OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

OVER the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, as professor Patrick Deneen claims in his recently published work Why Liberalism Failed.

The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Mr Deneen uses the term “liberalism” in its philosophical rather than its popular sense. He is describing the great tradition of political theory that is commonly traced to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke rather than the set of vaguely leftish attitudes that Americans now associate with the word. But this is no work of philosophical cud-chewing. Most political theorists argue that liberalism has divided into two independent streams: classical liberalism, which celebrates the free market, and left-liberalism which celebrates civil rights. For Mr Deneen they have an underlying unity. Most political observers think that the debate about the state of liberalism has nothing to do with them. Mr Deneen argues that liberalism is a ruling philosophy, dictating everything from court decisions to corporate behaviour. Theory is practice.

The underlying unity lies in individual selfexpression. Both classical and left liberals conceive of humans as rights-bearing individuals who should be given as much space as possible to fulfil their dreams. The aim of government is to secure rights. The legitimacy of the system is based on a shared belief in a “social contract” between consenting adults. But this produces a paradox. Because the liberal spirit mechanically destroys inherited customs and local traditions, sometimes in the name of market efficiency and sometimes in the name of individual rights, it creates more room for the expansion of the state, as marketmaker and law-enforcer.

In: Political thought: the

problem with liberalism. The Economist, Edição impressa, p. 74, 27 jan. 2018.

Ao partir para estudar em Coimbra, em 1783, José Bonifácio tinha 20 anos; voltava com 56. A simples colônia que deixara subira à categoria de reino e era a sede da monarquia, com ares de metrópole, em uma como que inversão de papéis. As consequências daí advindas feriam o olhar do observador menos atento. Bem diverso se apresentava, por exemplo, o Rio de Janeiro. A despeito do negativismo da fidalguia parasitária que acompanhara a família real na transladação para o Brasil, muita coisa melhorara na fisionomia urbana, e novos bairros, mais pitorescos, como o Catete e Botafogo, foram surgindo.

Tornara-se mais ativa toda a vida da cidade; a existência da Corte e de um corpo diplomático dava-lhe ensejo a um esboço de mundanismo. Mais importantes do que isso eram as iniciativas de ordem administrativa, econômica e cultural. Nem sempre as medidas tomadas seriam adequadas, e havia muito do mau espírito de improvisação, de ensaios e tentativas a que faltavam base segura. Sobretudo não se ia ao fundo das coisas. Cuidava-se de pôr em funcionamento um aparelho administrativo completo; criavam-se repartições públicas, tribunais, estabelecimentos de ensino e tipografias; editavam-se obras várias (até de Voltaire); fundavam-se os primeiros jornais brasileiros; tratava-se de agricultura, de minas, de fundição de ferro; buscava-se desenvolver os meios de comunicação e de transporte. Mas não se tocava no essencial – o regime de propriedade e de trabalho.

Aparências de civilização e de progresso José Bonifácio vinha encontrar, e isto lhe dava, à primeira vista, satisfação. À sua visão de cientista e de pensador, entretanto, não escapavam os aspectos mais profundos dos problemas brasileiros. E fixou-os logo, na sua nudez, tal como os exporia pouco depois em documentos públicos. Ele que, em fórmula perfeita, achava que “a sociedade civil tem por base primeira a justiça, e por fim principal a felicidade dos homens”, não compreendia como poderia haver verdadeira liberdade em um país onde o trabalhador era quase exclusivamente o escravo negro e em que a economia se organizara em benefício de uma classe privilegiada. Sem se deixar iludir por exterioridades, entendia que era necessária de partida a “expiação de crimes e pecados velhos”. Crimes e pecados velhos contra os negros que chegavam ao Brasil aos milhares, abafados no porão dos navios e mais apinhados do que fardos de fazenda; crimes e pecados velhos que ele vinha encontrar mais florescentes, prestigiados e impunes do que nunca. A primeira medida a se adotar, a seu parecer, consistia na abolição imediata do tráfico africano “tão bárbaro e carniceiro”; a segunda, na extinção da escravatura.

