Reviews for Myth of Liberal Individualism

The average rating for Myth of Liberal Individualism based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-27 00:00:00 John Regier This is a thoughtful and genuinely innovative book. I would love to give it five stars, but unfortunately its structure is confusing and the argument is hard to follow. It's definitely not a book to read from start to finish--read the introduction, then chapters 5-6, then go back and read 1-4. The poor structure and opaque writing is a shame because it the argument is spot on. Bird's argument is that "liberal individualism," which we mostly think of as a coherent theoretical position, actually involves two ideas that are in tension with each other. Simplifying greatly, these are 1) what is valuable /to/ individuals and 2) the value /of/ individuals. We can think of 1) as the legacy from JS Mill, and 2) as the legacy of Kant. The tension between these two ideas comes out most clearly in Bird's discussion of Nozick's libertarianism in chapter 5, since libertarianism understands itself as a self-consciously "individualistic" position compared to other liberalisms. Libertarianism as Bird interprets it involves both a view that people are self-owners, as well as a view that people's rights (including self-ownership) are inviolable and impose "side-constraints" on how we may use others. Bird shows, however, that these two commitments are not mutually reinforcing but actually in deep tension with each other. For example, the commitment to self-ownership rights is consistent with, and perhaps requires, that we /maximize/ the exercise of self-ownership rights rather than treat these rights as side-constraints. The commitment to a Kantian view of persons as inviolable, and the value /of/ individuals as opposed to what is valuable /to/ individuals, implies limits on how individuals may permissibly use their ownership rights. This is perhaps clearest in the case of voluntary slavery, which Nozickian libertarians might permit but would be inconsistent (according to Kant's view) with respecting the value /of individuals. While the incoherence between these two ideas is clearest in the case of libertarian theories, Bird demonstrates implications for liberal theories and their critics generally. To take just one upshot, for example, various criticisms of liberal theories as "atomistic" and "individualistic" are predicated on a confusion. As Bird puts it, one consequence of his argument is that we should understand liberalism as "an unstable alliance of antagonistic principles and ideals." The effect is that the liberal tradition is more up for grabs and open to theoretical development that we have appreciated.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-01 00:00:00 Courtney Spellicy Want to understand the last hundred years, and maybe the next hundred, in terms of the interplay between mass media and people's assumptions? The short book is an awfully good start.