• Complain

Domenico Losurdo - Liberalism: A Counter-History

Here you can read online Domenico Losurdo - Liberalism: A Counter-History full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2014, publisher: Verso, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Domenico Losurdo Liberalism: A Counter-History
  • Book:
    Liberalism: A Counter-History
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Verso
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2014
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Liberalism: A Counter-History: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Liberalism: A Counter-History" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.
Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieys, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on todays politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.

Domenico Losurdo: author's other books


Who wrote Liberalism: A Counter-History? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Liberalism: A Counter-History — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Liberalism: A Counter-History" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS S EGRETARIATO E UROPEO PER - photo 1

The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS
S EGRETARIATO E UROPEO PER LE P UBBLICAZIONI S CIENTIFICHE

Via Val dAposa 740123 Bologna Italy This paperback edition first published by - photo 2
Via Val dAposa 740123 Bologna Italy

This paperback edition first published by Verso 2014
First published in English by Verso 2011
Translation Gregory Elliott 2011, 2014
First published as Controstoria del Liberalismo
Gius. Laterza & Figli 2006

All rights reserved

Published by arrangement with Marco Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-166-4
eISBN-13: 978-78168-525-9 (UK)
eISBN-13: 978-78168-216-6 (US)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Losurdo, Domenico.
[Controstoria del liberalismo. English]
Liberalism : a counter-history / Domenico Losurdo.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-1-78168-166-4 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-84467-693-4 (hard)
1. Liberalism. I. Title.
JC574.L6713 2014
320.51dc23

2013033156

v3.1

To Jean-Michel Goux, in friendship and gratitude

Contents
A Short Methodological Introduction

How does this book differ from existing histories of liberalism, which continue to appear in growing numbers? Does it really succeed in making the innovation promised by the title? Once they have finished it, readers will be able to give their own answer. For now, the author can limit himself to a statement of intent. In formulating it, a great example can aid us. About to embark on the history of the collapse of the ancien rgime in France, de Tocqueville observed of studies of the eighteenth century:

[W]e imagine we know all about the French social order of that time, for the good reason that its surface glitter holds our gaze and we are familiar not only with the life stories of its outstanding figures but also, thanks to the many brilliant critical studies now available, with the works of the great writers who adorned that age. But we have only vague, often quite wrong conceptions of the manner in which public business was transacted and institutions functioned; of the exact relations between the various classes in the social hierarchy; of the situation and sentiments of that section of the population which as yet could neither make itself heard nor seen; and, by the same token, of the ideas and mores basic to the social structure of eighteenth-century France.

There is no reason not to apply the methodology so brilliantly indicated by de Tocqueville to the movement and society of which he was an integral and influential part. Solely because he intends to draw attention to aspects that he believes have hitherto been largely and unjustly ignored, the author refers in the books title to a counter-history. Otherwise, it is a history, whose subject-matter alone remains to be specified: not liberal thought in its abstract purity, but liberalism, and hence the liberal movement and liberal society, in their concrete reality. As with any other major historical movement, this involves investigating the conceptual developments, but alsoand primarilythe political and social relations it found expression in, as well as the more or less contradictory link that was established between these two dimensions of social reality.

And so, in commencing the investigation, we are forced to pose a preliminary question concerning the subject whose history we intend to reconstruct: What is liberalism?

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Rgime and the French Revolution, trans. Stuart Gilbert, London: Fontana, 1966, p. 24.

CHAPTER ONE
What Is Liberalism?
1. A series of embarrassing questions

The usual answer to this question admits of no doubt: liberalism is the tradition of thought whose central concern is the liberty of the individual, which is ignored or ridden roughshod over by organicist philosophies of various kinds. But if that is the case, how should we situate John C. Calhoun? This eminent statesman, vice president of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, burst into an impassioned ode to individual liberty, which, appealing to Locke, he vigorously defended against any abuse of power and any unwarranted interference by the state. And that is not all. Along with absolute governments and the concentration of power, he unstintingly criticized and condemned fanaticism And, given the concrete balance of forces in the United States, it was not difficult to imagine which of the two would succumb: blacks could only survive on condition of being slaves.

So is Calhoun a liberal? No doubts on this score were harboured by Lord Acton, a prominent figure in liberalism in the second half of the nineteenth century, an advisor and friend of William Gladstone, one of the major figures in nineteenth-century England. In Actons view, Calhoun was a champion of the cause of the struggle against any form of absolutism, including democratic absolutism; the arguments he employed were the very perfection of political truth. In short, we are dealing with one of the major authors and great minds in the liberal tradition and pantheon.

Albeit in less emphatic language, the question has been answered in the affirmative by those who in our time celebrate Calhoun as a strong individualist, In no doubt is one US publishing house, committed to republishing in a neo-liberal key Liberty Classics, among which the eminent statesman and ideologue of the slaveholding South features prominently.

The question we have posed does not only emerge from reconstructing the history of the United States. Prestigious scholars of the French Revolution, of firm liberal persuasion, have no hesitation in defining as liberal those figures and

We face a dilemma. If we answer the question formulated above (Is Calhoun a liberal?) in the affirmative, we can no longer maintain the traditional (and edifying) image of liberalism as the thought and volition of liberty. If, on the other hand, we answer in the negative, we find ourselves confronting a new problem and new question, which is no less embarrassing than the first: Why should we continue to dignify John Locke with the title of father of liberalism? Calhoun refers to black slavery as a positive good. Yet without resorting to such brazen language, the English philosopher, to whom the US author explicitly appealed, regarded slavery in the colonies as self-evident and indisputable, and personally contributed to the legal formalization of the institution in Carolina. He took a hand in drafting the constitutional provision according to which [e]very freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever. In fact, the latters position proves even more compromising; for good or ill, in the slaveholding South of which Calhoun was the interpreter, there was no longer any place for the deportation of blacks from Africa, in a terrible voyage that condemned many of them to death before they landed in America.

Do we want to bring historical distance to bear in order to distinguish the positions of the two authors being compared here, and exclude from the liberal tradition only Calhoun, who continued to justify or celebrate the institution of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century? The southern statesman would have reacted indignantly to such inconsistency of treatment: as regards the English liberal philosopher, he would perhaps have repeated, in slightly different language, the thesis formulated by him in connection with George Washington: He was one of usa slaveholder and a planter.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Liberalism: A Counter-History»

Look at similar books to Liberalism: A Counter-History. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Liberalism: A Counter-History»

Discussion, reviews of the book Liberalism: A Counter-History and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.