The Book Depository The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

Author: Athan

Rating: 5

Review: Edward Luce is a tremendous journalist. Not only does he work very hard, not only has he earned access to some of the sharpest minds in business and politics, he also commands the mightiest pen at the Financial Times, bar none. And that’s why I bought his previous book, “Time to Start Thinking.” I did not much enjoy it, though. In fact I thought it a waste of my reading time, about which more later. But long after the average sensible reader would have dismissed “Time to Start Thinking,” he might recall that on page 247 of this 2012 book Edward Luce pretty much predicted that Donald Trump might one day become president, and why. So the man has form. That’s terrible news, because on pages 145 – 153 of “The Retreat of Western Liberalism” the oracle of 1 Southwark Bridge, SE1 (yes, I admit it, I looked up the FT’s address online) is predicting a war between the US and China over Taiwan, to take place in year 2020, with a ceasefire to be negotiated by none other than Vladimir Putin. And, believe me, he makes it sound much more probable than a Trump presidency sounded back in 2012. The main thesis of the book, basically, is that perhaps the West has crossed a bridge to a place where liberal values such as openness and democracy may be in retreat, and then anything is possible. Radical uncertainty, here we come. It’s written very very well. And it covers a lot of ground. If you want to get your thoughts together about what went wrong, this book truly summarizes 99% of all the good explanations I’ve ever read. My favorite is on page 47, where Luce outlines all the proof you need of the fact that the Democratic party these days only pays lip service to liberal values and mainly serves the rich: “every single one of America’s 493 wealthiest counties, almost all urban, voted for Hillary Clinton.” But it’s really all here, and (as the author promises in the introduction) you can read it all in the space of three hours. If I had to recommend to a friend only one book to understand where we find ourselves today as a society, this would be the one. Period. Amazingly, however, and this truly baffles me, the very best explanation I’ve ever read about what just happened in the US, not only was proposed by Edward Luce in the FT on July 31, 2016, but is conspicuous in the book through its absence. In an amazingly incisive article he penned at the time, Luce explained that an American is first and foremost a consumer and that it is primarily as a consumer that he is rebelling against the system. I was dying to read the longer version of this thesis, and in particular I was dying to see Edward Luce weave this explanation into the general theme of the decline of liberalism, but I guess the book had to get out quickly, so it’s not there. What a crying shame! So you will allow me to be uncharitable for a millisecond and suggest that perhaps that favorite article of mine may have been ghostwritten by somebody like Larry Summers (for whom Luce has written tons of speeches before) and here’s why I’m saying so: because Luce can write like God, it’s easy to forget that he does not always 100% know what he’s writing about and is merely sampling from sources he thinks are good, rather than doing the deep thinking himself. So a good 60% of his previous book is a paean to industrial policy (and indeed could easily pass for a Trump speech with all its China-bashing and FDA-bashing). Also, he really cannot resist a good quote, even if he has not read the source and does not understand the context. My favorite example: he had to get the “Thucydides Trap” in there as an expression, it sounded too cool to leave out, but on page 156 he suggests that Sparta lost the Peloponnesian War. I’ve only really read the relevant history book in translation, I must admit, but I seem to remember they won, overwhelmingly… So read this book with caution. It’s truly fantastic, it’s the best summary in print of where we stand in the war between our liberal beliefs and the forces of autocracy, but read it the same way you read WebMD if you think you’re sick: as a place to start rather than end your diagnosis.

