Anti-Liberalisms

Catalog description

Critiques of liberalism have long been foundational to leftist political thought including to critical theory. However, parallel critiques of liberal legalism today are even more central to rightwing and conservative legal and political thought-including the jurisprudence of the Roberts Court. This Seminar examines the nature of anti-liberal sentiment for both left and right over history and into the present. Readings will range across philosophy, popular journalism and commentary, and legal opinions and will investigate the usual targets of anti-liberal critique (whether capitalism, legal positivism, the state, or individualism); alternatives to liberalism (Romanticism, communitarianism, natural law, Catholic and other political theology); and intellectual touchstones (Schmitt, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kafka) that have connected left and right. Why critique liberalism today? Does such thinking in fact unite both poles of the political spectrum? To what extent can critiques of liberalism be seen to shape legal and political reasoning, including changing constitutional law doctrine?