The history of liberalism has been complicated because of the broader political discourse since its birth in the late seventeenth century. Since then the very first idea of liberal doctrine stressed the values of individualism, that opened the new perspective obliging the State to ensure the rights of individual. Likewise, the philosophy of liberalism came to be known as the politics of individualism and with this context liberalism unbolted the debate of individual civil liberties which encompasses freedom of speech, conscience, and expression. These core values of liberalism were taken for granted as the hallmark of enlightenment across Europe in the late eighteenth century.
Furthermore, the liberal tradition that was shaped by the public sphere in Europe also became the symbol of secularism and the age of reason. Initially, it was the idea propagated by various philosophers through their writings such as Thomas Hobbes, J.J Rousseau, Montesquieu, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham and J.S Mill. It was Thomas Hobbes, who first described the concept of sovereignty in private domain, in which he inquired into the nature of the state and denounced the legislative process by arguing that;
“It is the distinguishing mark of the sovereign that he cannot in any way be subjected to the command of the another, for it is he who makes laws for the subjects, abrogates law already made and amends obsolete law”
But Rousseau came out denouncing Hobbesian interpretation of sovereignty by saying that man is born free but anywhere in chains. By this Rousseau meant all the power is derived from people whose will is at all time sovereign and likewise through his theory of general will Rousseau renounced the very foundation of absolute sovereignty derived from divine by the tapping the will of individuals at the centre of liberal discourse. Thus, in Rousseau’s perspective, if the state is sovereign then man and his rights should be the central theme of the state. Perhaps, with this interpretation Rousseau became the first person who openly denied the divine rights of king and church in the socio-political affairs of man, which later became the central theme of enlightenment across Europe.
However, Rousseau gave the theory of political power via liberal tradition but there were other philosophers who contributed to the development of this theory. For instance, the view of liberal history was forwarded by Voltaire while the doctrine of liberal progress was given by Marquis de Condorcet. In this way, the latter three philosophers became the founders of liberal school of thought.
On the other hand, the fact cannot be denied that, our civilization has been betrayed by the intellectuals of mankind. As we know that the real objective of liberal philosophy was aimed at reason and enlightenment alongside freedom and equality, but it is still yet to redeem itself from the diaspora of its birth. However, there have been various attempts to achieve this objective because Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century was the status dominate and church-controlled society. Subsequently, it was the French revolution and American declaration of independence, that fetched the popular slogans of Liberty, Fraternity, equality and separation of powers that reverberated like a thunder all over the Europe for the centuries to come.
Today there is no divine king rather a capital driven elite, which ascended to the status of power elite with the blessings of liberal ideals that were supposed to uplift the ordinary masses
Apart from the philosophical context of the liberal theory, the idea of liberalism was further emboldened by the economic ideas of Adam Smith, who published his book “The wealth of Nations” in 1776, in which he advocated Laissez-Faire and open borders for trade. Likewise, another philosopher Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill by using both philosophical and economic context of liberalism stretched the domain of liberalism to utilitarian civil government. Bentham explicitly advocated utilitarian civilian government in his famous work ‘The fragments of government’ in which he illustrated the broader framework of liberalism with this popular slogan — King not only by the grace of God but by the grace of people.
Although, today there is no divine king rather a capital driven elite, which ascended to the status of power elite with the blessings of liberal ideals that were supposed to uplift the ordinary masses. But the tragedy is that the capital driven elite have forgotten the very principles of liberalism because they think that they assumed their status by the grace of money not by the support of ordinary people. Thus, it has become crucial to deconstruct liberalism.
The writer is a postgraduate student with a keen interest of writing on history, geopolitics, Current affairs, and International political economy. He is also a freelancer and an independent writer
Published in Daily Times, December 12th 2018.