Patrick Deneen: Grappling with the Failures of Liberalism

“This conquest of the engines of social formation is, as Patrick Deneen argues, why liberalism is failing.”

The fundamental questions of human life are no longer answered. And the asking of them brings derision or a lack of recognition, engendered by living in a system of thought for so long that it acts as the water in which we swim. Our origins, purpose, and existential goals are supposedly no longer important. Liberalism has occupied the commanding heights of political philosophy, and—when instantiated as the hegemonic ideology of societal institutions—it becomes the ideology to which there is no alternative. This conquest of the engines of social formation is, as Patrick Deneen argues, why liberalism is failing. Its increasing success has led to increasing failure. We are all now living with the consequences of this conquest.

Liberalism and its Discontents

We all know something is deeply and fundamentally wrong. Society, if it even exists, has gone in the wrong direction. We are unhappier than we have been for decades. We are lonelier, less connected, and are less able to find the meaning in relationships that is essential for living a good life.

Patrick Deneen writes in Why Liberalism Failed that “Liberalism has failed–not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It failed because it has succeeded.” In becoming more of itself—and being implemented by those in power more in concert with its fundamental principles—it has revealed its inherent internal contradictions to a greater and greater extent. Liberalism, a political philosophy launched to “foster greater equity, defend a pluralist tapestry of different cultures and beliefs, protect human dignity, and, of course, expand liberty, in practice generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom.”