Cultivating Moderation in an Age of Extremism: Aurelian Craiutu joins Ben Klutsey to discuss the state of liberalism today and the neglected virtue of moderation (BEN KLUTSEY, MAY 31, 2024, Discourse)
KLUTSEY: Now, you use José Ortega y Gasset’s view of liberalism, which he describes as “the supreme form of generosity.” Can you unpack this definition?CRAIUTU: I’ve always been intrigued by this definition of Ortega, which appears in his book, “La rebelión de las masas,” which is a great book (but published in 1929, so almost 100 years ago). I think that it gives justice to the essence of liberalism, which is a liberal democratic regime. The institutions of representative government give the opposition, those who disagree with us—those who are in power and those who are against power—to argue, to present arguments, to coexist.
Those who have power do not throw the others in prison just because there’s disagreement or different views on what the good society might be. They create conditions for publicity, for exchange of ideas. That is the form of generosity: that, when you have power, you allow the weaker part to contribute to the public debate. You don’t want to stifle that. You want to learn from it, and you allow other voices to voice their opinions.
Also because you think that you never are in possession of the whole truth. Totalitarian regimes are those in which there is a monopoly of truth. One party, one group, one person has the monopoly of truth. In a liberal regime, nobody has the monopoly of truth. There is no single central committee where the truth is located. That is the form of generosity: that people share a public space and the freedoms and the institutions to search in common for the truth, justice and reason. That’s a form of generosity that is liberal.