christian sects wanted to impose their particular interpretation of religious
doctrine on their populations= forbidden sects were persecuted
- The founders of modern liberalism like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke sought to
preserve life, since diverse populations could not agree on what the good life was.
- The most fundamental principle is tolerance: citizens don’t have to agree, but each
individual should decide what important things are for themselves without
interference from you or the state. The limits of tolerance are reached when the
principle itself is challenged, or when citizens resort to violence to get their way.
- liberalism was a pragmatic tool for resolving conflicts in diverse societies.
- Final ends are moved into private life; if your individual means to and end are brought
into public life, its exclusionary for those who are different, so if diverse societies like
India or the US move away from liberal principles and try to base national identity on
race, ethnicity, or religion= violence
- How liberalism is perceived in the contemporary moment: deeper understanding,
liberalism is a means of protecting fundamental human dignity
- The ground of human dignity has shifted over time.
- Enlightenment: the capacity for choice or individual autonomy was given a secular
form by thinkers like Rousseau (“perfectibility”) and Kant (a “good will”), and became
the ground for the modern understanding of the fundamental right to dignity
- Liberalism recognizes the equal dignity of every human being by granting them rights
that protect individual autonomy based on their capacity for individual choice.
- Liberalism protects diversity by deliberately not specifying higher goals of human life.
- universalism: liberals care about rights of others outside their particular communities.
- 3:The French Revolution was a vehicle of the rights of man across Europe
- major arguments among liberals were over who qualified as rights-bearing
individuals, with various groups excluded.
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