Liberalism and its Discontents

Agents in contemporary Western societies find themselves in an odd situation. On the one hand, we seem to have no realistic alternative to liberalism; that is, we know of no other approach to human society and politics that is at the same time as theoretically rich and comprehensive as liberalism and also even remotely as morally acceptable to wide sections of the population in Western societies, as they are now in fact constituted.' Liberal ideas permeate our social world and our everyday expectations about how people and institutions will and ought to act; they constitute the final framework within which our political thinking moves. Prima facie nonliberal forms of habitual belief, such as those associated with certain religions, forms of nationalism, residual class enmities, and so on, still, of course, exist, but they seem to be, at best, isolated and localised foreign bodies in a universe, the overall structure of which is essentially liberal; in societies that are or are aspiring to be 'Westem', even these nonliberal ideological fragments sometimes adopt protective colouration in the form of the best veneer of compatibility with liberalism they can muster. On the other hand, there are signs of a significant theoretical, moral, and political disaffection with some aspects of liberalism. Liberalism has for a long time seemed to lack much inspirational potential; it is good at dissolving