Adrian Wooldridge has an excellent Bloomberg column on this topic, promoting the relevance of Thomas Mann, and here is one excerpt: In the book [Magic Mountain], Castorp falls in with two intellectuals who live in the village of Davos below his sanitorium: an Italian humanist called Lodovico Settembrini and a Jewish-born cosmopolitan called Leo Naphta
The post Settembrini and the continuing relevance of classical liberalism appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Adrian Wooldridge has an excellent Bloomberg column on this topic, promoting the relevance of Thomas Mann, and here is one excerpt:
In the book [Magic Mountain], Castorp falls in with two intellectuals who live in the village of Davos below his sanitorium: an Italian humanist called Lodovico Settembrini and a Jewish-born cosmopolitan called Leo Naphta who is drawn to the Communist revolution and traditional Catholicism. The two men carry on a bitter argument about the relative merits of liberalism and illiberalism that touches on every question that mattered in prewar Europe: nationalism, individualism, fairness, tradition, war, peace, terrorism and so on.
Settembrini mechanically repeats the central tenets of liberalism but doesn’t seem to realize that the world is a very different place from what it was in 1850…Settembrini is like the bulk of today’s liberals — well-meaning but incapable of recognizing that the world of their youth has changed beyond recognition.
My reading of the world, however, is slightly different. I think the Settembrini example, from 1924, shows classical liberalism is still relevant. In 1924, classical liberalism seemed out of touch because the rest of the world was too fascistic, too communist, and too negative, among other problems. Yet at the time the classical liberals were essentially correct, even though Settembrini sounds out of touch.
Because classical liberals continued to carry the torch, we later had another highly successful classical liberal period, something like 1980-2000, though of course you can argue the exact dates.
Perhaps the underlying model is this: classical liberals often seem out of touch, because the world is too negative to respond to their concerns. Most of the time classical liberals are shouting into the well, so to speak. But they need to keep at it. Every now and then a window for liberal change opens, and then the classical liberals have to be ready, which in turn entails many years in the intellectual and ideological wilderness.
When the chaos surrounds, the liberals are no less relevant. The Settembrini character, from 1924, illustrates exactly that. Because he did eventually have his day, though many years later.
The post Settembrini and the continuing relevance of classical liberalism appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Philosophy, Political Science, Uncategorized
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