THE CREOLIZATION OF LIBERALISM

Barry L. Bull
Indiana University

Kenneth Strike’s characterization of liberalism as a kind of moral pidgin brings together a number of important themes from the recent literature in the field of political philosophy.¹ From Bruce Ackerman, Strike takes the idea that liberalism is a kind of structured conversation in which verbal negotiation among those with differing visions of the good life is an alternative to the exercise of naked power.² From Ronald Dworkin and Ackerman, Strike takes the idea that this conversation must be conducted on grounds and in a language that are perceived as neutral to the interests of the participants.³ From John Rawls and Ackerman, Strike takes the idea that the liberal conversation is likely to be understood by the participants as justified for a wide range of reasons, many of which may not be mutually compatible or even intelligible.⁴ Finally, from Richard Rorty and Rawls, Strike takes the idea that liberalism must be seen as the result of historical processes and events, rather than as a timeless and objectively grounded moral doctrine.⁵

It would be important to consider whether Strike’s metaphor of liberalism as a moral pidgin and his description of the nature and function of such a culturally mediating language coherently synthesize these various sources, whether, for instance, such a view of liberalism makes reasonable sense of the actual history of liberal thought. But here I will pursue a different course, one that attempts to take seriously and perhaps more literally than Strike would approve the metaphor at the heart of his analysis.

Pidgins are languages that arise in the context of limited and intermittent contact between the speakers of two or more different primary languages.⁶ As long as such contact remains restricted in scope and frequency, pidgins retain their linguistically primitive and functional character. However, when contact becomes sustained and complex — when, for instance, members of the groups intermarry or a class of individuals whose primary function is the conduct of intercourse between the groups arises — pidgins may evolve into creoles, well developed languages sophisticated enough to embrace the full range of activities of their speakers, languages that in succeeding generations become primary for at least some individuals.

Let us grant for the sake of argument that liberalism arose as a kind of moral pidgin that permitted relatively peaceful and mutually beneficial intercourse between groups with contending moral cultures, say, Puritans and Anglicans at the end of the English Civil War or Revolutionaries and Loyalists after the American Revolution. (Of course, the real story must be much more complicated than this.) Let us grant further that the character of liberalism as pidgin has been continually renewed as contact with other groups was established, Native Americans, African slaves, later immigrant groups, and so on. Even so, the conditions for the emergence of liberalism as a moral creole are evident. Catholics do marry Protestants, and blacks do marry whites. So, too, do individuals appear whose primary functions consist in the conduct of commerce, in the widest sense, among the members of the primary moral cultures, such as merchants and politicians. In other words, if liberalism ever was a moral pidgin, it is certainly by the late twentieth century a moral creole.

Now, exactly what might it mean for a political doctrine like liberalism to be a creole rather than a pidgin? Well, first, the range of human activity over which liberalism is to function becomes broader, encompassing not just the regulation of unavoidable or mutually beneficial contact between independent cultures but also, for example, the conduct of domestic life of those who have intermarried. Certainly, in this process the moral vocabulary of liberalism must be augmented to deal with hitherto excluded exigencies of human life, like the relationship between husband and wife and the rearing of children. Of course, the moral vocabularies of the earlier primary cultures will be drawn upon, but the combination of vocabularies and the context of domestic negotiation will produce a new, if related, moral language. And some people, perhaps those whose parents have intermarried and those whose activities consist largely of intercultural intercourse, will come to use such a creolized liberalism as a primary moral language. In other words, pidgins, through the concomitant expansion of vocabulary and function, can and do become primary languages in their own right. At the very least, many members of the society that has embraced liberalism as pidgin will become morally bilingual in the sense of being conversant with two or more primary moral languages, one of which is the liberal creole. Some may even become monolingual speakers of that creole.

