In his much-discussed Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen identifies two revolutionary anthropological assumptions that constitute liberalism: first, that political order is founded on the “unfettered and autonomous choice of individuals,” and second, that human beings can and must be liberated from the constraints of nature, including our own. Today's economic, political, sexual, ecological, and educational ills aren't deviations from liberalism. They are predictable outworkings of liberalism's founding creed, and thus cannot be healed by upping the dose of liberalism.
Deneen's definition disregards the role of religion and the public management of religion in the formation of liberal order. This isn't to say Deneen ignores religion. He refers frequently to pre-liberal “Christian and classical” politics, which he acknowledges are the roots of liberalism. He knows that liberal systems officially guarantee religious freedom. Explaining the inner connection between liberal individualism and statism, Deneen writes, “Shorn of the deepest ties to family . . , place, community, region, religion, and culture . . . deracinated humans seek belonging and self-definition through . . . the state.” This quotation is typical of Deneen's analysis, which treats religion as one among several mediating structures corroded by liberal individualism. Yet this misses the theological twists and turns that laid the foundation of liberal order.
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