During my latest trip to Weimar I found myself in front of a group of Nietzsche sculptures. Trust me when I say that the guy staring at you is not endearing at all. Though it did motivate me to finally write this piece, which I’ve been putting off forever.
For the past two years I’ve been writing about delayed adulthood, the loneliness and socialisation crisis, and cultural predictions. Yet as a liberal I’ve never fully outlined my “solution” to our current problems. My best friends have heard all of this over drinks, but this is my attempt to articulate what I think should come next.
What’s the struggle with liberalism?
Even those who are against liberalism know how much progress liberalism has brought. Economic flourishing, social equality, technological progress and an increase in individual freedom.
That being said, I won’t turn a blind eye to our current problems. I think many liberals make the mistake of justifying our contemporary shortcomings by pointing out our previous wins. Yet life never stands still; we either progress or decline. Progress can only be maintained by continuing to solve problems.
This raises the question: is progress inherently good? My answer would be that if the framework is based on human flourishing, then progress is overall good. Progress isn’t good simply because something is newer. It is good when it expands the possibilities for human beings to live better lives.
By liberalism here I mean the broader political and cultural tradition centred around individual liberty, legal equality, voluntary association and scepticism towards coercive authority. I am not referring to every contemporary economic policy or cultural development that happens to exist within a liberal society.
Critics of liberalism usually circle around three main topics: loss of meaning, isolation and inequality. While I can agree with parts of these criticisms, such as Deneen’s idea that liberalism can structurally lead to an undermining of freedom, I don’t see these outcomes as inherent or immutable features of liberalism.
In the progression of liberalism, we started from negative liberties, as in being free from coercion, and moved towards positive liberties which recognised that freedom also requires resources and conditions for personal flourishing. When we contrast this political and historical development in the Western world with what was previously established, it naturally led to the corrosion of some of the previously established cultural structures.
However, it would be an exaggeration to accept liberalism as the hegemonic cultural atmosphere across the world, particularly over the last 100 years. I would argue liberalism won because it worked. Liberal economic paradigms became enormously influential, liberal urban hubs produce culture and therefore have enormous cultural influence, and liberal political institutions became dominant across much of the world. We live in a predominantly liberal paradigm.
All that being said, this doesn’t mean liberalism has been accepted and practiced with all of its values throughout the globe. Different societies have combined liberal institutions with very different cultural, religious and political traditions. Pinning contemporary problems entirely on liberalism therefore severely misses the point.
The hard truth first: liberalism never promised economic equality. It promised prosperity and equality before the law. It is better for some to be richer than everyone to struggle, provided that people have meaningful opportunities and are treated as political and legal equals. The main tenets of liberalism are based on legal and political equality, rather than equality of outcome.
This doesn’t mean inequality is irrelevant. Poverty, lack of opportunity and economic exclusion can obviously undermine human flourishing. But I don’t think equality itself should become the ultimate objective. If the framework is human flourishing, equality is valuable where it contributes to that flourishing, not simply because equality exists.
On global poverty, there has also been enormous progress. The World Bank estimates that the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell from roughly 38% in 1990 to around 9% before the pandemic. These gains matter and shouldn’t be dismissed simply because contemporary inequality remains a legitimate concern.
But this isn’t where my real concern lies.
What really intrigues me is isolation and loss of meaning because, in all fairness, these sound like the more serious claims.
For the past three years I’ve been intensely researching and working on the loneliness crisis, particularly in youth. When I look at the data, hear out individuals and look at the wider experience, I can see how the crisis can be partly attributed to the conditions created by liberal modernity. I don’t think it would be intellectually honest to claim that liberalism alone caused it. Technology, urbanisation, economic pressures, changing family structures and the decline of traditional institutions all play a role.
But liberalism can create conditions in which atomisation becomes easier.
After all, as liberals we stand for individual values and choices triumphing over coercively imposed collective ones. This can lead to the misunderstanding that we desire atomism and social anomie.
I call this a misunderstanding because another liberal concept we stand by is spontaneous order.
Spontaneous order emerges when individuals interact and create wider webs which lead to self-organisation. Social structures can emerge from voluntary association, cooperation and repeated interaction without being designed or imposed from above.
This is important because individualism does not necessarily mean atomism.
A liberal society can contain families, friendships, communities, traditions, professional associations, religious groups and countless other forms of belonging. The difference is that these relationships do not have to be imposed simply because they are traditional or socially expected.
