How do you make liberalism sexy again? Conversation with Sven Gerst [PODCAST]

What makes ideology sexy? What does liberal utopia look like? What does it mean to be a “good liberal” politician, bureaucrat or think tank? And how to make liberalism (again) become sexy? Leszek Jażdżewski (Liberte!) talks with Sven Gerst, a philosopher about an interdisciplinary philosophical, political and economical background. He earned higher degrees at King’s College London, London School of Economics and Political discipline (LSE) and at the University of Mannheim, and had previously studied and worked at Harvard University, Duke University, St. Petersburg State University, and Taiwan National University.

Leszek Jażdżewski (LJ): Could ideology be sexy?

Sven Gerst (SG): First of all, we request to consider what it means sexy. Sex is very physical, it's animal desire. Of course, this cannot be the idea. But if we're talking about an ideology that is attractive – not necessarily sexy – it can be if it offers a vision. This reflection already gives us a certain thought of what is incorrect with liberalism.

What makes ideology attractive? They usually bring something fresh and offer a large vision. Meanwhile, liberalism is now considered the position quo. It doesn't truly offer us anything new, at least not enough. That's why he's not so sexy.

On the another hand, liberalism offers a imagination according to which everything depends on the individual. Anyone can make their own society. Although this is very real, it is not very visionary. Liberalism is not a very utopian vision. Therefore, what makes political explanation sexy, is the fact that it is visionary and radically fresh – 1 that people have never heard of before.

LJ: Does this mean that fascism could at first be considered sexy?

SG: Let me avoid the question of fascism and look at this phenomenon more broadly. Instead, let us look at Communism in the 1920s. Was he sexy? Of course. F.A. Hayek made a crucial reflection (which is inactive undervalued today) that the attractiveness of socialism was fundamentally utopian. We see this in the way socialism is communicated – it always happens utopian.

What happened in the russian Union was not real socialism, due to the fact that although in explanation we are dealing with a utopia of what specified a strategy would look like, as it turned out, it was not real socialism. So the utopian ideal, the planet of dreams, has always been communicated. This is something that we see in socialism and that is not in another ideologies. surely this aspect is present in fascism due to the fact that there is an end goal – at least to any extent. Of course, erstwhile we talk the word “fascism”, many associations automatically come along. But there is within it a planet imagined, utopian standard that we can aspire to, a imagination that has been outlined.

Meanwhile, we gotta ask ourselves: What is the imagination of political explanation specified as liberalism? What is liberal utopia? Hayek asked that question in his essay The "Intellectualists and Socialism" (1965). According to him, liberalism has no specified utopia. possibly he should have it, possibly he shouldn't. I don't know. But this is an issue that remains open to discussion.

LJ: In his book “Manifest rhinoceros. Discourse with Liberalism” (Library Liberte!, 2022) Adam Gopnik presents a very convincing argument that liberalism is like a rhinoceros – it is rather massive, not very clever, it frequently gets angry and it is not a conventionally beautiful animal, but it is real. Liberalism is so not a unicorn that is typically slender and beautiful – an animal that can be considered sexy. The problem with a unicorn is that it doesn't exist, does it? Do you think Adam Gopnik's right? Or should we effort to make liberalism more utopian and akin to a unicorn?

SG: First of all, I would not agree to compare rhinoceros to the creation of an unwise 1 – it is simply a provocation. If liberalism is something no It's, it's not crazy. This is 1 of the most solid intellectual traditions and, to any extent, its drawback is that there is specified a immense canon of intellectual work behind it.

In the light of this reflection I would propose an analogy not between rhinoceros and unicorn, but alternatively a focus on the language of love – that is, what is considered to be sexy, why no. We most likely wouldn't usage a word. sexyto describe our romanticist partner due to the fact that we love our partners. And love is not just about being sexyIt's much more than that.

In the case of political theories, specified as liberalism, we can see that they truly be in the real world. That's most likely why we don't have any passion for liberalism. Instead, we give him designation and love – at best. This is the reason why we may not have stopped loving liberalism – at least in a global perspective.

We have seen all the possible shapes and sizes of liberalism and how it functions in the real world. We saw him without makeup and with makeup, we had certain expectations for him – especially in the 1990s and early 21st century. Now we see it all day erstwhile it's a small tired, worn out, so it doesn't look so attractive anymore.

Nevertheless, liberalism is simply a real political institution and political explanation that has been developed and applied worldwide. We are already in a long-term relation with this idea. So we don't gotta ask ourselves, is he sexy or not? Instead, we request to consider whether liberalism is worthy of our loveor no. And that already depends on where we are.

LJ: If we want to make our relation again sexyMaybe we should control partners. Is this possible for liberalism?

SG: Robert Nozick erstwhile said something interesting about love. He thinks love is simply a peculiar concept that is not necessarily related to being sexy. In the light of this reflection I think liberalism does not should be considered sexy due to the fact that liberalism has already been successful – people around the planet are more liberal than always before. They may not call themselves "liberals", they may not vote for liberal parties, but liberalism is the dominant morality of our times.

More people than always are liberals. Their regular morality is very close to the values of individual freedom, the acceptance of human rights, respect for justice and reciprocity, and democratic decision-making. Therefore, we are profoundly connected with liberalism as a society, so we do not gotta make liberalism sexy.

But what we gotta do is stay in this relation with others. Today, people are frequently disappointed, and this is why we see an increase in non-liberal tendencies – people are disappointed by their relation with this abstract political explanation (which is actually not abstract due to the fact that it takes place in the real world).

Liberalism has become to any degree intellectually dead. In the academic community, I always ask my colleagues and students what are the most crucial philosophical thinkers of liberalism since John Rawls? We're inactive talking about John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, John Rawls, the authors of any of the last breakthroughs, too. Many people inactive mention to Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan – whether we consider them liberal or not, it's a subject for another conversation. But where are the current leaders of this peculiar movement?

