Faith, Freedom, and Modernity: Christianity and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century

Acknowledgments

Through all the years of my life, I have always had this wonderful feeling that I am not alone. This is not only because of my firm belief that God is by my side in spite of my wretchedness and weaknesses but also because he placed good people on my way; people on whom I could rely and who, I hope, will never leave me alone. I would like to thank them for their untiring assistance, continuous inspiration, and support in my work.

My special thanks go to …

Professor Jerzy W. Gałkowski, a moral philosopher, my boss in the Department of Social and Political Ethics (at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin), the disciple of our beloved John Paul II.

Professor Jan P. Hudzik (from UMCS in Lublin), a political philosopher, whose long-lasting and well-tried friendship has accompanied and inspired me since my university years.

Professors Adam Chmielowski from Wrocław University and Andrzej Szahaj from Nicholas Copernicus University (in Toruń) for their critical and inspiring remarks.

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, Kris Alan Mauren, Dr. Samuel Gregg, Dr. Kevin Schmiesing, Dr. Stephen Grabill, and all the staff from the Acton Institute for all our talks and the fruitful time I spent at the Institute in Grand Rapids.

Professor Michael Novak for the books he sent to me, which have been so fruitful.

Dr. Jan Jacek Szymona from the Liberal Conservative Institute in Lublin for all the interesting books he shared with me.

My family, my wife, Ela, and my children, Marta, Jakub, and Mateusz.

Last but not least, my warm thanks go to my editors and friends, Dr. Samuel Gregg and Mr. Hugh McDonald, whose watchful eyes have scrutinized the text and given it the final touch.

Foreword

Liberalism was a theory of politics not a theory of man.

—Stephen Holmes

This book seeks to show a complex phenomenon that represents one of the ways in which modernity was received in the nineteenth century. I tentatively call this reception of modernity conservative liberalism. It is tentative because my aim is not to look at conservative liberalism in terms of political science alone or to trace the history of a doctrine but to examine the philosophical discourse itself. I shall concentrate on the clash between modern rationalism and empiricism with tradition and religion in the nineteenth century. In particular, I will examine the relationship between liberalism, as a doctrine that had stemmed from modern philosophy, and Christianity. Christianity, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, has formed the main sociological and cultural context for the doctrine that is the center of my interest. The debate on Christianity’s essence and how it is related to individual and social life is as relevant as it ever was. It is still important because history incessantly presents us with new challenges. One may say that modernity is still a challenge for us. Political scientists and others constantly attempt to redefine the ideas of individual freedom, political liberty, our duties to one another, and our duties to the state. Such issues are central in liberal discourse. This book focuses on the nineteenth century, but the questions are still relevant today.¹

In terms of my methodology, my thinking will move along two lines. First, I shall concentrate here on historical, philosophical, sociological, and cultural trends. Second, I shall make an attempt to comment systematically on conservative liberal thinkers against the backdrop of modernity. I understand the historical approach as including the history of philosophy, of society, and of the church. I am interested in writers who, although they did not set the tone for the epoch and were not philosophers of the rank of Hegel or Kant, show how nineteenth-century thinkers grappled with modernity and how they attempted to assimilate it. They were writers who were active in the debates of the time and who, in my opinion, often gave the right answers to the dilemmas of their time. In this context, we understand the remark of the twentieth-century economist, Friedrich von Hayek. In his well-known critique of socialism, he calls Lord Acton and Alexis de Tocqueville some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century.²

Modernity is my immediate point of reference in the systematic dimension of my studies because the authors under consideration refer to modernity as their most proximate historical context, and at the same time seek to overcome it. Hence, in order to understand the issues under study, I will outline the broader context of the history of philosophy. As the table of contents suggests, I have aimed at defining the concepts important for the period under discussion and important for conservative liberalism. Therefore, the historical considerations in successive chapters will close with commentaries that systematize the issues. Using a metalanguage, I apply concepts such as modernity, modern man, the man of the nineteenth century, and rationalization or modernization that were developed by such theorists of philosophy as Charles Taylor, and sociologists such as Niklas Luhmann, Robert Nisbet, Anthony Giddens, and Peter Berger.³ They formulated these concepts on the basis of a sociological, philosophical, interpretative, and hermeneutic diagnosis. These concepts will be important in the two structural parts of this book—in the introductory considerations that open particular chapters and in the closing systematizing approaches. The introductory considerations are broad because their purpose is not only to introduce the reader into the climate of the epoch but also to provide a history of some concepts and their sociological and political repercussions. Because I assume freedom, individualism, and progress to be the components of the doctrine of liberalism, the book is supposed to show—against the backdrop of philosophical, social, and cultural transformations and dynamisms—how these concepts were understood in a new way in the nineteenth century. This new understanding, which was based on a historical and systematic approach, tends to complement and supplement a certain theory of modernity that has functioned in contemporary debate and is still developed by such Catholic (Christian) thinkers as Michael Novak, the late Richard Neuhaus, and Maciej Zięba (in Poland). This position is defined as a personalistic approach. Obviously, we are talking here about a line of thinking that has accompanied philosophical and sociological discourse on modernity in the writings of authors such as Charles Taylor (a philosophical approach), Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Robert Nisbet, Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman (sociological approaches), and others.

