Liberalism Undermining Tradition

Matthias is one of my favorite nerdheads EVAR.

He wrote his senior thesis on how tradition has been undermined by the core principles of Enlightenment liberalism.

We're going to talk about it over coffee soon, but I want to write out some of his main points, weaving my thoughts into it. (NOTE: these are Matthias's thoughts I'm building on. I'm putting it in my own words so it makes sense to me later)

First of all, tradition is a beautiful thing. We can't live our lives without it. Everything we do, from going to school and getting married down to our ability to speak and process information--has to do with traditional values and customs. It's extremely ordinary and pervasive--so much so that it goes unnoticed.

However, tradition is necessarily exclusive. It makes some desires superior to others, and thus, is not compatible with "equality of preference" proposed by Hobbes in The Leviathan. He writes, “Whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it that he for his part calleth good… For there is no such finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of old moral philosophers.”

Hobbes's equality of preference rejects the ancient interest in the "greatest good" because it is seen as a monster oppressor to the individual's wants and desires. The problem with this is congruency. You simply can't have tradition without the exclusivity that comes with it--exclusivity to the opinions, wishes, and desires of certain minority groups or outsiders.

What happens when preference rules? Kalb writes that to “make freedom truly universal and equal is to make it featureless… it becomes an abstraction defined and redefined without limit by government officials, whether welfare administrators or Supreme Court justices.”

As a whole, Matthias's paper begs deeper questions about the nature of equality, morality, and truth. How do we define them? How important is it for us to have absolute answers in these areas? How important is it that we all agree? If we don't...what happens to tradition?

Ask him to send you his thesis!