An essay on liberalism

What is now obvious failure of liberalism

yet remains the dominant paradigm especially for the PMC ( professional and managerial class, aka the top 10% but not the 1%…)

Lots of references and links to books and papers both new and old.

Ostensibly a book review but ultimately much more 

our focus today, Not Thinking Like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss, who is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cambridge.  The first book of his that I have read is his recent A Philosopher Looks at Work, which has been published in a series of “little” books already on my shelf in which A Philosopher Looks at Human Beings (Michael Ruse, whose work on evolution is essential), Sports (Stephen Mumford) and Architecture (Paul Guyer).  A most remarkable thing to me about Professor Geuss is that he has a thoroughly working-class background.  This is rare for an academic of any discipline, and my hope that this would make a difference was confirmed in both A Philosopher Looks at Work and our subject for today.  I readily confess that because I come from a working-class background, I have also not thought like a liberal for a very long time.

Like many such good “little” books, Not Thinking Like a Liberal is substantially autobiographical.  The story is told from the perspective of a student in a boarding school outside of Philadelphia run by Hungarian priests of the Order of the Pious Schools (Piarists).  Geuss later attended Columbia, where he also received his PhD, and then became a Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, where he is now Professor Emeritus [4].  His teachers were profound, both in their work and in their teaching, and the journey is instructive.  We all have teachers, if we are willing to pay them the attention they deserve.  If we choose well those teachers we can, the outcomes are likely to be rewarding.  In my view, Professor Geuss has gifted us with a very good book for our time.