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Liberalism, the life of an idea, Edmund Fawcett

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 409-431) and indexes

index present

non fiction

Liberalism

electronic resource eBook

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Edmund Fawcett

the life of an idea

"Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the past two hundred years of American and European history. Yet there is striking disagreement about what liberalism really means and how it arose. In this engrossing history of liberalism--the first in English for many decades--veteran political observer Edmund Fawcett traces the ideals, successes, and failures of this central political tradition through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today. Using a broad idea of liberalism, the book discusses celebrated thinkers from Constant and Mill to Berlin, Hayek, and Rawls, as well as more neglected figures. Its twentieth-century politicians include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Willy Brandt, but also Hoover, Reagan, and Kohl. The story tracks political liberalism from its beginnings in the 1830s to its long, grudging compromise with democracy, through a golden age after 1945 to the present mood of challenge and doubt."--book jacket

Introduction: It's About More Than LibertyPt. 1. The Confidence of Youth (1830-1880). 1. Historical Setting in the 1830s: Thrown into a World of Ceaseless Change -- 2. Guiding Thoughts from Founding Thinkers: Conflict, Resistance, Progress, and Respect. i. Humboldt and Constant: Releasing People's Capacities and Respecting Their Privacy -- ii. Guizot: Taming Conflict without Arbitrary Power -- iii. Tocqueville and Schulze-Delitzsch: The Modern Powers of Mass Democracy and Mass Markets -- iv. Chadwick and Cobden: Governments and Markets as Engines of Social Progress -- v. Smiles and Channing: Personal Progress as Self-Reliance or Moral Uplift -- vi. Spencer: Liberalism Mistaken for Biology -- vii. J. S. Mill: Holding Liberalism's Ideas Together. -- 3. Liberalism in Practice: Four Exemplary Politicians. i. Lincoln: The Many Uses of "Liberty" in the Land of Liberty -- ii. Laboulaye and Richter: Tests for Liberals in Semiliberal Regimes -- iii. Gladstone: Liberalism's Capaciousness and the Politics of Balance. -- 4. The Nineteenth-Century Legacy: Liberalism without Caricature. i. Respect, "the Individual," and the Lessons of Toleration -- ii. The Achievements That Gave Liberals ConfidencePt. 2. Liberalism in Maturity and the Struggle with Democracy (1880-1945). 5. Historical Setting in the 1880s: The World Liberals Were Making. -- 6. The Compromises That Gave Us Liberal Democracy. i. Political Democracy: Liberal Resistance to Suffrage Extension -- ii. Economic Democracy: The "New Liberalism" and Novel Tasks for the State -- iii. Ethical Democracy: Letting Go Ethically and the Persistence of Intolerance. -- 7. The Economic Powers of the Modern State and Modern Market. i. Walras, Marshall, and the Business Press: Resisting the State on Behalf of Markets -- ii. Hobhouse, Naumann, Croly, and Bourgeois: Resisting Markets on Behalf of Society. -- 8. Damaged Ideals and Broken Dreams. i. Chamberlain and Bassermann: Liberal Imperialism -- ii. Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson: Liberal Hawks of 1914-1918 -- iii. Alain, Baldwin, and Brandeis: Liberal Dissent and the Warfare State -- iv. Stresemann: Liberal Democracy in Peril -- v. Keynes, Fisher, and Hayek (i): Liberal Economists in the Slump -- vi. Hoover and Roosevelt: Forgotten Liberal and Foremost Liberal. -- 9. Thinking about Liberalism in the 1930s-1940s 275. i. Lippmann and Hayek (ii): Liberals as Antitotalitarians -- ii. Popper: Liberalism as Openness and ExperimentPt 3. Second Chance and Success (1945-1989). 10. Historical Setting after 1945: Liberal Democracy's New Start. -- 11. New Foundations: Rights, a Democratic Rule of Law, and Welfare -- i. Drafters of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights: Liberal Democracy Goes Global -- ii. German Postwar Liberals: The 1949 Basic Law as Liberal Democracy's Exemplary Charter -- iii. Beveridge: Liberalism and Welfare. -- 12. Liberal Thinking after 1945. i. Oakeshott and Berlin: Letting Politics Alone and "Negative" Liberty -- ii. Hayek (iii): Political Antipolitics -- iii. Orwell, Camus, and Sartre: Liberals in the Cold War -- iv. Rawls: Justifying Liberalism -- v. Nozick, Dworkin, and MacIntyre: Responses to Rawls, Rights, and Community. -- 13. The Breadth of Liberal Politics in the 1950s-1980s. i. Mendes-France, Brandt, and Johnson: Left Liberalism in the 1950s-1960s -- ii. Buchanan and Friedman: Liberal Economists Against the State -- iii. Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, and Kohl: Right Liberalism in the 1970s-1980sPt. 4. After 1989. Coda: Liberal Dreams in the Twenty-First Century