It views autonomy and self-determination through the cultivation of the inner self as the highest good. Expressive individualism, enabled by the ever-expanding state, is the logical outcome of liberalism’s atomised conception of the individual. Anglo-American law and culture in particular have, over time, become oriented to an anthropology of expressive individualism. The individualism of Hobbes, Locke and their descendants is utilitarian, designed to maximise autonomy and choice through self-interest and security. The familial, local and national ties of mutual loyalty are abstracted away in a placeless, timeless, universal nowhere. Individual rationality and knowledge are therefore sufficient for social and political formation, while experience and tradition are irrelevant. He defines the goal of life and politics as pursuing life, liberty and property in a world of transactions based on consent, derived from universally valid principles accessible to individual reason. Hobbes was followed by John Locke, who argues in his Second Treatise of Government that individuals are born in “perfect” freedom and equality. The 17th century thinker Thomas Hobbes laid the groundwork for liberalism when he removed any sense of the transcendent from playing a central role in human affairs, arguing that individuals gathered together and consented to the force of an overwhelming sovereign Leviathan to put an end to our inherently brutish state. Conservatism accords with reality, with our embodied nature, and enables flourishing through the common life.įamilial, local and national ties are abstracted away in a universal nowhere.Liberalism creates an unreal, and therefore harmful, view of the world that’s inimical to the common life lived in harmony with our social nature. Liberalism’s core tenets are detached from reality.With this in mind, let’s lay out three core propositions, and go through them one by one: While conservatives can also be prone to partisan fictions, my central argument is that liberalism as a philosophy is based in fantasy, disconnected from our human reality, creating a world that’s inimical to the common life. This is the crux of the issue: liberalism is just as unreal. The ghost-land of the digital realm is a poor substitute for real-world interaction, for the internet is a dreamworld.
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