Author: Ivo Cerckel

Rating: 1

Review: The question of the book which was published in May 2017 is whether the Western way of life and our liberal democratic system can survive the dramatic shift of global power (p. 28) to the East but the author, a journalist at the Financial Times, does not refer to the book “Easternisation” by his colleague Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times, book which was published eight months earlier. The inside flap says that the book provides a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to defend them from the multiple onslaughts they face in the coming years. “Enlightenment” is written with a small e. From pp. 24 and 104, it is clear that what is meant here is the Enlightenment with a capital e. The Enlightenment is one of reasons why Modernity was born in the West, says p. 24. The author obtained in 1990 an undergraduate degree from New College, Oxford in Politics, Economics and … Philosophy. The main philosopher behind the Enlightenment is Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The book quotes Kant once. On p. 126, the author writes that Rousseau and Kant believed in humanity’s innate moral compass - the popular common sense that was celebrated by Thomas Paine. The index says at the word “democracy” that this is the idealism of Rousseau and Kant concerning … democracy, not concerning the Enlightenment since it is at the word “democracy”. (Or what? It’s the editor/publisher not the author who composes the index?) Jean-Jacques was the chap who sent the children he had with his mistress to the orphanage across the street. Please allow this reviewer to pass over JJR’s general will leading to the social contract. (On top of his bphouse.com Honest Money blog, this reviewer has a paper "C’est la faute à Rawls”.) Unconsciously, Luce demonstrates the main problem with democracy on p. 126 where he writes that Kant believed in humanity’s innate moral compass - the popular common sense that was celebrated by Thomas Paine. Luce is here referring to Kant’s categorical imperative. The categorical imperative (German: “kategorischer Imperativ”) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Kant, introduced in Kant’s 1785 “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, says Wikipedia. In the said work, Kant defined the categorical imperative as: “Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”, After having given this definition, Kant went on to give us a formulation of the categorical imperative that he thinks is easier to use than the one already given. (J.B. Schneewind, “Autonomy, obligation and virtue: An overview of Kant’s moral philosophy”, in: Paul Guyer, (ed.), “The Cambridge Companion to Kant”, Cambridge UP, 1992. 309 p. 320) “So act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.” As Mary Ugobi-Onyemere, IHM, puts it: “[...] in Kant, metaphysical principles are like ‘regulative ideas’, and moral principles are absolute. With respect to persons, in his ‘categorical imperative’ , Kant posits an ‘innate moral duty’ as “species” of first ethical realistic principles. Kant asserts that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a ‘categorical imperative’. It concentrates on the morality of actions while ignoring the consequences of such actions. This is absolutised since the morality of an action disregards the situation in hand. Kant illustrates the will as operating principle on the basis of subjective volitional principles that he calls ‘maxims’. And so, morality and other rational demands are requirements, which pertain to the maxims that motivate our actions. This proposal in Kant can be contrasted with the Thomistic ‘synderesis’, which is an innate habit.” (Mary Christine Ugobi-Onyemere, IHM, “The Knowledge of the First Principles in Saint Thomas Aquinas”, Bern, Peter Lang, 2015, p. 51) You don’t believe Mary Ugobi-Onyemere’s interpretation of Kant? Here’s Nobel laureate Friedrich A. von Hayek who copies the Kantian error: “It impossible to decide about the justice of any one particular rule of just conduct except within the framework of a whole system of such rules, most of which must for this purpose be regarded as unquestioned; values can always be tested only in terms of other values. The test of the justice of a rule is usually (since Kant) described as that of its ‘universalisability’, i.e., of the possibility of willing that the rules should be applied to all instances that correspond to the conditions stated in it (the ‘categorical imperative’). What this amounts to is that in applying it to any concrete circumstances it will not conflict with any other accepted rules. The test is thus in the last resort one of the compatibility or non-contradictoriness of the whole system of rules, not merely in the logical sense but in the sense that the system of actions which the rules permit will not lead to conflict.” (Hayek “The Principles of a Liberal Social Order”, paper submitted to the Tokyo meeting of the Mont Pélerin Society, September 1966 and published in: “Il Politico” 31, no. 4 (December 1966): 601–618, reprinted in: Chiaki Nishiyama and Kurt R. Leube, (eds.), “The Essence of Hayek”, Stanford University – Hoover Institution Press. 1984, 363-381, p. 371) The Kant quote from p. 126 further alleges that the categorical imperative, which Luce defines as humanity’s innate moral compass, corresponds to the popular common sense that was celebrated by Thomas Paine. The “Dictionary of American History”, Encyclopedia.com, says that “Common Sense” was a 1776 influential revolutionary pamphlet by Thomas Paine stressing the logic of America’s independence, while avoiding abstract philosophy, favouring instead the ordinary language of artisans and biblical examples to support Paine's argument. Sideways, the Dictionary adds that Paine’s original title for the tract was "plain truth". The only reference this reviewer found to common sense in the pamphlet is that the pamphlet's purpose was to examine that connection to and dependence on Great Britain, on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependent. So far, for Paine’s definition of common sense. Why not invoke the “common sense” of another USA revolutionary pamphlet, one of a century later, i.e., 1870? The pamphlet is “No Treason - The Constitution of No Authority” where Lysander Spooner writes that if the people of the USA wish to maintain such a government as the Constitution describes, there is no reason in the world why they should not sign the instrument itself, and thus make known their wishes in an open, authentic manner; in such manner as the “common sense” and experience of mankind have shown to be reasonable and necessary in such cases; and in such manner as to make themselves (as they ought to do) individually responsible for the acts of the government. But the people have never been asked to sign it. And the only reason why they have never been asked to sign it, has been that it has been known that they never would sign it; that they were neither such fools nor knaves as they must needs have been to be willing to sign it; that (at least as it has been practically interpreted) it is not what any sensible and honest man wants for himself; nor such as he has any right to impose upon others. It is, to all moral intents and purposes, as destitute of obligations as the compacts which robbers and thieves and pirates enter into with each other, but never sign, end of quote. Common sense does not have a value of representation, but it has a value of meaning insofar as it notifies the existence of a reality that it determines by the attitude and conduct that we must take and follow in order to orient and lead us towards the object in question. (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., "Le sens commun : la philosophie de l'être et les formules dogmatiques" (Common sense : the philosophy of being and the dogmatic formulae), Paris, Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1922, 3rd rev. ed., pp. 38-39, reprinted in 2016 by Editions Nuntiavit in Lourdes, p. 22) This means that, contrary to what Kant and Hayek argue, common sense can never give us the rules to be applied without knowing the situation to which the rules have to be applied. “Synderesis”, like the correct Greek word, “synesis” (insight) of of which 'synderesis" is a bastardisation, which Aquinas did not know, is indeed about naturally grasping the general principles to be applied to any intelligible reality after having in the same natural way grasped the truth in that reality, says Mary Christine Ugobi-Onyemere. The Top Customer Review of March 11, 2016 on Amazon.com of the quoted Spooner pamphlet says that if you love Rousseau's "Social Contract" you will hate this book; for they are emphatically opposed. There’s Jean-Jacques through the backdoor of the orphanage. The book which is hereby being reviewed opts p. 104 for Locke’s definition of social contract instead of that of Rousseau (no, instead of that Hobbes, the author says) although on p. 126 the author seems to agree with Rousseau’s “believe in humanity’s innate moral compass” which gives rise to Rousseau’s general will of the people. This reviewer would have liked give the full five stars to the book because it debunks Western democracy once and for all. However, he assumes that the review will be considered rather critical. The reviewer therefore gives only one star. This will make the comparison with the other reviews easier.