Translated from German with the help of AI. The original is the authoritative version.
Adrian Vermeule, a determined critic of liberal thought, once wrote that liberalism has a „sacral character" and that liberals in Western democracies regularly reassure themselves of their values in more or less ritualised form.
At first this description seems odd and off the mark. A run-of-the-mill liberal who wants to defend liberalism against Vermeule might say: liberalism as such abstains from religious forms and confines itself to marking out the political framework that allows the individual to practise religion freely. Sure, liberals have shared convictions, and one can certainly tell a plausible story about how these convictions can be identity-forming and convey the feeling of working on a common project. But liberalism as sacral and liturgical – is Vermeule serious? Like many liberals, I have ambivalent feelings about how rewarding a discussion with postliberals is. Perhaps there has simply been too much polemic in play so far when postliberals meet liberals?
Alexandre Lefebvre talks differently about (and with) postliberals. In his widely noted book Liberalism as a Way of Life he agrees with them on one central point. For Lefebvre, the scope of liberalism is large: „it is a big mistake to overlook or underplay how ubiquitous liberal values and sensibilities are in the background culture of contemporary Western democratic countries.” (p. 15). Lefebvre holds that everyday life in Western democratic societies is comprehensively and deeply shaped by liberal ideas. We simply notice it too rarely. Postliberals lament this liberal imprint on our way of life; Lefebvre, by contrast, considers it a valuable source of orientation. The book is perhaps at its most optimistic where Lefebvre finds it unnecessary to look elsewhere (in antiquity, say, or in the traditions of other cultures) for inspiration. In meme form: We have liberalism at home! This liberalism already familiar to us, Lefebvre argues, can shape our way of life and can even be inspiring in a spiritual sense. Liberalism as a Way of Life thus does something unusual with familiar liberal ideas.
These liberal ideas, if the author has his way, address us not only in our role as citizens but on a decidedly personal level. They are meant to shape how we talk with friends, use dating apps, or shop at the supermarket. At the same time, with its openness to the question of the flourishing life and the seriousness with which it speaks about spirituality, the book joins a trend in contemporary philosophy: philosophers have become more open to books that are meant not only to convince us of a particular thesis but also contain practical advice for living and personal anecdotes. Accordingly, Lefebvre sees his book as a mixture of moral philosophy and self-help. Liberals need advice in order to meet the high demands placed on them, of that he is convinced. He is also concerned to show how easily liberals can go wrong. In places the book is critical of liberals, because it takes liberalism seriously as a great and demanding cause.
At its core, Liberalism as a Way of Life contains a descriptive thesis about people in Western societies and a normative one. Many of us, it holds, are already liberals through and through („liberals all the way down” in Lefebvre’s diction). Anyone who wants to understand a society such as Australia’s or Germany’s cannot get around the enormous influence of liberal values on those societies. The normative thesis runs: the liberal life is a good life for those who engage with it. Making liberalism the basis of one’s own worldview and one’s own spiritual orientation is a meaningful thing to do. Again and again Lefebvre draws on humorous examples: he discusses at length, for instance, the thoroughly liberal make-up of Leslie Knope, protagonist of the comedy series Parks and Recreation. The pop-cultural references are without doubt a strength of the book.
It is worth noting that Lefebvre’s core theses are not meant to address every member of society without exception; he speaks of most of us, or of those who actually decide on a liberal life. It matters to him to discuss the liberal life in a way that is sensitive to the psychology of different people, instead of making strongly generalising assumptions about what makes people happy. A liberal life, according to Lefebvre, has many advantages, but for some people it can also have unsatisfying sides. Lefebvre makes a concession here: his plea for the liberal life leaves open the possibility that some have already found a form of life that suits them and that is not liberal through and through.
At first this comes across as pleasantly nuanced, but the impression remains that an ambivalent stance runs through the book. It also concerns the question of how wide the gap is between ideal theory and non-ideal reality. The ambivalence begins with the question of how many people are liberal through and through. More clarity on this question would be desirable, not least given that Lefebvre addresses himself primarily to people without religious affiliation. Are liberals all the way down rather rare, or do they form the majority in liberally shaped societies? On the one hand, according to Lefebvre, there are „lots of us liberals all the way down, which is only to be expected if I am correct about the omnipresence of liberalism” (p. 133). On the other hand, his book, he says, addresses „fence-sitters” who find it hard to embrace liberal values fully (p. 170). But perhaps it is simply out of place to insist on a precise answer to this question. The question of how liberal we are seems to me to belong rather to the empirical social sciences. Since Lefebvre has much that is original to say on normative questions and on the topic of liberal conduct of life, the book could have managed well by treating descriptive theses more cautiously or leaving the topic largely aside. The tension continues when it comes to the distinction between liberals and „would-be liberals in liberaldom” (p. 170). By liberaldom the author means our imperfectly liberal world with all its remaining illiberal traits and wrong turns among liberals. Put pointedly: are most of us already liberal through and through, or do we first have to learn more in order to become so?