The concepts of modernity, liberalism, and conservatism as I am using them here are multilayered and rich in meaning. One of our first tasks must be to make the terms more precise. Modernity functions as an explanatory category in sociological, philosophical, and political literature: we speak of the modern world, the modern state, modern society, or a modern lifestyle. Such terms are designed to highlight changes in mentality and quests for identity—the appearance of intimate society—that is, the disappearance, erosion or even the end of the public sphere, and the formation of a narcissistic culture (R. Sennett). We read of the delicacy and fragility of identity, of a culture of risk, of the degeneration of personal dignity and public duty; authenticity is made central instead. We talk about the fall of the authority of tradition (A. Giddens), the reorganization of time and space, the problem of people becoming uprooted in connection with social mobility, technical segmentation and specialization, about the disenchanted world (M. Weber), the desacralization of social and political institutions, and the reconstruction of the human world. We find the most ambitious philosophical attempt to grasp, define, and overcome modernity in Hegel’s writings. The German philosopher indicates the basic crisis inherent in modernity, the clash between the world of progress and the world of the alienated spirit. Hegel explains the modern world by showing its basic properties, such as subjectivity, freedom, and reflection. According to Jürgen Habermas, subjectivity means individualism, the right to criticize, and autonomy of action. The Reformation, Enlightenment, and French Revolution are of key importance to modernity. The subject-oriented reference and evaluation of the world initiated by Descartes ends with an attempt to base areas of morality, art, and culture on the subject. One can quote Kant’s well-known formula that man leaves his stage of immaturity and should be courageous enough to use his own reason. The latter formula refers to the Enlightenment but is also a synonym of what I call here modernity.⁴

In their description of modern society, sociologists have always applied the categories of nominalism and realism, that is, they considered social questions in terms of a dilemma between the individual and the community. Thus, they wrote about the attendant tension and in another context pointed at liberal, democratic or republican elements. Following this line of reasoning, J. Staniszkis shows modernity as a clash between realism and nominalism and writes about the nominalistic breakthrough, substantial rationality (characteristic of the premodern times) and modern formal rationality. The modern formal rationality, irrespectively of how we solve the problem of the rationality of being, puts first the question of the rationality of structures, of formal and legal regulations and social contracts. Then it applies such categories to explain the contemporary political situation.⁵ Another form of this debate is the American discussion between liberalism and communitarianism.

The term conservative liberalism functions in political science and politics (there are political parties that define their program as conservative liberalism),⁶ but, in philosophical literature, conservatism and liberalism appear as separate categories. Some sociologists, for instance, include de Tocqueville among the representatives of the conservative trend (Nisbet), and others place him in the liberal-conservative school (Kirk). Therefore, it is difficult to fit everything into the conventional categories. Such being the case, my initial reservations that led me to treat the concept conservative liberalism as a tentative term seem only right. It suggests at the same time that there is a certain area of issues common both for conservatism and liberalism, the more so when we speak about classical liberalism. The tentative character of the terms at hand appear particularly justified when we come to define liberalism and conservatism themselves. Here, too, as I have said, we encounter some basic difficulties.⁷ Generally speaking, by conservatism we mean opposition to sudden changes (although conservatives as such were not enemies of change), or else we refer to conservative views when the word traditional would be better; we list a respect for strong and wholesome family values that reside at the core of a productive, prosperous, and peaceful society, a limited government, human life as sacred and given by God, the importance of hierarchy and natural authority, the basic perception that man is fallible and perfectible, natural law, the rule of law (things obviously shared with classical liberalism), and progress. (Quintin Hogg firmly argues on behalf of the last item from this list, and I shall try to show that he was right.)⁸ Now, on the philosophical level, conservatism appears to be a critique of rationalism and opposition to the treatment of human knowledge as merely technical (Oakeshott), which in politics was manifested as a myth of social engineering. This kind of myth has brought forth the quest for a model and method of a more rationalized (ideal, perfect) form of society. Conservatives opposed this technical approach with practical knowledge, based on tradition, customs and beliefs; history (Burke, Acton); and confidence in experience rather than in abstraction and speculative knowledge. They highlighted the concrete character of experience and history (Burke, Ranke, and Oakeshott). Some changes are necessary, but people should be very careful and prudent, and changes should be gradual—not violent or destructive. Conservatism emphasizes limited government, the importance of local communities, the family, the church, voluntary associations (de Tocqueville), mediating groups (Acton), the neighborhood, and the primacy of tradition and experience over rationalistic planning (Hayek, Nisbet). Conservatism criticizes the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment and stresses the significance of historical development (Burke, Acton). It must be noted that in regard to economic matters there is no way to distinguish conservatism from classical liberalism.⁹ Thus, the governments of nineteenth-century Britain, irrespectively of whether they called themselves conservative or liberal, conducted a similar economic policy.