Fora considerável, sem dúvida, a obra propriamente política realizada, mas havia outra, de natureza social e econômica a empreender, mais importante e mais difícil. E nenhum dos seus pontos fundamentais escapou à argúcia de José Bonifácio – abolição do tráfico, extinção da escravidão, transformação do regime da propriedade agrária com a substituição do latifúndio pela subdivisão das terras de modo a “favorecer a colonização de europeus pobres, índios, mulatos e negros forros”, preservação das matas e renovação das florestas, localização adequada das novas vilas e cidades, para só citar estes.

SOUZA, Otávio Tarquínio de. História dos fundadores do

Império do Brasil. Brasília: Senado Federal, Conselho Editorial, 2015. 5 v., com adaptações.

Ao partir para estudar em Coimbra, em 1783, José Bonifácio tinha 20 anos; voltava com 56. A simples colônia que deixara subira à categoria de reino e era a sede da monarquia, com ares de metrópole, em uma como que inversão de papéis. As consequências daí advindas feriam o olhar do observador menos atento. Bem diverso se apresentava, por exemplo, o Rio de Janeiro. A despeito do negativismo da fidalguia parasitária que acompanhara a família real na transladação para o Brasil, muita coisa melhorara na fisionomia urbana, e novos bairros, mais pitorescos, como o Catete e Botafogo, foram surgindo.

Tornara-se mais ativa toda a vida da cidade; a existência da Corte e de um corpo diplomático dava-lhe ensejo a um esboço de mundanismo. Mais importantes do que isso eram as iniciativas de ordem administrativa, econômica e cultural. Nem sempre as medidas tomadas seriam adequadas, e havia muito do mau espírito de improvisação, de ensaios e tentativas a que faltavam base segura. Sobretudo não se ia ao fundo das coisas. Cuidava-se de pôr em funcionamento um aparelho administrativo completo; criavam-se repartições públicas, tribunais, estabelecimentos de ensino e tipografias; editavam-se obras várias (até de Voltaire); fundavam-se os primeiros jornais brasileiros; tratava-se de agricultura, de minas, de fundição de ferro; buscava-se desenvolver os meios de comunicação e de transporte. Mas não se tocava no essencial – o regime de propriedade e de trabalho.

Aparências de civilização e de progresso José Bonifácio vinha encontrar, e isto lhe dava, à primeira vista, satisfação. À sua visão de cientista e de pensador, entretanto, não escapavam os aspectos mais profundos dos problemas brasileiros. E fixou-os logo, na sua nudez, tal como os exporia pouco depois em documentos públicos. Ele que, em fórmula perfeita, achava que “a sociedade civil tem por base primeira a justiça, e por fim principal a felicidade dos homens”, não compreendia como poderia haver verdadeira liberdade em um país onde o trabalhador era quase exclusivamente o escravo negro e em que a economia se organizara em benefício de uma classe privilegiada. Sem se deixar iludir por exterioridades, entendia que era necessária de partida a “expiação de crimes e pecados velhos”. Crimes e pecados velhos contra os negros que chegavam ao Brasil aos milhares, abafados no porão dos navios e mais apinhados do que fardos de fazenda; crimes e pecados velhos que ele vinha encontrar mais florescentes, prestigiados e impunes do que nunca. A primeira medida a se adotar, a seu parecer, consistia na abolição imediata do tráfico africano “tão bárbaro e carniceiro”; a segunda, na extinção da escravatura.

Fora considerável, sem dúvida, a obra propriamente política realizada, mas havia outra, de natureza social e econômica a empreender, mais importante e mais difícil. E nenhum dos seus pontos fundamentais escapou à argúcia de José Bonifácio – abolição do tráfico, extinção da escravidão, transformação do regime da propriedade agrária com a substituição do latifúndio pela subdivisão das terras de modo a “favorecer a colonização de europeus pobres, índios, mulatos e negros forros”, preservação das matas e renovação das florestas, localização adequada das novas vilas e cidades, para só citar estes.

SOUZA, Otávio Tarquínio de. História dos fundadores do

Império do Brasil. Brasília: Senado Federal, Conselho Editorial, 2015. 5 v., com adaptações.