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The Liberal Mind
By Kenneth Minogue
About this Title:
Kenneth Minogue offers a brilliant and provocative exploration of liberalism in the
Western world today: its roots and its influences, its present state, and its prospects in
the new century.
The Liberal Mind
limns the taxonomy of a way of thinking that
constitutes the very consciousness of most people in most Western countries. While
few - especially in America - embrace the description of liberal, still, Minogue argues,
most Americans and most Europeans behave as liberals. At least they are the heirs of
what Minogue describes as “the triumph of an enlarged, flexible, and pragmatic
version of liberalism.” By examining the larger implications of the concept of
liberalism, Minogue offers fresh perspective on the political currents that continue to
shape governments and policy in the Western world.
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THE LIBERAL MIND
Kenneth Minogue
LIBERTY FUND
Indianapolis
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of
the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is
the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken
from a clay document written about 2300 in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
© 1963 Kenneth Minogue
Frontispiece courtesy of the London School of Economics
05 04 03 02 01 c 5 4 3 2 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Minogue, Kenneth R., 1930–
The liberal mind/Kenneth Minogue.
p. cm.
Originally published: London: Methuen, 1963.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-86597-307-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
isbn0-86597-308-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Liberalism. I. Title.
jc574.M56 2000
320.51—dc21 00-035409
liberty fund, inc.
8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300
Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684
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Table of Contents:
PREFACE TO THE LIBERTY FUND EDITION.........................................................5
PREFACE.................................................................................................................... 11
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction.................................................................................12
I.: SUFFERING SITUATIONS..................................................................................12
II.: IS LIBERALISM AN IDEOLOGY?......................................................................23
CHAPTER TWO: The Anatomy of Liberalism......................................................27
I.: A PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRING..........................................................................27
II.: THE COMMANDS OF REASON.........................................................................33
III.: THE USES OF CALCULATION.........................................................................42
IV.: THE PURITAN CONTRIBUTION......................................................................51
V.: THE STRUCTURE OF GENERIC MAN..............................................................58
VI.: TRADITION AND THE TWO LIBERALISMS..................................................67
CHAPTER THREE: Ethics and Politics..................................................................73
I.: MORAL EXPERIENCE.........................................................................................73
II.: THE ILLUSION OF ULTIMATE AGREEMENT.................................................82
III.: POLITICS AND TECHNIQUE............................................................................92
CHAPTER FOUR: Moral and Political Evasions.................................................103
I.: THE DOCTRINE OF NEEDS.............................................................................103
II.: THE LURE OF THE POSITIVE APPROACH....................................................112
III.: HOW TO MAKE TRENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE................................120
IV.: SCIENTIFIC MORALISM.................................................................................127
CHAPTER FIVE: Society and Its Variations........................................................134
I.: SOCIETY AS AN ASPIRATION.........................................................................134
II.: THE USES OF SOCIETY....................................................................................142
III.: EDUCATION AND SOCIETY...........................................................................148
CHAPTER SIX: Freedom.......................................................................................155
I.: FREEDOM AS A MANNER OF LIVING...........................................................155
II.: FREEDOM AND SPONTANEITY.....................................................................165
III.: PUBLIC PROVISION AND MORAL PROTECTION......................................170
CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusion.............................................................................176
I.: THE MORAL CHARACTER OF LIBERALISM................................................176
II.: THE BALANCE OF LIBERALISM....................................................................186
Notes.......................................................................................................................... 191
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PREFACE TO THE LIBERTY FUND EDITION
PREFACE TO THE LIBERTY FUND EDITION
THE LIBERAL MIND, FOUR DECADES ON
The French thinker Charles Péguy tells us that everything begins in mysticism and
ends as politics. This was a way of describing the corruption of power, since by
mystique he meant something idealistic which politics vulgarizes. Looking at the
evolution of the liberal mind in the twentieth century, I am inclined to turn this idea on
its head, but not to challenge its pessimism. Liberalism certainly began as a political
doctrine seeking reform of entrenched traditions, but then commencing with T. H.
Green and others in the late nineteenth century, a “new liberalism” began to advance
its claim to moral superiority over other political doctrines. By the middle of the
twentieth century, this liberal mind had become a network of thoughtful people beating
their breasts over the purported iniquities of capitalism and Western imperialism. Their
remorse was anything but personal, however. Rather, these liberals were thinking of
themselves as the innocent part of a guilty whole. The prosperity of the West, they
claimed to discover, rested upon the oppression of others.
As the liberal mind came to dominate Western culture, it turned out to be marvelously
fertile in discovering more and more abstract classes of people constituted by their
pain, people whom “we” had treated badly. These included not only the poor, but also
indigenous peoples, women, victims of child abuse, gays, the disabled—indeed,
potentially just about everybody except healthy heterosexual white males. The first
point I should make, then, is that in criticizing the liberal mind, I am in no way
implying that suffering is unreal, nor that it is not a problem. Understanding begins
with considering the generation of the basic premise of the liberal mind: that suffering
can be understood wholesale, as it were, as the fixed experience of abstract classes of
people.
In 1963, when The Liberal Mind appeared, the young and the radical in the Western
world were in a restive condition. The restiveness had two sides, one cynical, the other
sentimental. The cynical side was irresistibly seductive. It was immediately
conspicuous in the satire boom, in which hilarious parodists such as Tom Lehrer, Mort
Sahl, and Lenny Bruce mocked censorship, respectability, prudery, the rule of old men,
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