The term liberalism, like conservatism, is ambiguous, and it is difficult to formulate a precise definition. In the history of political thought, it was used with a specifying adjective. Thus, we speak about classical liberalism (also Whig liberalism,¹⁰ John Locke, John Stuart Mill), economic (Adam Smith), aristocratic (Montesquieu), conservative in the sense that concerns us here (Lord Acton, Frédéric Bastiat, Alexis de Tocqueville), and in our own time Catholic liberalism (Michael Novak, Richard Neuhaus)—moderate (goal-based) and modern liberalism. The last type of liberalism mentioned is often interpreted as opposed to classical liberalism or even hostile to it.¹¹ The historian and theorist of political thought, Harold Laski, writes simply that liberalism is hardly less a habit of mind than a body of doctrine.¹² This terminological ambiguity is therefore found in the heart of liberal discourse itself and reflects how certain basic questions are understood; the questions on which the doctrine is focused. Here again we can list basic traits: limited government, civil society, modest legislation and few restrictions, active membership, free association, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, a free economy (private property and the free market). It would perhaps be feasible to defend the thesis that liberalism was not established as a separate line of thinking in terms of political philosophy but is a compilation of various philosophical solutions. In any case, this would explain why the adjective liberal is used so freely in statements. For instance, we speak of a liberal government when it would be more appropriate to say a weak or malfunctioning government; or we hear people talk about a liberal law instead of a bad law.¹³ People may speak of a liberal attitude toward the law; whereas they mean lack of respect, as if any opposition for whatever reason to the law (as something imposed from without) were written in the core of liberalism. The temperature of contemporary discourse rises in proportion to the difficulty in understanding the positions presented here. In view of these intense debates, it seems particularly fitting to call to mind the thoughts of the nineteenth-century thinkers. Their solutions in the debate on liberalism, which may also be interpreted as a debate on modernity, prefigure the contrasting views of today. My considerations will be motivated by an observation that a contemporary political philosopher, Andrzej Szahaj, once made. In a press discussion, he says that one cannot understand liberalism born in the day of a naive faith in reason […], without understanding the complicated process in which liberalism abandons some rationalistic illusions, typical of any idea that takes its origin in the Enlightenment.¹⁴ Despite the passage of time, this claim is incessantly ignored. Therefore, we are dealing with two basic errors. On the one hand, the concept becomes vulgarized and its scope so broadened that it ceases to mean anything. On the other hand what meaning is left is perforce reduced to a reservoir of stereotypes and prejudices, and liberal becomes a buzzword with a connotation critical of all the negative phenomena of our times. We should be mindful that the attempt in the twenty-first century to correct the liberal project had already been made in the nineteenth century.

Some authors propose to treat liberalism in two ways: as a political theory and as a philosophy. In the case of a political theory, we speak of a limited government (Acton, Bastiat), absence of coercion from others (Berlin), autonomy of the individual (Rousseau, Kant), a link between freedom and property (Locke, Gaus, Steiner), private property as a personification of freedom (Robbins), and private property as a protection of freedom (von Hayek). Liberalism as a philosophy highlights the ontological primacy of individual persons over social groups and relationships—a free choice of the model of good life, responsibility, and the primacy of natural and spontaneous social relations over ones that are imposed and institutionalized. Therefore, while liberalism is primarily a political theory (Constant), it is something more than a pure political theory.¹⁵

Any interpretative differences here notwithstanding, it seems that we may define the principal core, the basic problems, the differentia specifica, and the distinctive property of what we could call the philosophy of liberalism. Its basic questions are freedom, individualism, and progress. In various contexts, they become not only synonyms of liberal discourse but in general other modes by which to define what I have called here modernity.¹⁶ This is the more justified because on the basis of the way freedom, individualism, and progress are understood, the liberal and conservative lines of thinking meet and complement each other.¹⁷ In terms of freedom in the conservative and liberal trend, we stress a critique of pure rationalism and a new object of epistemology: what is prerational, subconscious, and personal, as was underscored by Newman. We have therefore Burke’s prejudices, Madame de Stael’s feelings, the German concept of Zeitgeist, and the priority of person before community. In the sphere of politics, we emphasize the importance of a limited government and protection of private property. Instead of an individualism of atomized individuals, we emphasize internal relations and internal structure in the place of mechanic management of isolated individuals. The concept of progress is also modified: There is emphasis on national traditions (Brunetière); on history (i.e., the past, the present time, and the future) in which each moment is a concrete situation, a result of historical involvement rather than a noncontextual point of reference to solve a problem. On a critique of naturalism, of the progressivist and rationalistic development of society as a kind of mechanism subject to the processes of manipulation. In this sense, the conservative and liberal line could become an important voice in the nineteenth-century discussion with modernity, with the Age of Reason and the Age of Ideology.¹⁸

Conservative liberalism consisted in an attempt to overcome the rationalistic point of view; to overcome the modern perspective of ego-cogito,¹⁹ of scientific reason, and become open to an integral vision of man-as-a-whole—open to tradition, community, and religion. I wish to trace the elements of this correction in authors who did not belong in mainstream of philosophical and political discourse, yet were active participants in the modification of rationalistic modernity. They sought to find a solution to social problems not in a panrationalistic social space of self-revealing historical reason but in an openness to Judeo-Christian morality and, more concretely, to Christian revelation and the tradition and teaching of the Catholic Church.²⁰ I believe that the nineteenth-century clash of conservatism and the rationalistic project of modernity, which we may call rationalistic liberalism, actually saved this project before its enclosure in the totalitarianism of mass society.

Generally speaking, conservative liberalism sought to present an integral vision of man, which had disintegrated due to modern anthropology. This disintegration was exacerbated on the one hand by the post-Hegelian concepts of ideal and uniform society (socialism, communism) and on the other by hostile attitudes toward modernity (Joseph de Maistre, de Bonald, Juan Donoso Cortés). The nineteenth century witnessed movements on behalf of the state’s more intensive engagement in social life. It was supposed to play a more significant role, above all, in the formation of formal guarantees (legislature) of equality and material guarantees (social policy) in the area of giving equal opportunities. Socialistic movements gained importance, and concepts of a happy society were given priority. We should not forget that, in the period under study, modern Catholic social teaching emerged with Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Rerum Novarum (1891).²¹ The Church saw threats from socialist and communist doctrines, from efforts to reduce social life entirely to its economic dimension, from the free play of the market, and thus proposed the principle of subsidiarity as a principle regulating the relationship between the state and society. The basic premise for this principle is a belief that the state should not replace society but should try to arouse the citizens’ initiative and give support to traditional communities and social groups rather than do everything for society and transfer initiative to state institutions. Let us stress that this principle has had a positive impact on the conservative-liberal program.²² Catholic social teaching belongs to what I call the conciliatory line: that is, the approval of modernity in the scientific picture of the world while emphasizing that this picture is highly insufficient to understand man and to show the complete picture of him, including his freedom, individuality, and progress.

