Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre
I’m fascinated by Liberalism as a Way of Life by Lefebvre (2024). Lefebvre argues (a) we should understand liberalism as a way of life, not just a set of political institutions, and (b) that liberalism is a good way of life (though not the only good way of life).
One great thing about this book is that it connects political liberalism to (what you may call) cultural liberalism in a systematic way. Here is a quote:
What I propose is that the values and attitude enshrined in liberal social and political institutions, and everywhere present in the public and background culture of liberal democracies, can and often do inform a much more general sensibility—one supple enough to be realized differently and appropriately in all aspects of life. The good life, for such people, is the liberal life. It is not a model they wish to impose on anyone else. (17)
Ordinary people talk about liberalism in terms of liberal attitudes, not liberalism as a set of institutions. This is the first book I have read that substantially engages with this cultural notion of liberalism.
In particular, I wonder how much the recent support of far right movements should be understood as backlash against cultural liberalism. The problem is not the conservative pundit’s criticism that liberals are latte-drinking, Prius-driving, easily-offended moralists. The problem is that liberal ways of life are in competition with other values that people hold dear. In a chapter entitled “What Liberals Don’t get about Liberalism,” Lefebvre explains his disagreement with traditional political liberals.
They claim - as a premise or axiom, not as an evidenced or demonstrated conclusion - that everyone living in liberal democracies has a conception of the good life that can be specified independently of liberal values and ideas. They take for granted, in other words, that everyone is liberal (or illiberal in the sense of opposing liberal tenets) plus something else, whether that be Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, utilitarian, virtue ethicist, Confucian, Daoist, Kantian, Marxist, Rastafarian, Zoroastrian, nationalist, naturalist, ecofeminist, hedonist, or whatever other doctrine or combination thereof can be imagined. People living in liberal democracies are thus said to be made up of two components that are usually and hopefully integrated with one other. On the one hand, you are a citizen of liberal democracy, with its attendant liberal political values and practices; on the other hand, you espouse a comprehensive doctrine that while likely affected by liberal values, can be independently identified and described. (61-62)
Today, a whole bunch of people want to just be one thing. They don’t want to integrate liberal values into their life. Consequently, liberal political institutions have to go.