Why Liberalism Failed
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: January 9, 2018
Place of publication: New Haven (Connecticut), USA
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 225
ISBN-13: 9780300223446
Copyright date: 2018
First sentence: A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later, was a wager that political society could be grounded on a different footing.
Description: Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
Table of contents: title: Contents
pagenum: vii; title: Foreword James Davidson Hunter and John M. Owen IV
pagenum: ix; title: Preface
pagenum: xiii; title: Acknowledgments
pagenum: xvii; title: Introduction: The End of Liberalism
pagenum: 1; label: One
title: Unsustainable Liberalism
pagenum: 21; label: Two
title: Uniting Individualism and Statism
pagenum: 43; label: Three
title: Liberalism as Anticulture
pagenum: 64; label: Four
title: Technology and the Loss of Liberty
pagenum: 91; label: Five
title: Liberalism against Liberal Arts
pagenum: 110; label: Six
title: The New Aristocracy
pagenum: 131; label: Seven
title: The Degradation of Citizenship
pagenum: 154; title: Conclusion: Liberty after Liberalism
pagenum: 179; title: Notes
pagenum: 199; title: Bibliography
pagenum: 213; title: Index
pagenum: 221