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A Body of Thought: The Form of Liberal Individualism

Elaine Hadley

in Living Liberalism: Practical Citizenship in Mid-Victorian Britain

This chapter explores the form liberal individualism took. The liberal individual presumed to emerge from the myriad procedures of Victorian liberalization is a complicated ideological, theoretical, ... More

This chapter explores the form liberal individualism took. The liberal individual presumed to emerge from the myriad procedures of Victorian liberalization is a complicated ideological, theoretical, and historical construct, more often referenced in Victorian literary criticism than intensively examined. The chapter states that this subject is almost always an amalgam of the characteristics and characteristic practices most consistently iterated in canonical texts of classical liberalism. The chapter also looks at the revisions made to those premises in contemporary Victorian political and social theory, and the modern reformulations of that genealogy. In the Victorian period, a partial commitment to gradual democratization and an expansion of conceptions of proprietorship encouraged liberal thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold, to emphasize afresh a pedagogy of self-development that would, in David Lloyd and Paul Thomas's term, “educe” the citizen, who would only then be prepared for the privileges and responsibilities of liberal citizenship.Less

‘Reconditioning the Unemployed’: Work Camps in Britain

Desmond King

in In The Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain

King documents the establishment and operation of British Instructional Centres from 1929–38, ‘labour camps’, which also featured physical training and reconditioning classes. He argues that, unlike ... More

King documents the establishment and operation of British Instructional Centres from 1929–38, ‘labour camps’, which also featured physical training and reconditioning classes. He argues that, unlike British eugenics policies, there was little expertise cited or marshalled in the formulation of British work camps; instead, such policies rested simply on the perception amongst senior civil servants that the long‐term unemployed required physical ‘reconditioning’ to successfully enter the labour market. As a result, in King's view, such camps serve as striking examples of collectivism and the antithesis of the liberalism individualism.Less

Introduction Politics as Unusual

Elaine Hadley

in Living Liberalism: Practical Citizenship in Mid-Victorian Britain

This chapter presents an introduction to political liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain between the mid-1850s and the early 1880s. It describes Victorian society that mid-century political liberalism ... More

This chapter presents an introduction to political liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain between the mid-1850s and the early 1880s. It describes Victorian society that mid-century political liberalism ambivalently inhabits and its distinctive response to it. It discusses the form liberal individualism took and examines mid-century political liberalism's attempted revision of the public sphere. It explores the politics of liberal citizenship and the version of abstract embodiment in the political public sphere, the liberal citizen of the ballot box, a formation that emerges in the debates concerning secret balloting, which was made into law in 1872. It describes the mid-century political liberalism's deeply fraught relation to Ireland and in this way placing mid-century liberalism in its appropriate imperial context but also to a consideration of how mid-century liberal politics sought grounding authority in a precarious world of opinion.Less

The Ethics of Care

Virginia Held

David Copp (ed.)

in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the ... More

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the dominant moral theories: Kantian moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. This chapter outlines the distinctive features and promising possibilities of the ethics of care, and the criticisms that have been made against it. It then examines the ethics of care’s recognition of human dependency and of the importance of responding to needs; its interpretation of the roles of emotion and reason in moral understanding; and its critique of liberal individualism and development of a conception of the person as relational. The ethics of care contrasts care with justice, tries to integrate them, and reconceptualizes public and private life and morality.Less

The National Revolution

Julian Jackson

in France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944

This chapter discusses the National Revolution, which defined itself first and foremost in opposition to liberal individualism that uprooted ... More

This chapter discusses the National Revolution, which defined itself first and foremost in opposition to liberal individualism that uprooted people from the ‘natural’ communities of family, workplace, and region. It discusses the doctrine and inspiration behind the National Revolution, and how it conflicted with education, and social and economic policy.Less

Fixing the State

in The Motherless State: Women's Political Leadership and American Democracy

The problem with the United States is that, although hybrid symbolism is evident in the political campaigns of candidates, the state itself is deficient in this regard. A hybrid symbolism that works ... More

The problem with the United States is that, although hybrid symbolism is evident in the political campaigns of candidates, the state itself is deficient in this regard. A hybrid symbolism that works for race has worked for decades for sex, as women seeking access to political office assure voters they can be “male” while still being “female.” Liberalism can exacerbate political exclusion based on sex and gender. Liberal democracy can associate itself with women's maternalism by implementing welfare provision and gender quotas. Quotas are at the very heart of the American representative legislature and the American executive branch of government. Liberal individualism per se does not hinder women's access to political rule in the United States or elsewhere. On instrumental and normative grounds, electing more women to positions of political leadership is fundamental to fulfilling the promise of democracy.Less