While considering various reactions of Christian thinkers to modernity, we should bear in mind that in France the Church was not divided. The Church, at least officially, remained in unity with Rome. When the philosophical and religious aspects are considered together, we may also say that the new order in France, initiated by the French revolution, was inspired by the philosophy of French rationalism and deism. The sheer violence of the revolution might be partly explained by the fact that it encountered the resistance of tradition not weakened by a division. Besides, what is of utmost importance here is the ubiquitous sin of absolutist monarchy that touched each sphere of social life. The French Church, obviously, was not free of this guilt.

By contrast, the post-Reformed Church of England was shaped by Puritanism and Calvinism and differed, for instance, from the German model where Lutheranism was accepted. The doctrines are linked with different, concrete solutions. In Calvin-ism, we are dealing with the so-called visible church, a separation between the church and the state. In Lutheranism, in line with the founder’s teaching, the church is primarily invisible. One may easily guess that where the principal feature of the church is its invisibility, it obviously ceases to be visible, that is, it may be everywhere or nowhere. However, the state is obviously visible. I think that we can infer that the doctrine of Gallicanism did not meet much resistance in the states where Lutheranism was the official doctrine.²³

From the historical point of view, we usually assume two philosophical (also social) sources of liberalism: English and French. They have been implemented in various degrees and forms on the European continent. Some, however, would even go to ancient times, to the school of sages and sophists, and would be willing to take Protagoras as the forefather of liberalism (Gray). His maxim that man is the measure of all things seems well suited to freedom and individualism as understood in terms of modern liberalism. Traditionally, however, the birth of liberalism is linked with the birth of modernity itself, that is, as I have noted, with the appearance of European rationalism and empiricism. There are others still, who, like the well-known twentieth-century economist Friedrich von Hayek, regard only seventeenth-century British empiricism as the true source of liberalism.²⁴ Yet, others assume the ideas of Hobbes, Rousseau, or Bentham as this doctrine’s starting point—an approach that raises doubts and calls for additional arguments.²⁵ Such references raise doubts because Hobbes’ Leviathan and Bentham’s Panopticon were born out of fear.²⁶ The Leviathan is not concerned with individual freedom because it was called into being to ensure peace and security, even at the cost of freedom; it does not accept tolerance, especially religious tolerance because it is afraid that tolerance will breed social unrest. Today we usually relate the concept of the modern individual to Hobbes’ philosophy. Rousseau’s concepts on the rational ordering of society in which a man associated with a political community is entirely given to it and, without reserve, may be forced to be obedient to the general will and forced even to be free must arouse fears in any scholar of the sources of liberalism.²⁷

For Bentham, the idea of an all-seeing and omnipresent controlling institution did not only concern the reform of the prison system but would be a model for the relationship between political power and society. In this model, the political regime, like a prison warden, is holding men captive by an intricate system of inspection.²⁸ Toward the end of his life, terms like liberty and liberal, were for Bentham most mischievous words that obscured the real issues, which were happiness, security, and good government. He called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen bawling on paper because he was hostile to the idea of natural law.²⁹ In his case, the stress is therefore shifted to political power, or to an efficient management of society, while the variety that is in fact the fruit of freedom and individuality disappears. As the contemporary sociologist Robert Nisbet emphasizes, the most important thing then becomes to create that scene of rational impersonality in which there is no room for private and individual interests but that operates like an efficient mechanism, a structure interested only in its own effectiveness of control.³⁰ We find a treatment of the above philosophers (Rousseau and Bentham) as the only or the chief sources of liberalism, that is, liberalism treated as a closed doctrine, in those who connect the birth and development of liberalism exclusively with this rationalistic and secularizing model of the Enlightenment and as such reject it.³¹

In this book, I shall refer principally to the English and French trends of European liberalism.³² The English one is called evolutionary, and the French is regarded as more revolutionary, although both are connected with revolutions: the English with the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and the French with the Great Revolution in 1789.³³ The English may indeed be called evolutionary because though it started from violent social movements, it had no intentions of destroying the established social order that had a fixed place in the hated old regime. On the contrary, the English line of liberalism was initiated by the aristocracy, which fought on behalf of society for more participation in power. England was too strongly attached to its monarchic tradition to erase the whole social order and to rebuild it. Even if the English demanded what we would call today democratization of political life in the state, or that society should be regarded as a subject with rights, they certainly did not have in mind the kind of democracy as we understand it today. At that time, the participation of society meant the participation of the political elite. It was only in the nineteenth century that we find an all-European phenomenon, namely the universal demand for the people’s participation in government, and not merely the participation of privileged groups.³⁴ Hence, this century is also called the age of liberalism.³⁵ By pointing to the revolutionary movements at the dawn of the liberal order in Europe when the shift to what we call modernity was taking place, I want to highlight shifts in values, or transvaluations, at the theoretical level as well as practical initiatives.³⁶

The Catholic trend in nineteenth-century liberalism not only struggled against the scientistic paradigm and secularization but also made lay members of the Church more conscious of their responsibility for its life.³⁷ On the horizon marked by the individual ego-cogito appeared the person: an intellectual and moral unity, free and responsible, deserving respect and endowed with individual conscience to decide about the questions of moral good and evil, and a person who lives in a community.

