Liberalism

The Emergence of Liberalism

Western genealogies of liberalism trace the idea back to the aftermath of the religious wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which periodically disrupted the entire social fabric of western Europe from the mid1500s to the mid-1600s. The liberal ideal of toleration grew from the recognition that religious intolerance and the violent conflicts it bred were serious threats to social order. The “Letter Concerning Toleration” (1689) by the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) is one of the seminal documents of the liberal tradition, and the humane French skeptic Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592) also deserves mention as a notable precursor. For these Christian thinkers, the toleration of diverse religious viewpoints follows logically from the New Testament ideal of charity. Toleration, they believed, could also serve as a private corrective to public misuses of violence in the name of religion. In hoping to minimize violence, cruelty, and persecution, Locke proposed one of the early arguments for the separation of church and state, and his ideas on this issue famously influenced Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and the other designers of the U.S. Constitution.

This emphasis on the avoidance of cruelty persists in the later liberal tradition, notably in the works of the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and, more recently, in those of the Latvian American [Page 853]philosopher Judith Shklar (1928–1992) and the American philosopher Richard Rorty (b. 1931).

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such thinkers as the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), and the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) articulated an ideal of human development that became central to modern liberalism. They advocated not just the toleration of diverse opinions, beliefs, and ways of life, but also the appreciation of diversity as a good in itself. This new phase in the genealogy of liberalism stressed the importance of self-realization and “authenticity”—the need for human development to proceed according to individuals' unique personal laws, needs, and ideals rather than society's traditions, norms, and opinions.

Although nonliberals also worried about the tyrannies of social influence, the classic statement of liberalism during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is that of John Stuart Mill. In the relatively nonviolent social context of Victorian England, Mill viewed public opinion as the most serious threat to individual liberty and self-realization. Taking cues from both Humboldt and Tocqueville, Mill wrote On Liberty (1859) as a protest against the period's conformism and censoriousness. Mill argued that, by erasing difference and diversity, public opinion enforces assimilation, perpetuates mediocrity, and hinders “the free development of individuality” (Mill 2002, p. 58). Genius and originality can thrive only in a climate of freedom, which nourishes not only toleration but also an appreciation for diversity in opinions, tastes, and behaviors.

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