These questions also concern the book’s intended readership. For if the aim is to reach „fence-sitters” and people who are not yet liberal in the narrower sense, the book must do more to achieve its goals than merely remind us of our existing values. And indeed there are occasional signs in the text that Lefebvre also wants to make the case for liberalism among the not yet convinced, and that he sets the bar for success high in doing so. Why else the note that being liberal requires work and does not automatically result from growing up in a liberal society (p. 19)? In lofty tones, a liberal might say: a missionary defence of liberalism should advocate liberalism as a conception of the good life in such a way that conversion appears worthwhile.
Lefebvre is more reserved: „I’m not suggesting that [liberalism] is better than other ways of life. Any self-respecting liberal would by doctrine and disposition shrink from such a claim” (p. 18). Of course, not everyone likes to speak in a missionary register, and no one should feel pushed to start. But what about people from the liberal camp who like to present their arguments confidently in conversation with others and hold the position that the liberal form of life is superior to other forms of life? It seems to me far from obvious that liberalism itself gives one grounds for objecting to this approach. Lefebvre returns again and again in the book to the point that liberalism is more many-sided and more radical than life in liberaldom suggests. Against this background I consider it advisable to conceive of the spectrum of liberalism as broad, and not to classify liberals with a strong sense of mission as tending towards illiberalism too hastily.
Surely it is not illiberal or contradictory to consider liberalism superior to some forms of life. Liberals are not committed to placing a non-liberal form of life on the same rung as the liberal one in their ranking. David Enoch’s vigorous defence of liberalism („shameless liberalism”) is an example of such a position, one that argues for the superiority of certain liberal ideas about the conduct of life and that, in my view, does not deserve the suspicion of illiberalism.
In case it has not yet become clear: the book is refreshing to read and a genuine enrichment. Given the enormous volume of work on topics such as public reason and projects of Rawls interpretation, Lefebvre has succeeded in writing a book of a special type, which is no small thing. The critical queries I have just described do not change the fact that after reading Liberalism as a Way of Life one is grateful to have read a well-written praise of liberalism and of philosophy as a way of life.
Having touched on several things briefly, what is still missing is a look at the most exciting part of his project: his ideas on spiritual exercises. According to Lefebvre, liberals can learn to appreciate the depth and beauty of the liberal form of life better through spiritual exercises. Following Pierre Hadot, he understands spiritual exercises as voluntary, personal, and transformative embodied practices carried out with a certain regularity. Although he argues for a quietist stance on metaphysical questions, Lefebvre is convinced, like Rawls, that everyday life must be redeemed. All the spiritual exercises in the book are based on pieces of Rawlsian theory and are meant to function for liberals like religious practices. Philosophical ideas can trigger a fascination and a sense of being moved all their own, which makes the idea of devising philosophical spiritual exercises seem natural.
Whether the elements he borrows from Rawls are suited to serve as spiritual exercises? I am not yet fully convinced. One of the three spiritual exercises is inspired by the Rawlsian original position. Lefebvre invites the reader to sit down comfortably, close their eyes, and imagine a manageable group of people they have never met before. The next step is to turn all these people into stick figures and, in one’s imagination, negotiate basic principles for a society with them. Perhaps, Lefebvre concedes, this seems unexciting. But whoever carries out this exercise repeatedly can radically change their life through it (pp. 180–82). So far, so good.
But is a seated position and closing one’s eyes enough to have an embodied experience in the relevant sense? Perhaps. Like Lefebvre, I find the comparison with religious practices helpful. Religions have developed a broad repertoire of rituals with a bodily component. Religious people find it fulfilling to sing with others, to hold processions, to move in synchrony, or to go on pilgrimage. Characteristic of activities of this kind is the connection to a form of life and the experience of emotions that might not have arisen without the corresponding bodily actions. The original position as a spiritual exercise, by contrast, is probably phenomenologically closer to reflecting on a thought experiment. Many thought experiments are illuminating and yet do not fit the profile of spiritual exercises. Engagement with the original position could perhaps be deepened by combining it with other actions. Perhaps, to name one example, we should more often take long walks and deliberately direct our attention to the fellow human beings we encounter? One can think about Rawls while doing that, too.
Another of the spiritual exercises relates to Rawls’ public reason. Lefebvre characterises accurately what public reason liberalism consists in and then transfers the concern to the private sphere. Shaped into a spiritual exercise, public reason, on Lefebvre’s account, consists in the practice of good listening. Here too a fuller justification of the exercise’s transformative potential would be desirable, in order to counter the objection that listening to others charitably is a rather sober activity without a formative embodied component.
It is wonderful that Liberalism as a Way of Life gives a Rawls passage on everyday life’s need for redemption the attention it deserves. Following an interview, Rawls puts to himself the following question about the role of religion: „Does life need to be redeemed?”. He answers yes and adds a further question, which he leaves open: where can this redemption come from? That Rawls hesitates to follow the question directly with an answer is perhaps a pointer to the value of humility, however inspiring and uplifting the liberal form of life may be. We don’t have redemption at home.