This book also seeks to answer the question of whether the secularization processes in culture, which we are witnessing today and that made themselves felt for the nineteenth-century inhabitant of Europe are necessarily linked with liberal thought, or perchance they only result from the development of certain tendencies.³⁸

The basic thesis of the book reads as follows: Not only does liberalism not exclude morality (derived from Christianity), it cannot even exist without it if it is still to be a safeguard for its principal values—freedom, individualism, and progress. Any liberal and democratic order presupposes this morality as its foundation. It stems from various religious and philosophical traditions. For the European civilization, inasmuch as for another civilization that is developing in other continents but is derived from the European one, it will be the Judeo-Christian tradition. Should we wish to abandon this fundamental point of reference, we shall not be able to save the above values whose support liberalism seems to be. Consequently, liberalism itself will loose its identity. A misconceived freedom will become self-will and chaos—indeed, it will become captivity. A misconceived individualism will become a destructive force aimed against any community (as a matter of course the state, intending to counteract this process, will turn into a police state). A misconceived progress will threaten the sustenance of humankind. If, then, we assume that the main criticisms of liberalism are voluntarism, constructivism, and progressivism, then our task will be to show that the three positions do not exhaust what we call liberalism, that there is a so-called healthy strand of liberalism.³⁹

These three elements are not identical with the definition of liberalism, nor of modernity. Rather, they depict a one-sided approach to the issue at hand. Obviously, should the three concepts characterize the liberal doctrine, we would be dealing with an antireligious and anti-Church doctrine, and the formulation Catholic liberalism would be contradictory in itself. Voluntarism, for that matter, takes the individual as its point of reference, a noncontextual and nonhistorical individual. This is a being, so to say, without a land and without a homeland, a perpetual wanderer, faithful or unfaithful to himself, transforming the world and improving it according to his own values, closed in a peculiar technological eschatology. In line with constructivism man alone creates his own world; he reaches as far as his private or collective intellectual and spiritual horizon. Eventually, progressivism claims that everything leads to an ever better-organized society. Religion and its forms have a merely historical value, dependent on a given stage of society. Speaking metaphorically, man builds his little eschatology. We shall make efforts to show that one could just as well exhibit contrary positions in liberalism, namely, the presence of antivoluntarism, anticonstructivism, and antiprogressivism.

This study therefore also seeks to show that liberalism is an open project that has been adjusted or corrected in various ways over time. On the one hand, I will show a consequence of modern philosophy in its radical form of Hegelian idealism. This aspect was carried on in the doctrines of utopian socialism and Marxian scientific socialism (together with its twentieth-century applications). In order to counteract it, the nineteenth century attempts to escape from the universalizing and unifying actions of enlightened reason and to overcome the reductionist prospect of ego-cogito. In the trend of Catholic liberalism, some basic dichotomies are sustained: faith-reason, science-religion, society-state; at the same time, there is an emphasis on the need to integrate them. They must be integrated not in the universalizing scientific reason (embodied in the state) but in the person as a concrete moral being. Modernity initiated those types of dualism as mutually exclusive.

I wish to show how such thinkers as Acton, Bastiat, Constant, Newman, and Tocqueville contributed to the correction of the open project of liberalism. It is not true, as Gray claims, that there was only a single model of modernity, the enlightened model, with its attempts to make a rational justification of morality and a dominance of the authority of science (scientific reason).⁴⁰ Many authors think likewise of the English political model, as they either ignore attempts to deal with the enlightened model and modern rationalism as early as the nineteenth century or think that such attempts were fruitless. This is what Gray may have had in mind when he wrote about attempts to discuss the enlightened model of modernity on the part of the romantic movement and others and described them as a shallow and ultimately incoherent perspective. ⁴¹ We should not wonder at this position, when we see how authoritatively this author is in claiming that Christianity is no longer the main power enlivening culture in most West European cultures.⁴²

In today’s philosophical discourse, the nineteenth-century authors (Bastiat, Newman, and Acton) appear rarely, if at all. While Tocqueville appears in discussions of political philosophy, we rarely meet Acton there, and Bastiat and Newman are virtually absent. The goal of this book is basically not to present concrete positions but to discuss them in terms of problems. The point is to understand the modification of modernity in the nineteenth century.⁴³ This goal was also motivated by my wish to elicit, as it were, from obscurity the figures who would be difficult to find in readily available literature. Nevertheless, I regard their analyses as important in understanding the new approach to the project of modernity, of which liberalism was a part. Acton is present, basically, as a historian of ideas, Bastiat at times appears as a political journalist;⁴⁴ Newman exists almost exclusively as a theologian (although he had a penetrating insight into the problems of his time that can hardly be equaled).

Unlike Gray, I believe that Christianity still remains a force enlivening Western culture, but that its form changes. In view of the postmodern perspective, the level of modern intellectual discourse does not gain as much importance as a living experience of faith in the form of a testimony, a correspondence between word and deed. In any case, there is no way to measure vitality. It does not depend on statistics (such as the number of church goers) nor does it depend on surveys designed to study how people are receiving the Church’s teaching in the area of morality. I agree with Constant and Acton that the vitality of Christendom depends on its ability to assimilate modernity, modernizing processes, changes, and at the same time to preserve its own identity. We will discuss this special trait in the chapter on progress.