What’s more, the worldviews of the primary cultures will no longer be able to provide a coherent context for and justification of the creolized moral language. In such circumstances, it is likely that the speakers of the moral creole will seek to construct or reconstruct moral worldviews that enable them to make sense of their emergent moral vocabulary. To be sure, these worldviews will draw upon the moral resources of the primary cultures — their religious doctrines and practices, their social conventions, their definitions of moral rights and responsibilities — but inevitably the picture of the moral world that creole speakers inhabit will diverge from those sources. In sum, as a creole, liberalism will develop a system of moral representation and justification that at least aspires to enable its speakers to make coherent the vocabulary and practices that have emerged from domestic, commercial, and political negotiation. Indeed, new and powerful moral concepts, like individualism, utility, or the kingdom of ends, may emerge in this process.

The creolized moral vocabulary and its associated structure of explanation and justification can provide a standpoint from which the worldviews of the original primary moral languages can and will, I suggest, be criticized. With a vocabulary that embraces the full range of human activity and a moral worldview that sustains it, a creolized liberalism has become a potentially powerful competitor for the allegiance of those who speak and understand it. And the criticism that a creolized liberalism provides of primary cultures will be far more robust than that described by Strike. Strike notes that, in the presence of liberalism as pidgin, the members of primary cultures must “reflect on their own tradition and exploit its resources for the legitimation of liberal speech.” At most, however, this process involves a modest reorganization of the ideas and principles of the primary culture in order to justify to its members their continued participation in a liberal society. However, once liberalism has become a creole, capable of guiding all aspects of human activity, it can be recognized as an alternative to other primary moral languages, not simply a source of marginal internal adjustment.

Initially, this criticism of primary cultures from the standpoint of a creolized liberalism will lead some, perhaps many, members of a liberal society to shift their moral allegiance from the primary to the creolized moral culture. The creole will help organize and justify the lives of some citizens — perhaps those from intercultural families — more coherently than any primary moral culture. For those who maintain an allegiance to a primary culture, the pressure of moral critique from the creole may stimulate significant change in the primary culture itself. Under such pressure, the primary cultures may drift gradually toward a creolized liberalism. At the very least, this drift will produce an increasing cultural homogenization. It may also make it easier for subsequent generations to abandon the primary cultures in favor of the creolized liberalism because the differences between the primary and creolized cultures will diminish and, therefore, so will the costs of conversion.

By taking Strike’s metaphor of liberalism as moral pidgin seriously, I have concocted a story that has a rather different and more problematic ending than Strike’s own. The process of creolization involves expansion of the pidgin’s moral vocabulary, construction of an independent moral worldview, moral criticism of primary cultures, cultural drift, and perhaps cultural displacement. This extended story makes a bit more sense of some features of the past and present of liberalism and its critics than Strike’s does. It tells us why philosophers like Kant and Mill sought a foundational grounding for liberalism despite its pragmatic origins. It explains why some critics find liberalism to be a serious threat to traditional culture and community. It gives an account of the rise of civic republicanism as a competitor for primary cultures. And it explains why liberal public schools may be resistant to the instruction of students in primary cultural languages and even in what Strike calls “hermeneutical” speech, the dialogue among primary cultures.

The question that this extended story raises is whether there is anything internal to liberalism itself that will prevent, or at least should prevent, this process of creolization. Strike suggests that the reminder of liberalism’s pragmatic origins is enough to keep liberalism a moral pidgin. I am not sure whether the facts of living in a liberal society make that a plausible claim on either empirical or moral grounds.

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¹ Kenneth A. Strike, “Liberal Discourse and Ethical Pluralism: An Educational Agenda,” in Philosophy of Education, 1992, ed. H. Alexander (Champaign, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society).

² Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980), 3-11.

³ Ronald Dworkin, “Liberalism,” in Public and Private Morality, ed. S. Hampshire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 113-143. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, 11.

⁴ John Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal for Legal Studies 1 (1987): 1-25. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, 11-12.

⁵ Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 44-69. John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political, not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (Summer 1985): 223-251.

⁶ This discussion of pidgin and the evolution of creole languages is adapted freely from Suzanne Romaine, Pidgin and Creole Languages (New York: Longman, 1988).