Is freedom worth the risk? – Liberalism and the challenge of Dostoyevsky

by, Eno Trimçev

Abstract

Most contemporary liberal thought is concerned with the institutional

framework within which we may live our lives. It is, therefore, a mundane or earthly thought, i.e. it renounces what it derisively calls metaphysical speculation on the good life. I want to argue here that the mundanity of liberal thought hinders its understanding of the liberal order. The kernel of truth of that order I take to be (still): the transcendent dignity of human beings. Since the old philosophical vocabularies that established this dignity are now regarded as obsolete, I indicate with this term merely that an individual person is more than what she presents herself to be; that the person is more than the sum of experiences, achievements, comportments, and choices she has taken so far. Contemporary liberal thought must do more than merely acknowledge this – which it often does. It must think it. That is, liberal thought must become metaphysical.