The Illiberal Liberals

An esteemed contributor to the discussion of political liberalism and its limited promises, Zbigniew Janowski identifies four key players––Jefferson, Humboldt, Constant, and Mill–– of liberal thought and draws important discussions from each of these profiles. His exposition reveals how complicated an undertaking it is to define liberalism and all it comprises. But one must do so in order to test the viability of liberalism in a postmodern world that does not wish to necessarily break with the old (for ‘starting anew’ has been a disastrous project). Janowski traces liberalism’s conscious break with the Greeks and its roots in Protestantism. He thereby challenges the reader to see how liberalism interacts with the two pillars of Western civilization––namely, Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology––and envisions its role in human life as a new source for moral reasoning. 

Janowski’s astute and insightful study places today’s ‘liberal progressives’ at odds with these four earlier thinkers, to such an extent that Janowski claims Jefferson, Humboldt, Constant, and Mill are considered “illiberal.” For this reason this work may be of greatest interest to proper Liberals, as they may have already recognized the possibility that evolutions in political liberalism only lead to anarchy.