WHY LIBERALISM FAILED
By Patrick Deneen
Yale University Press. 256 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 0 300 240 023
This is a fascinating book for anyone trying to diagnose our society. The word ‘liberalism’ in the title is a bit misleading: the author means individual personal freedom, which has emerged as the highest good of our society since the Enlightenment.
Deneen argues that in pre-modern society, whether Greek or Christian, human freedom was conceived as freedom from slavery to one’s base passions: true freedom was found in self-control that was a necessary basis for virtue.