Kate O'Brien and the erotics of liberal Catholic dissent

Michael G. Cronin

in Impure Thoughts: Sexuality, Catholicism and Literature in Twentieth-Century Ireland

This chapter discusses the literary censorship of Katy O'Brien's novels: Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941). O'Brien's novels were banned in Ireland because of their explicit depiction ... More

This chapter discusses the literary censorship of Katy O'Brien's novels: Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941). O'Brien's novels were banned in Ireland because of their explicit depiction of sex. The chapter emphasizes the political significance of O'Brien's novels, arguing that she offered to Irish society the ideal of liberal individualism.Less

Maternalizing American Government, Briefly

in The Motherless State: Women's Political Leadership and American Democracy

American government became maternal because it became identified as a legitimate instrument for caring for people, whether the recipients of that care were men or women, adults or children, American ... More

American government became maternal because it became identified as a legitimate instrument for caring for people, whether the recipients of that care were men or women, adults or children, American citizens or newly arrived immigrants. Liberal individualism alone was clearly insufficient for attaining women's political inclusion as voters. Class and race biases impacted the implementation of maternal public policies. The use in the Progressive Era of two different sets of arguments for woman suffrage corresponds to the fledgling hybrid character of American public policies. The United States differs from most other comparable democracies in its failure to sustain public policies representing maternalism. The United States has never adopted gender quotas; it long ago destroyed its monarchical heritage, and failed to sustain the maternal impetus marking the Progressive Era.Less

The limits of liberalism in the work of Hanif Kureishi

Ahmed Rehana

in Writing British Muslims: Religion, class and multiculturalism

As well as examining Hanif Kureishi’s explicit representations of Muslims in The Black Album (1995), the short story and screenplay versions of ‘My Son the Fanatic’ (1997) and selected essays, the ... More

As well as examining Hanif Kureishi’s explicit representations of Muslims in The Black Album (1995), the short story and screenplay versions of ‘My Son the Fanatic’ (1997) and selected essays, the chapter explores texts that touch upon Islam elliptically and, the book argues, at times uneasily (Intimacy (1998)My Ear at his Heart: Reading My Father (2004)Something To Tell You (2008) and a range of short stories). The chapter tracks the way in which this writer and cultural spokesperson, well known for his powerful opposition to the sanctioned racism of Thatcherism, has responded to the shift to a neoliberal multiculturalism, and explores the position of Muslims and a Muslim identity within the multiethnic cityscapes peopled by mixed-race subjects that Kureishi creates. It argues that Kureishi’s work has helped to shape British multiculturalism both by legitimising a new, culturally diverse Britishness and, crucially, by articulating limits to this legitimacy. His valorisation of a secularist liberal individualism against religious collectivism leads to the emergence of a series of reductive binaries, at odds with the deconstructive thrust of his work, and problematically delegitimises subaltern minority – in particular Muslim – formations.Less

Social Interaction, Political Divides

in Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life

This chapter sums up and addresses the implications of the study in this book for political science and American politics. It explains implications for future research on racial attitudes, framing, ... More

This chapter sums up and addresses the implications of the study in this book for political science and American politics. It explains implications for future research on racial attitudes, framing, social context, political socialization, and social identity. It explains how the analyses in this context suggest a model of civic life that differs from the two prevailing conceptions: liberal individualism and civic republicanism. In informal talk, people are neither devoid of social attachments (instead, they rely on them) nor acting on behalf of a predetermined common good. Conceptions of “the common good” are constantly worked out as they interact together. Most important, the chapter concludes that the public's part of public discussion is consequential for citizen politics.Less

Against the Received View

Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa

in Unfreedom for All: How the World's Injustices Harm You

Chapter 2 examines the view that prevails among the world’s liberal elites on the book’s questions. Specifically, it examines this received view’s theories of the nature of systematic injustice, ... More

