John Gray - Liberalisms : essays in political philosophy

Liberalisms, a work first published in 1989, provides a coherent and comprehensive analytical guide to liberal thinking over the past century and considers the dominance of liberal thought in Anglo-American political philosophy over the past 20 years. John Gray assesses the work of all the major liberal political philosophers including J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, F. A. Hayek, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and explores their mutual connections and differences.

Essays in Political Philosophy

John Gray

First published in 1989

by Routledge

This edition first published in 2010 by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1989 John Gray

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-56375-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-09262-0 (ebk)

ISBN 10: 0-415-56375-5 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-09262-7 (ebk)

The aim of this collection is to give a coherent and comprehensive analytical guide to liberal thinking over the past century and, more particularly, to consider the dominance of liberal thought in Anglo-American political philosophy over the past twenty years. It focuses on two fundamental questions about liberalism what it is, and how it might be given a rational foundation. All of the essays seek to distinguish and assess the varieties of liberalisms which have prevailed in Anglophone political philosophy over the past century and to investigate how each of these might be justified. Accordingly, virtually all the major liberal political philosophers are examined including J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, F.A. Hayek, John Rawls and Robert Nozick and their mutual connections and differences explored.

Given the liberal dominance of recent political philosophy, and the author's own contributions to its revival, his conclusion, that the liberal perspective has no privileged claim on reason, should interest all students of political thought.

John Gray is a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. This collection was prepared for publication by the author during a period of residence as Distinguished Research Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

Essays in Political
Philosophy

John Gray

First published 1989
by Routledge
Reprinted 1990
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

New in Paperback 1991

1989 John Gray

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gray, John, 1948 Nov 5

Liberalisms: Essays in Political
Philosophy
1. Political ideologies: Liberalism
I. Title
320.51
ISBN 0-415-07136-4

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gray, John, 1948

Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy
Bibliography: p.

Includes index.
1. Liberty. 2. Liberalism. I. Title.

JC585.G736 1989 323.44. 8836390
ISBN 0415071364

This collection, which begins and ends with a paper on J.S. Mill, contains a dozen essays, written over as many years, together with a new postscript written specially for this volume. The essays collected here were neither written nor selected haphazardly. They embody a single project, pursued continuously over the period in which they were written the project of defining liberalism and giving it a foundation. The enterprise ended in failure. The upshot of the arguments developed in these essays is that the political morality that is constitutive of liberalism cannot be given any statement that is determinate or coherent and it has no claim on reason. The various projects of grounding liberalism (conceived as a set of universal principles) in a comprehensive moral theory rights-based, utilitarian, contractarian or whatever are examined in turn and found wanting. Recurrently in these essays, I conclude that a particular path of justification of liberalism is a dead end and a liberal ideology an impossibility only to take up later another, and apparently more promising, justificatory strategy. When in the twelfth and last essay I conclude that no set of arguments is available which might ground liberalism and privilege liberal society over its rivals, this only voices definitively a suspicion that was with me from the first.

The aim of the postscript is to give in summary form a statement of the reasons for the indefensibility of liberalism as an ideology or general doctrine and to sketch the outlines of a post-liberal perspective on government and society. In the postscript, I seek to show that the failure of liberal ideology is not to be lamented, since liberal political philosophy expresses a conception of the task and limits of theorizing that is hubristic and defective. The ruin of liberal political philosophy is only the most spectacular instance of the debacle of the received tradition, modern as much as classical, of philosophy as a discipline. In retrospect, then, the programme of these essays is to clear away the rubble, piece by piece, of the grand liberal theories, so as to open up a perspective in the political tradition we have inherited (and of which liberalism itself was a drastic abridgement). Indeed, if the later essays collected here had any practical goal, it was to protect the historical inheritance of liberal civil society from the rages of a fevered ideology which, throughout western society, and especially in America, threatens to squander that inheritance. It would be a hopeful augury if the current decomposition of liberal conventional wisdom which this collection aims to bring to a conclusion were to return us to a detailed investigation of the character and postulates of the forms of civil association that are most distinctive of our cultural tradition.

Conversations with a large number of theorists over the years have helped to crystalize the thoughts expressed in these essays. Among those to whom I would like to make a particular acknowledgement for stimulating and informing my thought on these questions are Isaiah Berlin, James Buchanan, David Gauthier, F. A. Hayek, Robert Nozick, Michael Oakeshott, Karl Popper and John Rawls. Conversations with Jeffrey Paul and Ernest van den Haag have entered into the thoughts developed in several of the later essays. The conception of the scope and limits of political thought intimated in the postscript owes much to conversations over several years with Charles King. I am indebted to Jeremy Shearmur for suggesting to me that a collection of my essays on liberalism might be worth publishing. It should go without saying (but I say it nevertheless) that none of the persons whose help I have mentioned shares responsibility with me for the thoughts and arguments developed in these essays.