My Take | Is there a valid Chinese criticism of Western liberal notion of freedom?
- I ask my favourite philosophy podcaster and political theorist of the moment, Louis Devine, whether there is more to freedom than just the freedom of the individual
Western liberalism seems to be in a perpetual state of crisis. And yet, most people in the modern world are liberal to some extent, even if many may go consciously or rebelliously against it, including yours truly. There is really no escape from it. So long as you insist on your own point of view, you are in a sense asserting your right to your own thinking, perspectives and ideas, however pedestrian, uninteresting or wrong.
That kind of modern individualism seems to me the bare minimum of liberalism. But where do we get this arrogance, confidence, self-assurance or whatever you call it? Where did this self-entitlement to your own thoughts and ideas come from? It is, I assure you, not at all natural or a given, but a distinctly Western modern notion and social-political practice over which great thinkers clashed, nations fought and blood spilled over centuries. It was a seismic change of a world view, the collective mental consequence of the transition, as Karl Marx had long discerned, from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.
So that seems to me as much a philosophical question as a political-economic one.
Every now and then, I get a craving for a philosophical discussion as I do with a Big Mac or KFC meal. So I have been bingeing in the past few months on this excellent but well-hidden podcast called Ideas Matter run by Louis Devine and his best childhood friend Alex from Down Under.