Book Review: Readings in Liberalism by Detmar Doering

Detmar Doering, the Director of Liberal Institute in the introduction of the book argues that liberalism represents the finest of western tradition and the greatest of what constitutes modernity. He has very smartly summarized the main ideas discussed in this book. He writes that there is no complete definition of liberalism. One reason that he suggests is that politics continuously brings new challenges that require new liberal answers.

This book is an attempt to show the diversity within the tradition of liberalism. Texts included in this volume span the period from the 17^th century writings of John Locke, through liberalism’s peak in the 19^th century (represented here by Frederic Bastiat, for example), to contemporary authors such as Popper, Gray and Nozick. 

Various topics are under discussion in the book. John Stuart Mill’s thought on education, David Hume on justice, Wilhelm von Humboldt on the purpose of man, John Prince Smith on the free- are some of the examples. Names such as Adam Smith and the American thinker William Leggett are also present. The philosophical positions of various thinkers are presented. They have one thing in common. All of them help to establish the liberal idea of freedom.

John Locke’s work on the individual’s rights that predate the state, Hume’s political thought on the assumption that freedom and justice appear only with the cultural development that draws its dynamism from the individual’s striving for benefit are also mentioned in the book. This position, in turn, is taken to an extreme by Ludwig von Mises, who admits only the individual and his capability for economic calculation, thus rejecting any ideas of natural rights that predate the state. In the final analysis, all three arrive at the same conclusion, that the protection of property is one of the most liberal constitutional state’s most important tasks.

While Mill and Ortega y Gasset discern possible danger to freedom even in democracy, Leggett considers democracy to be freedom’s essential philosophical basis.  But all these approaches have one thing in common: They support liberalism’s idea of freedom. They support the idea that all power must be tied to the freedom of the individual. They both serve the struggle against every open form of totalitarianism and reinforce the warning against the creeping dismantling of freedom taking place through well-meaning state interventionism. Many approaches become apparent that all lead to the same goal. This goal is the open and liberal society that is based on the ideal of the freedom of the individual and on the principles of the constitutional state and the free market economy. Consideration of the bases of such a society (the present collection is intended to provide food for thought in this regard) is always a relevant task. As Friedrich August von Hayek once stated, “The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the 19^th century.”