Chapter 2 examines the view that prevails among the world’s liberal elites on the book’s questions. Specifically, it examines this received view’s theories of the nature of systematic injustice, whether there are global systematic injustices, and the duty to challenge injustice. The received view argues that oppression or systematic injustice is mainly a form of political subjugation of a group, done chiefly by the state. It argues that there are no global systematic injustices, because a systematic injustice can implicate only those people over whom some agency claims political authority, and no agency claims political authority over the whole globe. And it argues that when groups have duties to challenge injustice, this does not imply that their individual members do, and vice versa. As a result, the view has nothing to say about when individuals should join in solidarity against injustice. Ironically, the view thereby sets groups free: rather than Leviathans composed of atomistic individuals jealous of their liberties, groups become Gullivers released from the Lilliputians’ bonds. The chapter then argues that this results in dangerously unchecked groups and a shortfall of responsible agents.Less

Redeeming Freedom

Sharon R. Krause

in Freedom Beyond Sovereignty: Reconstructing Liberal Individualism

Several conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, it is important to recognize the destructive force of systematic social inequality as it bears on human agency and freedom. Secondly, the formal ... More

Several conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, it is important to recognize the destructive force of systematic social inequality as it bears on human agency and freedom. Secondly, the formal apparatus of the state is not the only or always the most effective mechanism for promoting freedom and redressing its failures; citizens themselves must step up and seek to embody a new ethos of citizenship that nourishes non-sovereign freedom. Third, there is crucial work to be done in generating the communities of bearers that can help to bring the agency of marginalized persons to fruition and thereby sustain their freedom. The value of recognizing inequality’s destructive force, cultivating a new ethos of citizenship, and fostering communities of bearers to sustain the agency of the marginalized is that all this makes individual men and women more free. Non-sovereign freedom is at once an intersubjective and an emphatically individualist ideal in this sense. The promise it holds is one that Americans cannot refuse, for it is the American promise, long delayed, of a freedom that really is for all.Less

Introduction

Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa

in Unfreedom for All: How The World’s Injustices Harm You

Among the world’s liberal elites today, a received view answers all five of the questions put by this book, arguing that systematic injustice is, essentially, persecution by a government; that there ... More

Among the world’s liberal elites today, a received view answers all five of the questions put by this book, arguing that systematic injustice is, essentially, persecution by a government; that there are no global social injustices; that individuals have a strong reason to challenge injustices only if they perpetrated or were victimized by them; that the individuals made unfree by systematic injustice are only its direct victims; and that the ultimate harm done by oppression is the unjust denial, to the oppressed, of the ability to live as free and equal citizens. Against this, the book’s introduction presents the theory of “Unfreedom for All,” which argues that oppressions are also institutional structures that privilege one group and unjustly harm another; that global systematic injustices of, say, race, gender, and poverty do exist; that all are harmed by oppressions because all are made unfree by them; and that this should be everyone’s main reason for joining in solidarity against them.Less

A fit occupation for children? Children and work

Lucinda Platt

in Discovering child poverty: The creation of a policy agenda from 1800 to the present

This chapter argues that child labour legislation (along with education) is critical in establishing a relatively bounded childhood and a privileged status for children — even poor children — which ... More

This chapter argues that child labour legislation (along with education) is critical in establishing a relatively bounded childhood and a privileged status for children — even poor children — which is to make state support and intervention in other areas of child welfare increasingly hard to resist. It observes that the legislation is probably based less on the ‘fact’ of child employment than on campaigners' mobilisation of sentiment around children combined with arguments that operate within the prevailing discourse of liberal individualism and laissez-faire. It observes, nevertheless, that the introduction of legislation and the creation of a distinct child population both rendered the ultimate introduction of state educational provision almost inevitable and created a particular constituency for wider poverty research.Less

The Essais Framed for Modern Intellectual Life

Warren Boutcher

in The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume Two: The Reader-Writer

The core topic of 2.6 is two modern reader-writers of Donald Frame’s American translation of the Essais (Gore Vidal and David Denby). We consider a range of related intellectual contexts for Frame’s ... More

The core topic of 2.6 is two modern reader-writers of Donald Frame’s American translation of the Essais (Gore Vidal and David Denby). We consider a range of related intellectual contexts for Frame’s work, a product of the culture of liberal education and of American liberal individualism: modern, pedagogical versions of ‘human philosophy’; the educational goals of elite institutions such as the École Normale Supérieure and Columbia University; the legacy of Pierre Villey’s work in twentieth-century Montaigne studies. We see how twentieth-century humanists in America and Europe called up the real person ‘Montaigne’ from behind his text and made him explain that text’s value to idealist programmes of general literary education. The chapter includes discussions of figures in the German idealist tradition such as Auerbach,and Burckhardt, as well as the critic of Renaissance ‘self-fashioning’, Stephen Greenblatt, and the British critic Terence Cave.Less