In this light, this book concerns itself with the encounter between modern thinking (sometimes called rationalistic liberalism) and the open liberal project proposed by conservative liberals. With regard to the historical approach, I shall concentrate on an analysis of the problems inherent in the sources. The authors with whom I shall be dealing include Constant, Acton, Newman,⁴⁵ and Bastiat.

In part 1, I will deal with the development of freedom from antiquity to modernity, and the sense given it by modernity. The perspective of antiquity is important because the nineteenth-century authors with whom I am concerned often referred to antiquity in their criticism of certain tendencies in modernity—particularly with respect to the concept of virtue. In a particular way they referred to Christianity, first and foremost taking into account the concept of conscience—an essential element in the area of modernity. An equally important issue is to point to the particular situation of each person who lives in a concrete sociopolitical system and, at the same time, overcomes this system and has goals that are independent of those of the state and society. Modernity, in the form of the modern rationalistic model, reduces reality to the idea of a rational society, a society of rational choices, whose freedom is determined by procedures of constructed social contracts. The term rational is somewhat ambiguous, and in the modern context it usually implies an element of central organization.

Part 2 begins with Hegel’s idealistic philosophy, which returns to the idea of the closed and happy society of the ancient polis in a modern form: the total rationalization of the whole. In this part, the stances of the nineteenth-century representatives of the new school of conservative liberalism appear, who in their antirationalistic and anti-Hegelian attitude understand freedom in a different way. This new freedom is also a reaction to Enlightenment secularist trends that reduced religion to the natural realm, the private matter, and tried to build a morality of secular humanism. Here, Constant appears as the thinker who at the turn of the century sought to link modernity with awakening romanticism. The emphasis is shifted from the ego-perspective onto the person in the social, historical, geographical, and political context. As an individual, the person is part of society, but at the same time he has goals that go beyond society. This new perspective would be continued in the writings of Bastiat, Newman, and Acton. I intend to show how conservative thinking penetrated the new liberal project. It deviated from the total concept of social contracts in the direction of presenting man-as-a-whole in the concrete, man as an individual and social being in the first place, not only political. Then it took a course toward a deeper understanding of the role of the man of faith, religion, and Church structure as an autonomic reality, surpassing the natural perspective. I devote the most space to the matter of freedom because it is specially emphasized by modern political philosophers and is also an essential foundation for Christian thinking, the foundation for Christian morality as a whole (with respect to guilt and punishment, merit, and vocation). Freedom is the essential foundation of individualism as well as progress. Freedom enables individualism and progress to function and introduces a certain dynamic element. It begins to take shape in a certain drama and tension of solitary choice, risk, and uncertainty.

In part 3, I present the subsequent element of the new perspective: individualism and that which is associated with it: individuality, originality, diversity—terms characteristic of an epoch that retreats from the intellectual models of a total society. I consider whether, in a modified way, the understanding of freedom introduced by modernity has a place for community, tradition, ties, and the creation of a sphere of national sympathy. I make attempts to show how far advanced is the possibility of a nonatomistic modern society not only in which the modern concept of self-interest actually functions but also in which, thanks to the freedom imparted by a transcendental religion, it is capable of discovering another foundation.

In part 4, I address the idea of progress, an idea typical of the intellectual climate in the nineteenth century. It is well known that the ideas of evolution, or historical and biological development were dominant elements in the ideological realm in this period. The idea of progress also becomes part of how people thought about religion and the Church. We shall see that progress in the sense of the development of man (including his economic, political, social, and moral development) has a completely different shape than the progress of knowledge and technology. In other words, there is much more to development than progress.

In our discussion on the interrelation between faith and freedom in the state, we closely consider conservative liberalism as a doctrine with a special connection to Christianity because reflection on the topics of freedom, individualism, and progress are linked with liberalism and Christianity. Just as we cannot consider modernity without Christianity, we cannot make a reliable analysis of liberalism without reference to Christianity. This is readily apparent in the contemporary research of Catholic liberal thinkers, who, unlike Gray, do not believe that it was a shallow and incoherent attempt at the modification of modernity. They also believe that Christianity has an unchanging and far-reaching strength that can revive culture.

Notes

1. Ludwig von Mises thus characterizes this period: It was an age of immortal musicians, writers, poets, painters, and sculptors; it revolutionized philosophy, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. And, for the first time in history, it made the great works and the great thoughts accessible to the common man. Human Action (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1966), 155.

2. F. A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1986), 10. The book has an interesting dedication: to the socialists of all parties.

3. On modernity, see also in the classical study written by J. Habermas, Filozoficzny dyskurs nowoczesności [The Philosophical Discourse on Modernity], trans. M. Łukasiewicz (Kraków: Universitas, 2000).

4. See G. W. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), par. 25–278; A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), passim; R. Nisbet, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), passim; M. Weber, Polityka jako zawód i powołanie [Politics as a Vocation], trans. A. Kopacki and P. Dybel (Kraków: Znak, 1998), 122; J. Habermas, Filozoficzny dyskurs nowoczesności [The Philosophical Discourse on Modernity], 26–27; R. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 221–81; C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), passim; J. Szacki, Historia myśli socjologicznej [History of Sociological Thought] (Warsaw: PWN, 2006), 77–133.

5. See J. Staniszkis, O władzy i bezsilności [On Power and Helplessness] (Kraków: WL, 2006), 49–70; see also R. Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 77.

6. Among politicians one mentions, for instance, R. Reagan, G. Bush, M. Thatcher, or V. Klaus; in Poland the well-known conservative liberals are the late S. Kisielewski, now R. A. Ziemkiewicz, the UPR party, http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalizm_konserwatywny (accessed on October 20, 2006).