Over the last fewer years, we have been stuck in a dead end as an intellectual and political tradition due to the fact that we have been so successful that it would seem that the planet would yet become more liberal. This, however, would mean that we do not gotta put any extra effort into this relationship, as in the case of a romanticist relationship.

If we presume that we will stay with our partners for the next fewer years, we do not usually put besides much effort into this relationship. But if we know anything about relationships, erstwhile things get worse, easy solutions don't work anymore, and we request to make any fundamental changes in the dynamics of relationships.

LJ: The utmost extremist version of the left-wing imagination of the planet and economy seems to be becoming increasingly attractive to young people. Is this due to the fact that it opposes the mainstream and offers a utopian version of reality? Or is it due to the fact that liberalism is truly boring?

SG: I'm certain liberalism is status quo, and there's nothing duller than status quo. Secondly, identity plays an increasingly crucial function in modern society, and liberalism has always struggled with the subject of identity. So, if we look at topics like postcolonialism and critical theory, these are issues of identity. These are besides issues that the Liberals historically underestimated. Therefore, at 1 point Francis Fukuyama wrote a book on identity, where he says identity should be found in our area of interest. But it was besides late at the time. Therefore, we are again catching up on the improvement that is already ongoing.

In the meantime, liberals have much to say about identity, but they have completely missed the fact that we are dealing with a fresh shuffle in politics – 1 that no longer concerns the clash between capitalism and socialism (it is simply a kind of boomerian adjustment of the way of reasoning about the planet and it is no longer a fundamental economical battle).

What we see in politics now, and what excites young people around the world, is that we are at a point where the full policy focuses on identity issues. Are we more cosmopolitan liberals advocating an open society? Or are we more closed erstwhile it comes to ethnic, racial or sexual identity? This is the another side of the spectrum of this debate. And here people belong to different camps.

I am not so pessimistic to think that most people are identityaries on both sides – either left-wing or right-wing identities, positioning themselves against liberals. After all, most young people are liberal due to status quo. They were raised in a liberal framework and are attached to liberal morality. But they are besides disappointed with liberals and do not like that we have much to say about migration or identity in the modern world, where old identity cards (such as religion or association) are important, but at the same time they are not addressed by this peculiar theory.

LJ: Should they be moved?

SG: Liberalism is not even trying to address this issue. And while many charges could be raised against liberalism, it is surely not that this explanation has logical holes in it. It's a very solid intellectual canon. The fact that we are not active in interaction with certain groups with which we should interact seems to have a alternatively sociological basis. Consider this, for example, feminism as a key example of this phenomenon.

Early stages of feminism were scratched by liberals specified as Harriet Taylor Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft. These were feminists who came from liberal tradition and emerged from it due to the fact that 1 of the fundamental values of liberalism is skepticism towards power. Nowadays, erstwhile we look at feminist environments, we announcement that there are very fewer classical liberals (or liberals in general). This is not due to the fact that we have abandoned feminism as a matter, but alternatively due to the fact that the sociological liberals deviated from this discourse and then completely abandoned it.

Similarly, erstwhile it comes to issues specified as postcolonialism, experimental groups appear in universities – this is where all the fashionable ideas are discussed before they enter the mainstream. And that's where we're not present. However, for sociological reasons, it seems that we do not want to engage in these topics, although we could easy do so.

There are spaces in which we could relate to post-colonial injustices from a liberal position – through the prism of breaking laws or limiting freedom alternatively than in the dimension of Foucauldian power. But we inactive don't. This is an area I am disappointed with – clearly we are not developing a fresh class of liberal thinkers who could address these issues with respect to this peculiar audience.

LJ: In short, how can we refresh liberalism?

SG: It's a hard project. First, liberalism must realize that belongs tostatus quo. Liberalism has been successful – in most societies it is the dominant moral and political standard. We must begin to respect what we have already achieved.

Liberalism is simply a lifestyle. However, as far as the intellectual movement is concerned, we are inactive dealing with counterattacks, which is why we should be prepared for them, and should even flatter us. After all, the emergence of populism and geopolitics are 2 phenomena that are clearly non-liberal. Victor Orban's populism is even called "non-liberal democracy" – can there be anything more flattering than the fact that counter-ideology has been invented?

Liberalism must yet realize that for 200 years it was a progressive movement on the outskirts and always fought for different ideals. Now it's become status quo. He's active with most human societies. 1 of the things we could do is yet admit that we have settled on laurels in our relationships with people and have not put adequate effort into this relationship. Intellectually and politically, we have failed to carry out our duties decently and we request to do better.

In any relationship, at any point, you want to emergence to the challenge. It seems that liberalism has disappointed many due to the fact that it had the chance to do so – due to the fact that it has been tried and is inactive present in many societies.

What we request to improve is simply a liberal project. That is why we request a series of discussions on the possible of the country in which we will discuss what it means to be a good liberal politician, a bureaucrat or a think tank. This is something that we haven't done in the last 30 or 40 years, due to the fact that innovation on this front is not at the right level. This in turn caused many problems, which we now see in our relations with liberalism.

Sven Gerst was a guest of the last edition of the Freedom Games, an thought festival organized annually in Łódź. This year's edition was held on 18-20 October at EC1 Łódź. The co-organiser of the festival is the European Liberal Forum.

This podcast was produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movieno Liberal Social and the Liberté Foundation!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are liable for the content of the podcast nor for any way of utilizing it.

Podcast is besides available on platforms Sound, Apple Podcast, Stitcher and Spotify

Dr. Olga Łabendowicz translated from English

Read English at 4liberty.eu