Muddling through Modernity: Experience, Transcendence and Morality in Odd Times

• In Event: Alternatives to the Liberal Paradigm

Abstract

At a time of change, tumult, bitterness and even violence, when ostensibly democratic political orders or systems are delegitimated or seem ineffective, what’s a person to do? I suggest that there may still be some merit to a sort of liberalism, but not for many of the reasons often given and certainly not with any sense of triumphalism. History has not ended, alas. I look to critics of neoliberalism, mostly French thinkers of the Twentieth Century, to find the seeds of a defense. What unites many of them is the prioritization of the experience of distinct persons, an openness to encounters and comprehensions beyond the scientific and concrete, and a return to the grounding of morality (and ultimately just political order) in the actions and relations of the person.

Author

• Dennis J. Coyle, Catholic University of America