'Liberalism is an incoherent ideology'. Discuss.

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‘Liberalism is an incoherent ideology’. Discuss.

 

‘Liberalism’, as a term, it has a lot of meanings, it not one simple, undifferentiated doctrine. Liberalism can be understood as a political tradition, a political philosophy and a general philosophical theory. As with other doctrines or ideologies, there are varieties of liberalism, but all liberals agree on the primacy of individual freedom and individual choice. Along with the evolvement for 300 years of period, the ideology of different period of liberalism is more or less different, such as classical liberalism and modern liberalism, which have tensions of principles of individualism, freedom, economy and so on. Actually, although it has been dominant for so long time, some of the liberal ideology is clear and coherent, but some of others could be seen as incoherent.

Liberal ideas resulted from the breakdown of feudalism in Europe and successfully challenged the absolute power of the monarchy. Liberals who were supported by middle class sought fundamental reform, even revolution change, for example, American and French revolutions which were strongly influenced by liberal ideas. Then it gradually formed a distinctive set of political ideas from the early part of the nineteenth century. More different from feudalism, liberalism proclaims the freedom of the individual and believes that civil right should be guaranteed by social contract. And they “advocated an industrialized and market economic order ‘free’ from government interference, in which businesses would be allowed to pursue profit and nations encouraged to trade freely with one another”. (Heywood, 2003) Actually, most other political ideologies are more or less influenced by liberalism. On the other hand, liberalism did not only influence development of the whole Europe but UK, Latin America and Japan.

In practice, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, influenced by an Enlightenment belief in universal reason, the rudimentary form of liberalism was emerged. Then they tried to found the main values, which advocate personal autonomy, namely, individual freedom. Actually, although liberalism has evolved for 300 years, the central theme is the freedom of individual all along. In that case, liberalism is coherence in a sense. Looking back to the history, especially in the feudal period, individuals just had few chances to control their life and difficult to change they identities. However, when feudalism was displaced, individuals began to have wider range to make choices and social possibility. At the same time, for early liberals, liberty was a natural right. It supplied people the opportunity to pursue their own interests. Then ‘liberals have seen liberty as the only condition in which people are able to develop their skills and talents and fulfil their potential’. (Heywood, 2003) Nevertheless, liberty does not mean ‘licence’. Although the individuals could absolutely control their bodies and mind, each must realise that every one enjoys an equal right to liberty. But the view is just for modern liberalism. For classical liberalism, they claimed to use the most minimal restrictions of individual freedom to prevent harm to others. Therefore, in this sense, liberalism is incoherent. However, a distinctive set of values and beliefs of liberalism does not only embody individual freedom, but reason, justice and toleration.

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To review the development of liberal history, there are two traditions of thought within liberalism, commonly called classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Classical liberalism which transformed from feudalism to capitalism was the earliest liberal tradition. It emanated from UK and it principles and theories in fact influenced the whole west. And modern liberalism, which developed from classical liberalism, is described as the ‘twentieth-century liberalism’. Its ideas were related to the further development of industrialization.

Although the main point of these two groups of liberalism is the same of individual freedom, the particular of the principles are more or ...

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