Liberal Reads European Liberal Forum

BOOK REVIEW - Adam Smith "The Theory of Moral Sentiments"

By Patrick Van Schie

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is not Adam Smith’s best-known work among  the  general public – that, of course, would be his economic  analysis, The Wealth of Nations,  whose  (abbreviated)  title  many  know,  even if they are unfamiliar with its contents – but it is certainly a standard liberal work. Although Smith owes his enduring fame to The Wealth of Nations – it is thanks to this book that he is considered  the  founder of (classical  liberal) economics – he  considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be his best work. The irony goes even further:  Smith is remembered as an important economist, which he certainly was, but his bread and butter was moral philosophy.  

The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations are the first two instalments of a trilogy that  Smith  had  intended to publish. In  the  first  part – The Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments – he laid down the foundation of his vision of humanity and society. In the second – The Wealth of Nations – he  elaborated on the virtue of prudence, which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy. It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book.

BOOK REVIEW - John Milton "Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England"

By Mara Pepine

The early half of the seventeenth century in England was marked by Charles I’s  rule,  the  English  Civil  War, and following it the Cromwellian  regime. The English Civil War had its roots in a religious war between Catholics and Protestants, a conflict that defines much of English history. Once the Protestants came into power, they abolished the monarchy and replaced it with parliamentary rule. During its dismantling of the English monarchy, the Protestant Parliament also went about dismantling the Star Chamber. The Star Chamber was an English court founded in the late fifteenth century whose original goal was that of supplementing the activities of other courts by targeting powerful individuals who might be able to intimidate the rest of the system into not prosecuting them. However, it soon morphed into an organ of the state responsible  for abuses of power,  e.g. imposing excessive punishments, which prompted the passage of the Habeas Corpus Act. Its abolition in 1641  was a very important step towards eliminating the unjust rule of the monarchy. However, the passage of the Licensing Order of 1643 showed that the Parliament was more interested in a transfer of power rather than in eliminating the abusive structures themselves. The law ensured the pre-publication censorship of books in England. As a response  to  the  Licensing  Order,  in  November  1644,  the  English  poet  and  intellectual  John  Milton,  who  was  a  big  supporter  of  and  a  key  actor  in  the  Cromwellian  regime,  published Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’ d Printing, to the Parlament of England. His speech, which addresses the Protestant-led Parliament directly, is an open criticism of the Licensing Order and the paternalistic approach of the legislative body. 

BOOK REVIEW - Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes "The Light That Failed: A Reckoning"

By Mara Pepine

The title of this book, The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, is directly inspired by the novel The Light That Failed written by Rudyard Kipling in 1891, depicting a tragic unrequited love story. What Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev hope to achieve is to explain how liberalism became a victim instead of the victor it was purported to be after the Cold War.1A  preliminary  look  will  highlight  certain  events  of  the  last  thirty  years  as underlying causes of the decline of liberalism: 9/11, the second Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, the annexation of Crimea, the Syrian War, the 2015 migration crisis, the Brexit referendum, and the 2016 American elections,  all  evolving  against  the  background  of  China’s  economic  miracle and growing influence. With the most border enforcement since the end of the Cold War, and with decreasing public faith in the systems of democracy, the question this book aims to answer is the famous quote from Ben Rhodes ‘What if we were wrong?’, referring to the possibility that liberals might have gravely misread the post-Cold War situation.

BOOK REVIEW - Jonathan Rauch "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth"

By Luke Hallam

This book by the journalist Jonathan Rauch seeks to make sense of the threats facing liberal societies today – threats including the destructive convulsions of Donald Trump  and  his  Make  American  Great  Again  movement,  a  global  army  of social media trolls, and the emboldened attacks against liberal cornerstones such as expertise, free speech, and diversity of opinion. Rauch is no pessimist, but he is clear-eyed about the crises we face, and The Constitution of Knowledge provides an authoritative and crisp account of those challenges. Over  the  past  five  years,  plenty  of  writers  have  sent  up  flares  about  our  so-called  post-truth age. Yet the term ‘post-truth’ is refreshingly absent from The Constitution of Knowledge. This is because Rauch’s book, which is subtitled ‘A Defense of Truth’, is not an epigraph to something we have supposedly ‘lost’. Rather, it is a call to arms. Ultimately, he argues, truth isn’t lost; we have simply forgotten what it looks like, and we have permitted its  enemies  to  exploit  our  confusion.  The  result  is  authoritarian  politics,  the  erosion  of  democratic norms, ‘cancel culture’, and the depressing sense that ‘truth’ itself might be an illusion. But none of these problems is insurmountable.

BOOK REVIEW - Albert Camus "The Rebel"

By Luke Hallam

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, thousands of readers turned to the French philosopher Albert Camus’ most famous novel, The Plague. They were attracted by its portrayal of ordinary people heroically battling pestilence in a daily slog of sacrifice, perseverance, and hope – and with good reason. But as visionary as The Plague remains, it is The Rebel  (1951),  the  final  book-length  essay  Camus  published  during  his  lifetime, that of all his works speaks the most to our politics, especially to anyone concerned with the problem of freedom. Camus’ broad aim was to understand the great events of the twentieth century – a period of wars and genocides, torture and execution, fascism and communism. He wanted to define an alternative political morality, one that would place certain limitations on what one human being can justly do to another and would strive to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again.

BOOK REVIEW - Johan Norberg "Open: The Story of Human Progress: How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind"

By Adam Mazik

Johan  Norberg  makes  a  strong  statement:  every  single  time  when  societies and people have experienced an increase of wealth, innovations, and living standards, the reason was a broadly understood ‘openness’, of course, relative to the specific time. By openness, the Swede means openness towards trade, immigration, and the exchange and expression of different ideas. Analysing evidence from  the  300,000-year  history  of  Homo  sapiens,  he  comes  to  the  conclusion that every time those factors came together, the result was a remarkable explosion of wealth.

The lesson is this: the Western world does not have a patent on economic growth, openness, and tolerance. As Norberg shows, periods of wealth and  relative  freedom  have  appeared  in  different  times  and  different  cultures.  And  for  a  very  long  time,  Europe  has  not  been  a  very  good  example of the values that we today would describe as liberal. The  second  lesson  is  more  painful:  All  those  past  enrichments  ended.  Wars,  conflicts  and  political  decisions  in  the  past  were  able  to  destroy  the  fundaments  and  results  of  those dynamic populations. Each period of ‘openness’ and progress gave way to a time of  ‘closing  down’  and  regress,  a  return  to  traditional(-ist)  values  and  isolation  from  the  rest of the world.