Spontaneous order is therefore not an argument that social cohesion will automatically emerge. It is an argument that social cohesion does not need to be imposed from above.
This is also why I don’t think liberalism inherently desires social anomie. The problem is that liberalism can weaken some of the structures that previously produced social cohesion without necessarily replacing their social function.
One example of this is morality. While you can argue for moral relativism, most people would still argue for some type of moral benchmark, which is usually formed by the group we belong to or the people we are surrounded by. The fact that something is socially formed does not mean that its value is determined solely by social approval.
And this is where the problem of meaning becomes more difficult.
The Problem of Meaning
I think loss of meaning is the most valid criticism of liberalism.
When we can’t extract meaning from established orders such as family, religion or nation, it becomes exponentially more difficult for an individual to generate meaning alone. Meaning is usually the driver and engine of human life and flourishing.
The liberal achievement was to give individuals greater freedom to decide what their lives should mean.
The unresolved problem is that freedom does not automatically tell us what to do with it.
This is the tension I am interested in.
Traditional structures provided people with ready-made sources of meaning. Some of those structures were oppressive and deserved to be challenged. Liberalism was right to challenge them.
But when we remove an established source of meaning, we don’t automatically replace its psychological and social function.
The answer therefore cannot simply be a return to the old structures. We should not force people back into a particular family structure, religion or nation simply because those structures once provided meaning. Nor should we pretend that their disappearance has no consequences.
The question is whether we can create new forms of meaning without imposing a new comprehensive system of meaning from above.
My answer is yes.
But doing so requires taking individual development and voluntary sociality much more seriously.
Flourishing with Virtuous Hedonism
One of the main criticisms about the liberal and particularly cosmopolitan lifestyle is that it’s based on senseless hedonism, short-term gratification and a lack of virtue. An abundance of goods and opportunities can naturally lead to this, but consumption alone does not satisfy the underlying human needs and potential.
As liberals, we stand for development, but this should also mean personal flourishing through using and expanding our capacities. Development shouldn’t only mean economic or technological development.
Here a distinction is necessary.
Do we use goods and opportunities to expand our capacities and the confines of ourselves, or do we collapse into a comfort zone and indulge in escapism?
This is why I talk about flourishing with virtuous hedonism.
It’s important to contrast rigid systems which force virtues upon society at the expense of the individual and erase the self. But the opposite extreme doesn’t work either. If freedom becomes nothing more than the ability to consume, pursue stimulation and avoid discomfort, then we end up with a very shallow version of freedom.
The virtues we practice should deepen our capacity for pleasure, freedom and well-being while leading to self-actualisation.
This is not about prescribing a single way of life. It is about recognising that some capacities make us better able to pursue whatever conception of the good life we choose.
Honour is a social technology
A couple of years back I read Why Honor Matters by Tamler Sommers. Unfortunately, the read was a disappointment on many accounts, including what I saw as a lack of attention to gender and power dynamics as well as a romantic outlook on societies which practice honour.
The truth is honour is a social technology. It keeps the social facade functioning by regulating behaviour through recognition, reputation and shame. But this doesn’t necessarily make it good.
In many societies, honour is deeply intertwined with hierarchy. It can become particularly oppressive towards minorities and women because maintaining honour often means maintaining the social order itself. It keeps and polishes the status quo rather than challenging the power hierarchies underneath it.
This is inherently incompatible with liberalism since having power scepticism should be a modus operandi for most liberals. If a social norm exists primarily because it protects existing hierarchies, the fact that it is traditional or socially respected should not be enough to justify it.
It’s crucial for us to have the distinction between honour and virtue.
Honour is social while virtue is about excellence.
A person can be honoured by their community for conforming perfectly to its expectations while lacking the qualities necessary for human flourishing. Conversely, a person can exercise a virtue that their society does not recognise at all.
Virtue can be socially transmitted without deriving its value simply from social approval.
That distinction is important because if we are looking for new sources of meaning, I don’t want to replace liberalism with a return to honour-based society. I want to ask whether we can cultivate virtue without demanding conformity.
Virtuous Hedonism
It’s easy to treat virtue and pleasure as opposites. I don’t think they are.
Immediate gratification is temporary, and a life built primarily around chasing the next gratification can easily become frustrating and empty. But this isn’t because pleasure is bad. It is because not all pleasures are equal, and some of the deepest pleasures require investment.