7. The Concise Conservative Encyclopedia, s.v. conservatism, we read: Attempts to define conservatism have been numerous and somewhat elusive, and s.v. liberalism, we find almost the same unfavorable piece of information: A term nearly as unsettled as conservatism. B. Miner, The Concise Conservative Encyclopedia (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), 63, 134. The difficulties to define are further complicated by the statements of some political philosophers. In his Historia myśli politycznej [History of Political Thought] M. Król writes: One should honestly admit that conservatism revived only thanks to liberalism. Liberalism created a world stable and free from radicalisms, in which there is room to seek good society. M. Król, Historia myśli politycznej [History of Political Thought] (Gdańsk: Arche, 1998), 250. It must be added, however, that the benefit of interdependence was mutual. Conservatism saved liberalism from empty and barren rationalism. In any case, one must be aware of the difficulties to make the positions here precise. We have placed Burke in the conservative tradition, but he could equally be placed in the conservative liberal strain. P. Kłoczowski writes about it in his introduction to the Polish translation of the Reflections on the Revolution in France, where we read: […] liberal conservatism […] supports political and economic liberalism, but it struggles against moral and religious leseferism (E. Burke, Rozważania o rewolucji we Francji [Reflections on the Revolution in France], trans. D. Lachowska (Kraków: Znak, 1994), 14; also, R. Kirk places Tocqueville in the liberal conservative tradition. Therefore, in order to do justice to the complicated matter at hand, like in the case of liberalism, we use modifying adjectives. Thus, for instance, if Burke is classified as a conservative liberal, de Maistre would be authoritarian conservative, and his conservatism would be defined as theocratic, etatistic, paternalistic, and anti-parliamentarian (E. Burke, Rozważania o rewolucji we Francji [Reflections on the Revolution in France], 14).

8. Cf. R. Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 2–3; see also A. Quintin, Conservatism, in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. R. E. Goodin, Ph. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 244–68; see also A. Szahaj and M. N. Jakubowski, Filozofia polityki [Political Philosophy] (Warsaw: PWN, 2005), 60–61; Q. Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (West Drayton: Penguin Books, 1947), 16–146.

9. See A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vols. 1–2, trans. H. Reeve (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004), passim; E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1959), passim; B. Miner, The Concise Conservative Encyclopedia, 64; M. Król, Historia myśli politycznej [History of Political Thought], 250–60; R. Kirk, The Conservative Mind (New York: Gateway Editions, 1978), 161–96.

10. See W. Kwaśnicki, Historia myśli liberalnej [History of Liberal Thought] (Warsaw: PWE, 2000), 47.

11. See A. Ryan, Liberalism, in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. R. E. Goodin and Ph. Pettit, 294; see also W. Galston, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: University Press, 1992), 4; for an interesting text comparing classical and modern liberalism see in D. Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1998), 6–64.

12. H. J. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism (London: Clarendon Press, 1962), 13, 14.

13. In his penetrating analysis of the old regime, de Tocqueville notes how often the application of the law varied day by day (tous les jours), so that it was eventually treated with contempt that ended by dropping the law, even in the hearts of those who applied it, (le mepris ou finit par tomber la loi, dans l’esprit meme de ceux qui l’appliquent) and then adds: the government […] rarely breaks the law, but each day it makes the law bend delicately in all directions (brise rarement la lois, mais chaque jour il la fait plier doucement dans tous les sens) (L’ancien régime et la revolution) (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 134.

14. See A. Szahaj, Antyliberalizm na skróty [Taking a Shortcut Across Antiliberalism], Dziennik [Polish Daily News], Magazine Europa, no. 52 (December 30, 2006), 8. The passage quoted here is a polemic with R. Legutko’s text Dlaczego nie lubię liberalizmu [Why I Do Not Like Liberalism], Dziennik [Polish Daily News], Magazine Europa, no. 48 (February 3, 2005), 4; R. Legutko, Nadal nie lubię liberalizmu [I Still Do Not Like Liberalism], Dziennik [Polish Daily News], Magazine Europa, no. 77 (September 9, 2005), 13. I think it is fitting to agree with a contemporary political philosopher who writes: Indeed, one may say that liberty is for all liberals the highest value and a condition to realize other values, but this is also the common part of various directions of liberal thought, recurring in different (liberal) forms of life. Besides this, there are numerous differences, and they are not trivial at all. M. Król, Bezradność liberałów [Helplessness of Liberals] (Warsaw: Prószyński and S-ka, 2005), 23.

15. See G. F. Gaus, Liberalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ (accessed on October 10, 2007); M. Król, Historia myśli politycznej [History of Political Thought], 235–49.

16. See J. Gray, Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 9–10.

17. In his insightful analysis of conservatism, focusing on the nineteenth century, R. Nisbet rightly remarks, Liberalism and socialism are both visibly affected by conservative undercurrents in the nineteenth century, Conservatism, 83.

18. Nineteenth-century philosophers, as a historian of ideas notes, became involved in a gigantic task of ideological and cultural reconstruction.[…] They were involved […] in a prolonged crisis of reason, more profound than any that had occurred in Western culture since the original collision of paganism with primitive Christianity. H. D. Aiken, The Age of Ideology (New York: Mentor, 1962), 26.

