Not Thinking Like a Liberal

University of Cambridge philosopher Geuss (Who Needs a Worldview) mixes autobiography and political philosophy in this thought-provoking look at the influences and experiences that led him to question “liberal orthodoxy.” Contending that liberal democratic capitalism has been “visibly unraveling” in recent decades, Geuss reflects on places and people who provided him with “a cognitive advantage” in resisting illusions such as liberalism’s “fantasy” of the “entirely sovereign individual.” An early influence was Father Béla Krigler, a Hungarian priest who taught Geuss at a Piarist boarding school near Philadelphia in the 1950s and ’60s. Geuss learned from Krigler that “people often acted on beliefs they did not necessarily know they had,” and that human reasoning and discussion were always limited by the specific circumstances in which they took place. Geuss also spotlights his mentors at Columbia University, including Robert Denoon Cumming, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Robert Paul Wolff, and cites authorial influences including Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, and the poet Paul Celan. Though he doesn’t propose an alternative to liberalism, Guess lucidly analyzes its shortcomings and sheds valuable light on how the critical mind is formed. This probing intellectual memoir will appeal to those who believe philosophy can change the world. (Apr.)