Everything worth having in life does not necessarily come easily, but many of the things that give life enduring value require time, effort and self-expansion. Family, achievement, wealth, friends and love.
The self-expansion is where I expect virtuousness to take place.
When the self directs its focus towards a goal or pleasure, virtuousness is the quality it exercises to achieve it.
Discipline allows us to achieve things we otherwise couldn’t. Courage allows us to take risks. Patience allows us to build things that cannot be built immediately. Curiosity expands what we can understand. Vulnerability makes deeper intimacy possible.
These aren’t virtues simply because society rewards us for possessing them.
They are virtues because they expand what we are capable of doing and experiencing.
Moreover, certain excellences can bring greater pleasures and freedoms into one’s life.
Friendship requires becoming someone capable of friendship. Love requires vulnerability and commitment. Achievement requires discipline. Intellectual pleasure requires curiosity and effort. A rich life requires developing the capacities that allow us to experience it.
You don’t become a good friend by trying to maximise the pleasure you receive from friendship. You become a good friend by developing the capacity to give, understand, listen and remain present. The pleasure follows from the quality of the relationship.
The same applies to almost everything worth having.
Virtue, in this sense, isn’t the enemy of pleasure. It is one of its conditions.
And this is where I think liberalism can offer something different from both traditionalism and contemporary consumerism.
Traditionalism can tell us what virtues we are supposed to have.
Consumerism can tell us what pleasures we are supposed to want.
Virtuous hedonism instead asks: what kind of person do I need to become to experience the life I actually want?
Kein Übermensch
Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch dominated the media and pop-thinkers for quite a while now. As an idea to toy with, it’s great, but when push comes to shove, the idea of the Übermensch can become as inhibitory to human flourishing as any other ideal of the perfect human.
I don’t mean that Nietzsche literally proposed a top-down social system. My concern is what happens when an ideal human type becomes a prescription for what individuals ought to be.
The problem isn’t having ideals.
The problem is turning an ideal into a template.
I don’t think we need to replace the old moral structures with a new one. That would simply recreate the problem in a different form. Liberalism should not tell people what kind of person they have to become. It should give them the freedom and the conditions to become someone.
This is where I think liberalism has an unfinished project.
Negative liberty gave us freedom from coercion. Positive liberty recognised that freedom also requires certain material conditions. But neither answers the question of what we actually do with that freedom.
A person can be free from coercion, materially comfortable and surrounded by endless opportunities, yet still be lonely, purposeless and unable to form meaningful relationships.
That is not an argument against freedom.
It is an argument for taking freedom more seriously.
If liberalism is fundamentally concerned with human flourishing, then flourishing cannot mean merely having more choices. It must also mean having the capacity to use those choices well.
This is where virtue becomes important.
Not virtue as obedience to tradition.
Not virtue as social conformity.
And certainly not virtue as honour.
Virtue as excellence: the development of capacities that allow us to experience more, create more, love more deeply and pursue things that are difficult but worthwhile.
The liberal response to the crisis of meaning therefore cannot simply be a return to rigid collective identities. We should not force people back into a particular family structure, religion, nation or conception of gender simply because those structures once provided meaning.
Nor should we pretend that their disappearance has no psychological or social consequences.
The alternative is to create a culture where meaning can emerge without being prescribed.
That means taking voluntary association seriously. It means creating spaces where people can form friendships and communities without requiring everyone to share the same identity. It means respecting commitment, discipline and long-term projects without turning them into obligations imposed from above.
Most importantly, it means making individualism more demanding rather than abandoning it.
The liberal project should not be to produce the same kind of person.
It should be to create people capable of becoming more than they currently are, while remaining free to decide what that means.
Liberalism doesn’t have to provide a single answer to the question of how to live. It should, however, create the conditions in which people have the freedom, relationships and capacities necessary to seriously ask the question.
Perhaps this is what comes after the politics of liberation: not another system telling us who to be, but a culture that takes seriously what we can become.
We don’t need an Übermensch.
We need people capable of self-overcoming without being told what their final form should be.
The task isn’t to return to the old order.
It’s to build something worth being free for.
References
- Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (2018)
- Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
- Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
- Tamler Sommers, Why Honor Matters (2018)
- John Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993)
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)
- World Bank, Poverty and Shared Prosperity / global extreme poverty data
- Richard E. Lucas, “Adaptation and the Set-Point Model of Subjective Well-Being” (2007)
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