19. I shall be referring to the ego-cogito throughout the text as to a symbol; a symbol of a kind of amnesia that Descartes proposed; a theoretical construct; a distance to the real world; a suspension of knowledge coming from sense data, from tradition, and from history. Jacques Maritain, in his remarkable book, calls the French philosopher notre cher ennemi [our dear enemy] who had brought about the dualism of spirit and flesh, intellect and morality, who gave rise to rationalistic l’esprit cartésien [Cartesian spirit] J. Maritain, Religion et Culture (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie, 1946), 41.

20. In like manner, Acton is defined by a specialist of the epoch. In his journalism of the 1860s, the Englishman concentrated on two areas: religion and politics. His main source of inspiration was Edmund Burke and his writings, and the goal for Acton was to convert his co-religionists to a more valid Catholicism and introduce them to the true principles of political Conservatism. See G. Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1993), 69. Let us note that the position that stressed the importance of the Church and Judeo-Christian morality was not unanimous (Burke, de Tocqueville, Acton, Newman, Bastiat) in the conservative line of thinking. Thus, we meet here militant atheists (Ingersoll) and those who stood in opposition to Christianity (Menchen, Nock); see R. Nisbet, Conservatism, 72.

21. On the broad scope of social problems discussed by nineteenth-century Catholic writers see also M. Novak, Freedom with Justice (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 4–8.

22. While commenting on the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Constant wrote: We are a generation of passage, of transition, born under arbitrary government, we are sowing the seed of liberty (Le constitutionnel), G. H. Dodge in Benjamin Constant’s Philosophy of Liberalism (Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 142. The term passage might serve as a handy descriptive for the whole of the nineteenth century. Therefore, this period arouses a living interest among scholars. It was not only the time of establishing the modern state of liberal democracy but also a fertile ground for the nationalisms and totalitarianisms of the twentieth century.

23. See also N. Aroney, Law, Revolution, and Religion: Harold Berman’s Interpretation of the English Revolution, Journal of Markets & Morality 8, no. 2 (Fall 2005), 361; L. Girard, Le catholicisme en Europe de 1814 á 1878 (Paris [no date]), 5; H. Arendt, On Revolution (Bangay: Penguin Books, 1973), passim.

24. See F. A. von Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), 1–32.

25. The Polish political philosopher, S. Kowalczyk, openly calls Hobbes and Rousseau classics of liberalism, which is for me entirely incomprehensible without further qualifications. This seems to be a sort of mental shortcut. See Liberalizm i jego filozofia [Liberalism and Its Philosophy] (Katowice: Unia, 1995), 154. To take another example, Gaus calls Hobbes at best a qualified liberal, noticing simultaneously in Hobbes and Rousseau
distinctly illiberal features. G. F. Gaus, Liberalism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ (accessed on October 10, 2006). Another thinker credits Hobbes for spawning egalitarian materialism. See B. Frohnen, Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).

26. G. Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1995), 38. R. Nisbet writes about icy rationalism. See Conservatism, 43.

27. See J. J. Rousseau, The Essential Rousseau: The Social Contract, trans. Lowell Bair (New York: A Mentor Book, 1974), 17, 20. No wonder then that Rousseau welcomed the outbreak of the revolution with hope, but—as Löwith rightly notices—although he instigated it, he himself felt fear, […] as he thought it futile to attempt to remove the cause of evil and to bring people to the state of primeval equality […] K. Löwith, Od Hegla do Nietzschego. Rewolucyjny przełom w myśli XIX wieku [From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolutionary Breakthrough in the Thought of the Nineteenth Century], trans. S. Gromadzki (Warsaw: KR, 2001), 292.

28. G. Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds, 35, 36. The idea of Panoptism, that is, a possibility to observe the whole of social life, that is, checking, controlling, and surveying it, from a chosen point of view bears, as M. Foucault noticed, a new type of society (Nadzorować i karać) [Discipline and Punish], trans. T. Komendant (Warsaw: Fundacja Aletheia, 1998), 210. Society in this system constitutes a certain concise whole, a fact that makes it easier for the centers of power to exert unobtrusive control, because the power may remain invisible. Panoptism is, therefore, a dream of the lost unity come true. The unity is brought back by virtue of a new organization of society. In this new organization, the whole of social life is transformed into the vast field of perception, in which the viewer is invisible for the viewed (208). The new mode of management automatizes and disindividualizes power (197). It may be exercised by anybody, for it is a perfectly functioning system that matters, not the man joined to that system. Now man who is seen, although he himself does not see the viewer (an example of camera obscura, candid camera), becomes an object of information, not a subject of communication. The Panopticon—as Z. Bauman rightly notes—was a weapon against difference, choice, and diversity. Globalizacja [Globalization], trans. E. Klekot (Warsaw, 2000), 62. R. Nisbet in his turn points at Bentham’s rage at pluralistic diversity (Conservatism, 43).

29. R. Nisbet, Conservatism, 77; see I. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 107.

30. See R. Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 176. Both for Bentham and for Rousseau—says Nisbet—the individuals were supposed to be forced to freedom, and the task was entrusted to the policeman and the penitentiary (177). Indeed, what comes to mind here is the praiseworthy service of the executioner, worshipped by another advocate of the state’s dictate, Joseph de Maistre. Bentham and Rousseau had the vision of a society freed from the tyrannous and stultifying traditions that had come down from the Middle Ages (177). In any event, efficacy is the key word of modernity. Utilitarianism was not so much interested in freedom, as in a well-managed society. One cannot help noticing that the attempt to build a new and happier community soon comes into conflict with the freedom of the individual member of such a community.

31. MacIntyre provides an example of utilitarianism, as an enlightened project, whose attempt to give a rational vindication of morality has failed. See A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre