Changes in American Liberalism Over the Years
From the Perspective of James Wilson
James Wilson (1742-1798) was born in Scotland and emigrated to North America in 1765 where he taught Greek and rhetoric at the College of Philadelphia.
He then studied law under John Dickenson, who was a delegate to the First Continental Congress.
Wilson helped draft the US Constitution, the Pennsylvania constitution and was appointed justice of the Supreme Court from 1789-98. He's a primary source for Classic American Liberalism and is a pivotal founder of the USA that you've probably never heard of.
What follows is a progression of Liberalism over the years. I used AI to help understand how the concept of Liberalism changed and how Wilson would have critiqued those changes. It’s quite enlightening.
1. Classic Liberalism (18th Century)
Summary
A political philosophy emphasizing individual rights, limited government, and natural law, rooted in the belief that universal moral truths and human reason form the foundation of just governance and individual liberty.
Human Experience: The moral reality is clear and visible, like reading by bright daylight. People's judgments align naturally with reality, like walking a well-lit path
Philosophy
Metaphysics: Grounded in divine moral order; rights and duties are universal and self-evident.
Epistemology: Knowledge from reason and common sense, trusting faculties to perceive truth.
Ontology: Humans are moral agents with inherent dignity, relational responsibilities, and divine purpose.
Correspondence:
Semantic: Language directly maps to objective reality through self-evident truths and common sense
Ontological: Facts and reality align through discoverable natural laws; human reason can reliably perceive this alignment
Impact on Individuals
Moral Accountability: Each individual is endowed with natural rights and duties by the Creator, making them personally accountable for moral actions.
Unity of Rights and Duties: Liberty is inseparable from virtue; individuals flourish when they exercise their rights responsibly.
Rational Freedom: True freedom lies in acting according to reason and moral law, not mere personal whim.
Impact on the Nation
Moral Foundation for Government: The nation prospers when its laws reflect divine and natural law, protecting both rights and moral order.
Education and Virtue: Citizens must be educated in both their rights and responsibilities to sustain a just society.
Unified Republic: A government based on self-evident truths and the consent of the governed ensures stability and justice.
Impact on Trust and Judgment
People could be trusted based on their demonstrated commitment to self-evident moral truths
Judgment was grounded in shared moral reality, making it predictable and reliable
Trust built through consistent alignment of actions with universal principles
2. Utilitarian Redirection (19th Century)
Summary
A shift from natural law to utility-based calculations, replacing self-evident moral truths with secular materialism.
Key changes: Abandoned the common sense ability to perceive moral truth directly, substituted divine/natural law with utility metrics, and reduced rights from moral certainties to mere tools for social benefit.
Human Experience: Reality still exists but is obscured, like reading at dusk. People start relying on artificial metrics because the natural light is dimming.
Philosophy
Metaphysics: Utility replaces natural law as the guiding principle; secular and materialist.
Epistemology: Empirical and consequentialist, focusing on outcomes for maximizing happiness.
Ontology: Humans as rational actors seeking pleasure, defined by individualism and self-interest.
Correspondence:
Semantic: Language shifts to describe outcomes rather than inherent truths; words like "good" redefined by utility
Ontological: Facts become measured consequences rather than objective states; reality viewed through lens of calculable benefits
Impact on Individuals
Loss of Moral Anchor: Shifting from natural law to utility erodes the moral basis of individual rights.
Focus on Self-Interest: Individuals prioritize material success over virtue, weakening their sense of higher purpose.
Diminished Accountability: Utility’s focus on outcomes undermines personal accountability for moral choices.
Impact on the Nation
Weakened Moral Foundations: National policies driven by utility lack the universal truths needed to bind citizens together.
Erosion of Civic Duty: The pursuit of economic growth and individual gain diminishes collective responsibility.
Potential Injustice: Without grounding in natural law, rights become malleable, threatening minority protections.
Impact on Trust and Judgment
Trust becomes contingent on perceived outcomes rather than moral character
Judgment becomes calculating rather than principled, making people less reliably moral
Others must constantly verify claimed benefits rather than trusting moral intentions
3. Progressive Collectivism (Early 20th Century)
Summary
A collectivist philosophy that mistakes rights as human constructs rather than objective moral realities discoverable through reason.
Key changes: Inverted the relationship between individual and state by making rights dependent on social needs, rejected the self-evident nature of moral truth, and replaced the discovery of natural law with the invention of social mandates.
Human experience: Reality becomes like distant stars behind city lights. People substitute collective guidance for the faint natural moral light.
Philosophy
Metaphysics: Pragmatic and evolving; morality and rights shaped by societal needs.
Epistemology: Truth seen as contingent and instrumental, adapting to human progress.
Ontology: Humans as socially embedded beings, shaped by collective goals and systems.
Correspondence
Semantic: Language serves social needs; meaning determined by collective rather than correspondence to reality
Ontological: Facts become social constructions; reality shaped by group consensus rather than objective states
Impact on Individuals
Diminished Individual Sovereignty: Increasing reliance on the state to define justice reduces personal moral agency.
Focus on Social Utility: Rights and duties are reshaped by societal demands, weakening the intrinsic link between liberty and virtue.
Moral Confusion: Pragmatism introduces ambiguity in moral standards, leaving individuals unmoored from universal principles.
Impact on the Nation
Overreach of the State: Expanding government power to promote social justice risks suppressing individual freedoms.
Fragmented Unity: Pragmatic approaches to morality create instability as shared principles fade.
Undermining Natural Rights: By prioritizing evolving societal norms, the nation drifts from its founding principles of inherent, unalienable rights.
Impact on Trust and Judgment
Trust shifts from individual character to institutional compliance
Judgment becomes socially determined rather than personally reasoned
People become trustworthy only insofar as they conform to collective standards
4. Modern Relativism (Mid-20th Century)
Summary
A pluralistic philosophy that directly contradicts the existence of universal moral truths accessible through common sense and reason.
Key changes: Rejected the fundamental premise that moral truths are self-evident and discoverable, replaced objective moral standards with subjective preferences, and abandoned the common sense realism that grounds both individual rights and collective stability.
Human Experience: Reality still exists but is barely perceived, like stars behind clouds. People create artificial frameworks to compensate, but still feel the pull of true moral reality.
Philosophy
Metaphysics: Pluralist and relativist, rejecting universal truths for diversity and subjectivity.
Epistemology: Constructivist; knowledge shaped by societal narratives and cultural contexts.
Ontology: Individuals defined by self-determination and social constructs.
Correspondence
Semantic: Language loses fixed reference points; meanings become culturally contingent and personally defined
Ontological: Facts fragment into perspectives; reality becomes subjective and disconnected from universal truth claims
Impact on Individuals
Loss of Objective Standards: The rejection of universal truths leaves individuals to navigate morality in isolation.
Excessive Autonomy: Self-determination without grounding in natural law leads to moral relativism and weakened personal virtue.
Fragmented Identity: Individuals may struggle to reconcile personal freedom with societal narratives and expectations.
Impact on the Nation
Erosion of Shared Values: A relativist framework undermines the unity required for a stable republic.
Rights without Responsibility: Overemphasis on autonomy results in societal fragmentation and weakened collective responsibility.
Departure from Founding Principles: The rejection of natural rights and divine law moves the nation away from the moral clarity of its origins.
Impact on Trust and Judgment
Trust becomes highly personal and contextual, lacking universal standards
Judgment loses objective reference points, making it unstable and unpredictable
Building trust becomes difficult as there's no shared moral framework for evaluating character
Hopefully it’s clear Classic Liberalism is a bit special. Also, notice that it was “redirected” - it did NOT evolve. Honestly, I feel it was an usurpation, rather than redirection: purposeful and willful subversion.
It’s very common that people conflate Classic Liberalism with Utilitarian Redirection. Why would that be? It’s because most people don’t understand or appreciate the philosophy underpinning it.
Our constitution is THE example of authentic American Liberalism. It isn’t anything like the Woke monster we have today, and today’s “Liberalism” didn’t evolve naturally from it.
Be proud of our Founding Fathers and the Great Nation they Created. It was never collectivist. It was never socialist. Ever.
Excellent piece, Raff. Mill was not a good guy. Hard for me to come to that conclusion for a while.
I think I might need to take a look at how he completed the boxing out of SCSR. It's likely to be dialectical and synthetic and is likely a good historical landmark that could be useful for situational awareness, grounding metaphysics, and disclosing the metaphysical ground.
Found you through X post via the Palmer Worm. Thanks for an interesting summary.
The evolution of ideas is complex. My knowledge of this area is limited. Labels these days are at best 'fluid', but I find that I'm most sympathetic to classical liberals.
In reviewing your summary, I think the critical mistake was made at the transition to utilitarianism. In leaving the original Classical Liberal basis of natural law, i.e., the natural order of things is the realm of Nature/God, utilitarians made untenable knowledge claims. [My interpretation in modern terms is they failed to recognize the 'knowledge problem'.] However, because of the obvious successes born out of the industrial revolution, utilitarians convinced themselves that designing social systems and economies was just another tractable engineering project. This hubris continues to animate 'liberal' approaches.
Classical liberals like Hayek and Mises challenged Keynes in the 1930s. Hayek's Road to Serfdom found a wide audience. Hayek is well known for his discussions of the 'knowledge problem', but WWII temporarily snuffed out any effective discussion of its implications.
When chaos and complexity theories emerged a generation ago from disciplines outside of the normal classical liberal camp, I was hopeful that they would help to supplant the dominant statist narrative. Silly me.
I recently ran across Iain McGilchrist (The Master and his Emissary) and his left-brain/right-brain hypothesis that helps explain how we wandered into our current mess. I find his discussion of the evolution of society from the Enlightenment to the present day very interesting. The stones that he throws hit the mark most of the time; of course, throwing stones is easy.