If early-modern and mid-modern liberal societies were successful in securing their members’ cooperation and participation – and it is hard to deny them a measure of success – this was due to the moment of self-abdication instilled by their monotheistic faith. Through that religious moment they directed their members to become critical moral intelligences, taught them to see themselves as answerable directly to God. Thus they envisaged themselves as open to authoritative criticism and correction, and this lay at the heart of the reconciliation they effected between individual and social identities. In the face of conflicting expectations and hopes, a liberal society could make itself accountable before the throne of God’s justice. This opened up a variety of self-understandings for the dissenter, who could assume the role of critic, prophet, even martyr – all roles that could be socially learned and socially respected. It could even move a dissenting member to respond to it not merely with revolt but with compassion.
In abandoning their deference to transcendence, late-liberal societies have followed a perilous course. Losing the conciliatory strength of religious humility, they have gambled on majority support for a narrowly materialist and sensual sphere of public communications, inculcating by all means at their disposal the purely material expectations that conform to them. This strategy of moral under-education presumes as impoverished a view of human nature as classic liberalism presumed a rather exalted one. …The discontent that any human being can feel at being underestimated can, and surely must, undermine this a-moral majority, generating high waves of inarticulate dissatisfaction. …But the warning that needs hearing is even more solemn than that: liberal society, proceeding on its present course, may deserve a reaction, simply because it is incapable of taking the spiritual capacities of its members seriously.
Oliver O’Donovan Freedom and its Loss The Westminster Abbey Gore lecture 2002
