Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

The Cold War roots of liberalism's present crisis

"[A] daring new book."--Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

"A fascinating and combative intellectual history."--Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Moyn argues that the liberal intellectuals of the Cold War era--among them Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, and Lionel Trilling--transformed liberalism but left a disastrous legacy for our time.

In his iconoclastic style, Moyn outlines how Cold War liberals redefined the ideals of their movement and renounced the moral core of the Enlightenment for a more dangerous philosophy: preserving individual liberty at all costs. In denouncing this stance, as well as the recent nostalgia for Cold War liberalism as a means to counter illiberal values, Moyn presents a timely call for a new emancipatory and egalitarian liberal philosophy--a path to undoing the damage of the Cold War and to ensuring the survival of liberalism.

Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 09/10/2024
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.50w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780300280128
ISBN10: 0300280122
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | History & Theory | General
- Political Science | Political Ideologies | Conservatism & Liberalism
- History | United States | 20th Century

About the Author
Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University and author of many books on the history of ideas and politics in the twentieth century. He lives in New Haven, CT.