The book I linked is an academic work that details how the major liberal philosophers dealt with the contradiction between freedom of the bourgeoisie and freedom of the exploited classes. It’s not a long read, and does the important work of contextualizing their philosophies.
Liberal education has a tendency to present liberalism as if someone just got the idea for everyone to be equal and free, and then the people democratically embraced capitalism because that’s the most freedom and equal system, and history ended.
I understood what you’re saying, and I’m telling you it’s historically inaccurate, I just gave you a book explaining how your classical liberals practiced and argued about slavery and other “freedoms” of the bourgeoisie.
To respond to your edit, I mean kind of not really?
This isn’t just the philosophers being hypocritical, there are contradictions to liberalism, and they had different ways of resolving them. Philosophy doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the strains that won out were the ones that benefited the most powerful faction of the bourgeoisie at the time because that was the context of promoting them.
People in medieval Europe didn’t invent idea of the divine right of kings, and then find a king because they though that feudalism was the best way to run society, that feudal mode of production came first, and everything else was justifying it.
The book I linked is an academic work that details how the major liberal philosophers dealt with the contradiction between freedom of the bourgeoisie and freedom of the exploited classes. It’s not a long read, and does the important work of contextualizing their philosophies.
Liberal education has a tendency to present liberalism as if someone just got the idea for everyone to be equal and free, and then the people democratically embraced capitalism because that’s the most freedom and equal system, and history ended.
Guess what I was trying to say is that that changes over time - and not in a good way. But maybe if you read the book, you can tell us more :)
Edit: looks like the author posits it has “always” been shit in mostly “liberties for me but bot thee” ways.
I understood what you’re saying, and I’m telling you it’s historically inaccurate, I just gave you a book explaining how your classical liberals practiced and argued about slavery and other “freedoms” of the bourgeoisie.
I get it now, see the edit. And they’re not mine ;)
To respond to your edit, I mean kind of not really?
This isn’t just the philosophers being hypocritical, there are contradictions to liberalism, and they had different ways of resolving them. Philosophy doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the strains that won out were the ones that benefited the most powerful faction of the bourgeoisie at the time because that was the context of promoting them.
People in medieval Europe didn’t invent idea of the divine right of kings, and then find a king because they though that feudalism was the best way to run society, that feudal mode of production came first, and everything else was justifying it.