Let me propose a new definition of a liberal:
A liberal is one who values will greatly and thus is inclined to exaggerate his power over the thing-like world, over his own nature and the nature of other human beings, over a merely factual world, and — maybe — over truths.
This seems strange in light of the teachings of the very early liberals. Most, such as Locke, taught moderation in any efforts to impose your will upon the world because you would then be limiting the freedom of others, at least in many cases. Hobbes even seemed to teach that men are powerless as individuals; good men can’t even protect themselves or their loved ones against the violent amongst us — without the help of Leviathan. Yet, we have to remember that other liberals, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, have been very optimistic about the power of the individual to take care of his needs and proper desires — however ‘proper’ is defined — in a world which can descend into chaos and mindless violence.
I think there is some sense to be made of this Modern Age, this Liberal Age, if we think in terms of this optimistic doctrine about the power of the human will. Hobbes willed to escape the turmoil of religious wars. Rousseau willed to escape certain sorts of moral responsibility which seemed to him to be better handled by a polity. Adam Smith willed to seek a proper gentleman’s prosperity and life within the context of what might be called a “bourgeois moral order.” John Stuart Mill was interesting in that he willed an individualistic freedom seemingly compatible with Smith’s marketplace and he also willed radical, and not necessarily empirically sensible, political reforms seemingly compatible with Rousseau’s polity.
I noted recently that I’ve finished reading Norman Cantor’s Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization and he ended with the story of the Oxford Franciscans, most prominently Duns Scotus and William Occam, waging war upon the Thomistic concept of the mind and its importance to mankind in our relationship to Creation and Creator. Even the most brilliant of liberal thinkers, even Hobbes and Rousseau and Smith and Mill, seem to me to drive their thoughts forward not by any process similar to the Thomistic process in which a human being develops organically — mind develops as the human being responds to external reality and begins to properly re-shape himself in that response.
I might be speaking in a clumsy way as I try to summarize a lot of thought into a few words but the idea is that will, in the conception of Duns Scotus and his liberal descendants, is a pre-existing faculty which can be directed towards…
Towards what? In a complex world, such a faculty would be guaranteed to get most human beings in trouble and would also be guaranteed to destroy a liberal society. If will exists, it’s not capable of engaging the world in such a way as to understand our circumstances or to project possibilities. Will, unless its a human aspect controlled by a disciplined mind, is capable only of attempting to dominate and control.
I’ll stick to my views that we’re born as human animals and shape ourselves, in ways appropriate for organisms, to develop aspects which can be labeled ‘moral’ and ‘mind-like’ and ‘soul-like’ and so forth. With this sort of an understanding, will isn’t an independent faculty and neither is a mind. Yet, mind is the relationships a human being has with some plausible and honest understanding of a reality which is itself objective, in fact, a manifestation of some thoughts of God. Mind is a human being who develops a plausible understanding of objective reality and responds accordingly. Some who aren’t called to lives of intellectual work or mystical contemplation still give a sense of some sort of deeper understanding of what it’s all about.
The point I’d like to make is that a cognitively and imaginatively sane understanding of reality, especially but not only the part we directly interact with, is what directs morally purposeful action and the plans we might have for better and further shaping ourselves and those under our influence. We don’t live in a world where sane choices present themselves clearly. A great deal of planning and purposeful activity of a general sort is needed to become the sort of moral creature who can begin to make moral sense of this world, including our small regions. We develop habits and attitudes. We acquire the skills to understand better and to act better.
If we are morally well-ordered creatures, will is likely an illusion of sorts, a result of some with simple views of their own selves trying to justify their organic selves as being ruled by their self-conscious aspects. Organisms act as organisms, not as mere residences for agencies and faculties which exist independently of liver and toes and so forth and act accordingly.
It is the mind which can help us to move through life in ways which are morally sane. Will is mostly an illusion, the light reflecting off our wakes as we look behind and try to understand our lives. To see our moral natures in those optical displays of what lies behind us is to have already sunk into a form of insanity.
The punchline, perhaps already anticipated by my regular readers, is that I consider nearly all modern political thinkers and doers to be liberals. The anti-mind crowd has swept the modern fields in nearly all endeavors. Now begins the counterrevolution, or so I can pray.