Book Recommendation: Natural Law Liberalism

 First of all, before introducing the book, it is important to know the brief introduction of the disputed types of Liberalism. The brief birth story of Liberalism in the modern era is needed. The two mainstreams of Liberalism are roughly explained as follows.

Liberalism is a political philosophy claiming for liberty of autonomous individuals emancipated from authoritarian oppression with their naturally endowed right and equality of obtaining it. It distinguishes liberty from a simple freedom as it claims for some degree of restriction on one’s freedom of doing whatever s/he wants on a temporary basis. It insists providing individuals with a broader meaning of freedom in a permanent basis as well as the social public environment and its minimum required rule securing all the individuals to accomplish it.

Although it is often believed that Liberalism emerged in the early modern age, the base concept was already emphasised by Aristotle (The ancient Greek) and Thomas Aquinas (The medieval European) at the pre-modern time period. Both Aristotle and Aquinas expressed humans as autonomous individuals who should be free to act and think with their own freewill. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke claimed for Liberty as the universal naturally endowed to complete the overall picture of the characteristics of Liberalism in the beginning of the modernity

The first mainstream of Liberalism in the modern world politics formed its characteristic identity by adopting the utilitarianism asserting to maximise the sum of pleasures while minimising the sum of pains by letting individuals to act freely with their constitutional right under the mutual social agreement. This is also related to economic freedom encouraging the market competition guaranteeing the equality of opportunity for individuals to join to be rewarded by means of their contribution merit. This is the Liberalism encouraging the overall liberty in a comprehensive meaning so that it is introduced as Comprehensive Liberalism.

On the other hand, there is the second mainstream of Liberalism challenging the aforementioned Liberalism where liberty is limited to the constitutional and metaphysical level. This new branch of Liberalism attempt to modify the older version of Liberalism to the newer alternative more applicable to the political intention of accomplishing the liberalist ideal ethics.

This second mainstream of Liberalism insisting on providing individuals with their right of the comprehensive freedom but also an impartial spectator intervening resource distribution, social justice mediation, and rehabilitating the handicapped minorities. The most notable figure is John Rawls having introduced the political theory called Political Liberalism claiming for more proactive interventions rather than the conventional laissez-faire (little or no intervention policy).

The provision of liberty requires the daily political level intervention to individuals more than guaranteeing their right under the constitution or the customary agreement. There is the veil of ignorance penalising some individuals lacking the necessary information before acting freely. In order to accomplish the equality of opportunity under a fair competition, it requires a certain degree of the redistribution of resources to enable all the individuals to become competent and able. The minority individuals are often marginalised under the laissez-faire majority rules so that it requires the culturally and religiously intermediate pluralist intervention into it. It thus requires the proactive intervention by this impartial spectator is thus necessary to mitigate these obstacles causing unfairness.

Nevertheless, there is a counterargument being sceptical about these modern types of Liberalism whose political methods are controversial enough to judge whether or not they can encourage individuals’ liberty. The book introduced here indicates one of the counterarguments. 

This book “Natural Law Liberalism” is highly recommended to read to understand the characteristics and their transformation of various derivations of Liberalism in the modern world. The author of this book manifestos his own version of Liberalism challenging against the two mainstream versions of the modern Liberalism.

His own manifesting political philosophy is explained in the last one third of this book whilst the first two thirds of this book is about introducing what versions of Liberalism exist. It mostly covers the historical evolution of Liberalism having produced various derivations from the pre-modern periods including the ancient Greece and the medieval Europe to the modern time period. Therefore, this book is actually useful as a textbook of understanding the evolution of Liberalism.

This book puts strong emphasis on the sceptic perspective on the modern types of Liberalism by criticising them with reference to his manifesting alternative. However, even though its main intention is criticising it, it well-summarises the characteristics of both Utilitarian Comprehensive Liberalism and Rawlsian Political Liberalism while explaining how either of them has become popular in the political arena nowadays. Thus, this book is recommended to study it at a fast pace because of its objectively well-summarised description.

The counterargument against Rawlsian Political Liberalism is based on the scepticism about the impartial spectator as a mediator of social justice and also about its moral neutrality. This public institute as an impartial spectator promoting the pluralism of cultural, ethnic, and moral diversity is still prone to the bias manipulated by the powerful influential cohort of this political arena. The objectivity and plurality can therefore also be under the threat of political lobbying.

This book highlights the criticism on both Comprehensive Liberalism neglecting to install the core moral principle and Rawlsian Political Liberalism overestimating the neutrality of the secular (believed to be morally neutral) interventionist social reform. Instead, it suggests Liberalism to focus on the inevitable influence by the majority mainstream and the longevitive tradition to policy making and societal environments. For example, the history of religious influence over social norms and values is significantly longer than the history of the modern secular politics.

The author of this book is a stronger supporter of the metaphysical and ethical philosophy of Natural Law most notably defined by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Both Aristotle and Aquinas expected for human individuals as naturally social so that their spontaneously formed social order is sufficient enough to encourage both stability and fairness.

The Natural Law theory by Aristotle and Aquinas describes the error correction mechanism called an unmovable mover which indicates the unchangeable virtue even in necessary multiple drastic social transformations. All in all, while individuals and their society may constantly change to adapt individuals and their society to each new environment with new challenges within the minimum necessary restriction imposed by the unchangeable virtuous guideline.

The seemingly most essential point of this book is underlining the importance of a strong sense of morality of all the individuals and their community functionally cohabiting together in a society. An authoritarian state does not require a strong morality of its individual citizens under a cohesive stability. By contrast, a state with less or no authoritarianism requires individuals being moral enough to enable them to voluntarily comply with the spontaneous order stabilising their state.

Overall, regardless of political opinions and perspectives, this book is highly recommendable to understand characteristics and challenges of the various versions of Liberalism in history. Also, it explains that Natural Law, the metaphysical and ethical philosophy, is compatible with Liberalism in practice for the current daily politics. This attempts to explain that Aristotle and Aquinas are ones of the remarkable Liberalist political thinkers. Even though it is not agreeable, it is thought provoking enough to get interested in Liberalism and its historical footprints.