Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 79

REFLECTIONS ON ANCIENT AND MODERN FREEDOM

not possible to perceive the metastasis of a conceptual pathology
that grew up within the matrix of liberalism itself? If no values
can claim absolute validity, then on what grounds can liberalism
claim greater truth or validity than illiberal values? If the notion of
"the Good" is entirely relative, then there is no foundation to the
claim that liberalism is the best form of governance, or that free
societies (however defined) are in any sense superior to unfree
societies. Relativism is the true source of the totalitarian temptation in modernity and not the classical conceptions of virtue. In
the words of one historian:
The avowed philosophy of totalitarian regimes (like much of modern thought) was basically subjective. Whether an idea was held
to be good depended on whose idea it was. Ideas of truth, beauty
or right were not supposed to correspond to any outer or objective reality . . . no norm of human utterance remained except political expediency-the wishes and self-interest of those in power.26

Moreover, the vices decried by Western religious and social
conservatives in modern liberal society-the disdain for human
life reflected in the abortion culture, spread of euthanasia, the
mass industry of pornography and promotion of hedonism and
violence in popular culture, the breakdown of the family-seem
all to be consequences of an inadequate concept of freedom,
which fails to relate it to any broader conception of the Good. The
aimlessness of modern freedom, which glorifies unrestrained
action without regard to its moral character, increasingly resembles the vulgarized freedom decried by Plato when he asked
with indignation, "Has not every man license to do whatever he
wants?"27
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
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