In a review of Matthew Rose’s A World After Liberalism, Prof. Mahoney argues that atheists on the Right and the Left need the same remedy: a renewed commitment to reason and faith.
Some excerpts:
“‘We are living in a postliberal moment. After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds.’ So Matthew Rose begins A World After Liberalism, his compact but thoughtful and suggestive reflections on a series of ‘philosophers of the radical Right’ who not only excoriated the liberal dispensation, but sketched the prospects for a future that repudiated liberal liberty root-and-branch.”
“Rose’s reference to ‘three decades’ of liberal dominance suggests that the liberalism he has in mind is the postmodern liberalism that came to the fore after the collapse of European Communism in the period 1989-1991. This is a liberalism with global pretenses that is at once post-national, post-Christian, and post-political, relativistic, transgressive, and moralistic. Its proponents proclaim absolute individual and collective autonomy in a ‘world without borders’ with no shared affirmation of virtues and values, except for a commitment to ever-expanding rights without any grounding in human nature or a moral law that would direct the exercise of human freedom. This is largely what goes by the name of liberalism today. But one must ask: Is this liberalism in any recognizable or robust sense of the term? Or is it rather a radicalization of modernist premises that hollows out human liberty by divorcing it from the virtues and human nobility without which it becomes an empty shell? We shall return to this crucial question in the course of our discussion of Rose’s provocative book.”
“[Rose] displays remarkable equanimity in dealing with a series of thinkers whose criticisms of modern liberty are serious, if at the same time overwrought and self-consciously incendiary. These ‘philosophers of the radical Right’ are atheists of the Right who, in one form or another, blame Christianity for the defects of liberalism and the crisis of Western civilization. It is this impressive equanimity that makes Rose’s book just right for the moment, as thoughtful believers and unbelievers alike must come to terms with the moral crisis that is coextensive with the decay of a once self-confident and morally robust liberal order.”
“…the West at its best avoided the twin extremes of ‘holism’ or ‘heteronomy,’ taking our bearings entirely from unthinking tradition and authority, and the ‘autonomy’ that leaves us bereft of the precious resources that are faith and right reason.”
“After this compelling set of portraits of the leading radical Right theorists, Rose turns to a thoughtful pondering of what he calls ‘the Christian Question.’ He once again makes clear just how anti-Christian the radical Right really is, obsessed as they are with the question of racial and ethnic identity. They are moved by hate rather than true love or loyalty. They blindly identify decayed liberalism with Christianity, while ignoring the Catholic Church’s longstanding critique of the religion of humanity and of that ersatz religion’s appeal to antinomianism and soft humanitarianism. To his credit, Rose recognizes that many ‘churchmen and faithful’ (Raymond Aron) have accepted an impoverished view, call it liberal or not, that human beings are defined ‘through acts of individual choice and self-expression alone.’ These humanitarian Christians thoughtlessly side with cosmopolitanism and ‘global values,’ when what is needed is loyalty to one’s nation and people tied to, and measured by, ‘truths that transcend them.'”
“The path of inexpiable conflict and murderous hostility is the path of the atheistic Right and Left which eschew the authority of God in the name of tribe, race, or class. These are old truths that a conservative-minded liberalism needs to renew.”
Read the full piece here.