Liberalism against itself: cold war intellectuals and the making of our times
2024; Palgrave Macmillan; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1057/s41296-024-00695-z
ISSN1476-9336
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
Resumos Liberalism Against Itself provides an erudite and challenging analysis of 'Cold War liberalism', a term used to describe a loosely connected body of works written by diverse intellectuals between the 1940s and the early 1990s.Moyn is explicit about his own position from the book's outset: 'though labeled by its enemies, Cold War liberalism has recently been written about almost exclusively by its friends.After a long era of apologetics, this book offers the case against….Cold War liberalism left the liberal tradition unrecognizable and in ruins' (pp.6-7).Throughout the book, he argues that Cold War liberalism is one of the historical forces responsible for the backlash against liberalism that has been sweeping across much of the world for the past few years (see pp. 169-176).This book is politically argumentative; it is not a historical survey.Moreover, the author deliberately refuses to discuss many of the more 'canonical' Cold War liberals, such as Raymond Aron, Leszek Kołakowski, and Richard Hofstadter.He instead looks at figures who 'cast more unexpected light on critical features of their time' (p.8).The book has six main chapters, and the theorists discussed are Judith Shklar, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hannah Arendt, and Lionel Trilling.The chapters do not give an overview of their thought, but instead home in on particular aspects of their philosophies.This, Moyn believes, will allow us to evaluate the substance and legacy of Cold War liberalism.Some of the chapters are somewhat uncharitable and unoriginal; Karl Popper, for instance, is criticized for his poor understanding of Hegel and Marx.The most interesting are those in which Moyn gives a more nuanced appraisal, as he does, for instance, in the chapters on Judith Shklar, Isaiah Berlin, and Lionel Trilling.Shklar is celebrated for After Utopia, which is presented as a foil for the Cold War liberalism that she later embraced.In Moyn's view, After Utopia delivers a powerful
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