Liberalism and Its Discontents

By: Francis Fukuyama

Narrated by: Christopher Ragland

An audiobook about the challenges to liberalism from the right and the left by the bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order.

Classical liberalism is in a state of crisis. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, liberalism is a system for governing diverse societies, which is grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law. It emphasizes the rights of individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness free from encroachment by government.

It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision. The result, Fukuyama argues, has been a fracturing of our civil society and an increasing peril to our democracy.

In this clear account of our current political discontents, Fukuyama offers an essential defense of a revitalized liberalism for the twenty-first century.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2022 Francis Fukuyama (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

A defense of liberalism

The author defends liberal traditions believed to be the human destiny in his "The End of History and the Last Man" published 30 years ago in 1992 at the eve of collapse of the Soviet empire. It lays out a strong argument of liberalism against the attack from the far right-- mainly Neoliberalism on economics, white nationalists on politics, and Evangelical conservatives on culture. It also presents a critique on the critical theory that has served as the intellectual foundation for identity politics of the progressive left challenging the liberal order's failures to protect equality. Though the threats to liberal democracies are from both the far right and extreme left, the threats from the former are clearly more immediate and direct. An example is Trump's and his hard-core nationalism followers' challenge of the very heart of the liberal principles of equality, diversity, and tolerance. The book is full of information and references, useful for both students of politics and the general audience. The title emulates Sigmund Freud's classics "Civilization and Its Discontents".

The idea in the book that Eastern spirituality, tied by the author to the movement of individual actualization in the west, somehow contributes to extremity of self identity is misunderstanding if not completely nonsense. Cultivating consciousness in the eastern philosophical tradition is for achieving a non-self (no Ego) which, to a large extent, can contribute to collectiveness and public spirit.

Reading to think

One reason I read is to stimulate my thinking. Deeper is good. Broader is good. A different “lens” is good. Having listened to what Fukuyama has to say on liberalism, I am encouraged to buy the hard copy of his book and to encourage my grown sons to read it so I can obtain their reactions and conclusions and to refine my own.
This is an excellent book. Thoughtful and accessible.

A little biased but good in general

A little biased but not much for the day we live in. Unfortunately a classical liberal is hard to find nowadays

An important voice at the table...

Fukuyama articulates and correlates each of the big, over-arching intersections where political conflicts are occuring in the U.S. He does so by revisiting the founding tenets of liberalism while staying dispassionate and clearly apart from any theory, in particular dialogues around critical theories, that in his estimation are too conditional, group-focused, and exacting in their causal analyses to have any import what-so-ever to adequately address the broader global effects of neo-liberal philosophy. This, in my humble assessment, ultimately is Fukuyama's myopia as he dismisses these out-group proposals as little more than "critical stories" better suited for the individual to seek repair through litigation than serious socio-economic group/class critique. With such considerations dismissed, he is freed to offer a set of ideas for how these conflicts could be addressed or at the least attenuated if our increasingly polarized and self-centered aspirations are not moored to some common cultural and political anchor. This is a necessary and important analysis, that over time, would ultimately be required to acknowledge its own patriarchal underpinning and not ignore the perspectives provided by the same passionate proponents of critical theory who have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from this discussion of a shared "commons,".

For those who haven’t given up yet.

Important and timely, the author offers critical correctives to the unhinged extremes of the political Left and Right. Offers the rest of us with the patriotic, economic, historical, and philosophical underpinnings to support the Classical Liberal project, and invites us to reinforce the freedoms and responsibilities inherent thereto.

Intellectually Honest

This book aims at deconstructing and criticizing radical views from the left and right. He seems to redefine classic liberalism as a much more calibrated version of what is generally perceived (e.g. Neoliberalism).

Not a book that will bring crowds to the street on passionate support of Fukuyama's ideology; but one that should!

Radically centrist and intellectually calibrated.

This book definitively deserves to be read by anyone who want to understand the polarized world we live in today.

Unbiased. Pragmatic. Necessary.

This is a fantastic framing of the current global political landscape of the Western world. What I came away with was not just how important it is to strike a better balance through policy, but what that rebalancing act would involve. Fantastic book!

Another fantastic work

Dr. Fukuyama remains one our most important political scholars and thinkers. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants a nonpartisan view of modern politics.

Left me on the fence about it

I'm definitely going to have to listen to this the second time and, maybe, parts of it a third time. I doubt that I'll ever completely understand his section on the philosophical roots of liberalism; there are just too many of the people whose ideas he's discussing that I just don't know anything about.

In the first half I also felt that it was too polemical for me. But I hung in there, and he did get to the problems and alternatives that balanced things out, leaving me with much to think about.

Fukyama wins again.

I enjoy Fukyama. after his Origins series his understanding of political theory makes sense of our complex world.