[MLUG - DISCUSSION] political philosophy - Stanley Fish on liberalism

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Stanley Fish, well-known professor, has an NY Times blog.  Here's his 
latest:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/liberalism-and-secularism-one-and-the-same/

My comments:

It's Fish's pomo deconstruction of liberalism.  He essentially sees it as 
defining itself as intolerant of intolerance and extremely anti-extremist, 
but he isn't saying that liberalism is a bad thing.  He might be saying 
that liberalism is like other belief systems, including authoritarian and 
fundamentalist religious systems because in all of these systems there are 
core principles that cannot be questioned.  There is some truth in some of 
that, but if it could have been explained in plain and simple terms the 
idea would not have seemed all that impressive.

I have one central objection to his analysis.  He repeats a few times the 
claim that liberalism presents no vision of the good life because a core 
tenet of liberalism is that the individual is allowed to choose his vision 
of what is good.  But to me he is missing something there -- couldn't I 
say that Islamic fundamentalism has no vision of the good life because 
followers are allowed to choose which dressing to put on a salad, or what 
color of burqa to wear?  But Fish doesn't accuse Fundamentalist Islam of 
lacking a vision of the good life. The liberal vision of the good life is 
freedom from authoritarian dogma with resulting reduction in inter-group 
conflict and threat of warfare.  If acceptance becomes normative, we can 
better keep the peace, and peace should be a central feature of nearly 
anyone's vision of the good life (a few leaders might prefer constant 
warfare, but ask the people if the good life should include warfare).

Thinking along similar lines, liberalism has that one core principle of 
freedom of choice, even for non-liberals, with the proviso that one may 
not harm others.  Most religions have large numbers of rules for followers 
and liberalism accepts that -- a liberal can be religious.  The thing that 
is not acceptable to the liberal is a religion that espouses to force 
itself on non-followers, creating followers through some form of coercion 
or threat of violence, or even through the legal system -- the tyranny of 
the majority.  One might say that such religions are like liberalism in 
the sense that the liberal wishes to impose liberalism on religious 
authoritarians by force if needed. This is an incomplete and disingenous 
analysis.  If a religion attempts to impose itself on non-followers, 
liberalism would defend those non-followers, who may be of other 
authoritarian religions, from coercion.  Thus, liberalism defends all 
religions, even coercive authoritarian religions, against all other 
religions.  Liberalism is a defensive system.  Authoritarian religions use 
offensive systems of self-promotion.  When seen in this way, liberalism 
and authoritarian religions are not alike.  Fish wants all ideologies to 
be alike and he is thereby blinded from the obvious truth.

This reminds me of the Chinese government's response to human rights 
concerns expressed by the U.S. and other nations and organizations.  The 
Chinese government played the cultural-relativism card and said (I'm 
paraphrasing) "You don't understand China and the ways of the Chinese 
people.  This is our way and you should not interfere."  This response is 
absurd.  It is absurd because the international community is not trying to 
impose its views on the Chinese, it is merely trying to protect Chinese 
dissidents from an abusive Chinese government. The Chinese government 
claims that coercive authoritarianism is "the Chinese way," but many of 
the Chinese people obviously disagree and they are being tortured for 
doing so.

It would be interesting to hear Fish having a discussion with Leo Strauss. 
I think they would agree.  Too bad Strauss has been dead since 1973.

Mike

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