Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism, is a formidable volume. In it, Alan S. Kahan aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the intellectual history of liberalism, what drives changes within liberalism over time, and the future of liberalism. Clocking in at just over 500 pages, the book is an extensive, dense history that traces delicate, nuanced ideological twists and turns from liberalism’s origins to the present day. From century to century, it tracks continuities and contrasts among liberal thinkers, and carefully delineates the various competing (though intellectually related) schools of thought within liberalism. While Kahan primarily focuses on American and British liberalism, liberalism in France, Germany, and occasionally other countries such as India is explored. As a history, it is an impressive example of scholarship, and demonstrates Kahan’s extensive knowledge of liberal thinkers and their intellectual genealogy.

This is not just a work of history, however. Kahan has his own agenda. He wants to advance a particular view of liberalism as a quest for freedom from fear, while at the same time airing his fears about the uncertain future of liberalism.

The subtitle’s reference to being an “incomplete history of liberalism” does not refer to the necessary incompleteness of any enterprise to trace a historical idea that spans centuries and countries. Rather, for Kahan, the greatest fear we face today is the existential threat to liberal democracy posed by right-wing populism. Populists threaten to unyoke the long-term “marriage” between liberalism and democracy. (Kahan magnanimously grants that left-wing populism exists but dismisses its danger, either because it’s only “episodically influential” like Black Lives Matter or because it’s popular in Latin American countries.) Right-wing populists include the usual suspects: Brexit voters, France’s gilets jaunes protesters, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and, of course, Donald Trump. 

So far, liberalism has failed to adequately counter right-wing populism. Consequently, this chapter in liberalism’s history is unwritten. Kahan’s diagnosis of how liberalism found itself on the back foot with the rise of populism and his take on what liberalism must do in response to right-wing populism are the most thought-provoking parts of the book. 

Kahan writes with urgency, concerned for the precariousness of liberalism in the hearts and minds of Western peoples. The marriage between liberalism and democracy, Kahan reminds us, cannot be taken for granted. Since the turn of the century, he concedes that liberals have not exactly covered themselves in glory in justifying liberalism to those who have been exposed to the rougher sides of globalism. In order to thrive, liberalism needs to be supported and defended, which will require its friends to reinvigorate much-neglected traditional supports for liberalism such as religion and morality. Nevertheless, Kahan’s intellectual history intentionally downplays the principles, doctrines, and institutions, such as natural rights, social contract theory, and constitutionalism, contained within liberalism that could diffuse the dangers of populism that he identifies.

Kahan boils liberalism down to “the search for a society in which no one need be afraid.” Every liberty should be understood as a freedom from fear. The majestic rights and doctrines in the Declaration are just an “eloquent way” of expressing the “wish to live without fear.” (And for that they pledged their “sacred honor”?) Not every fear. Liberalism cannot do anything about fear of clowns, small spaces, and public speaking. Instead, liberalism is “about building a society in which we need not fear other people.”

Here Kahan hews closely to Judith Shklar’s understanding of “liberalism of fear”—a boutique academic strand of liberal thought that Kahan hopes to elevate to prominence. Shklar argues that liberalism strives to establish the “political conditions” in which “fear and favor” are reduced so that individuals may enjoy “personal freedom.” What Kahan adds to Shklar’s account is a mechanism for explaining how liberalism has repeatedly adapted itself over time to address ever-shifting fears.

Liberalism, as Kahan argues, is not a static doctrine because the things people fear change over time. 

Each development in liberal thought can be explained as an adaptation or response to an era’s predominant fear. As the current version of liberalism succeeds in addressing one fear, another fear emerges and demands a response. By Kahan’s reckoning, there are four versions of liberalism (or five if you count his oddball category “proto-liberalism”). For example, “Liberalism 1.0” includes nineteenth-century liberals like Tocqueville and J. S. Mill, who responded to fear of the state by advocating for limits on the state’s authority. Then, in the late nineteenth century, liberals turned their attention to the problem of poverty as menace to the freedom of the poor. “Liberalism 2.0,” or progressivism, emerged, as liberals happily turned to the state to find remedies for the poor. 

Kahan seems to understand the fight over liberalism as a kind of war of succession. The key to preserving the liberal democracy marriage is knowing the true heirs to the line of liberalism. Writing an intellectual history is much like writing a family history. It is done to expose the black sheep, to demote the lesser lines, and to validate the claims of the successor. With that in mind, some of Kahan’s choices are strange. Poor Thomas Hobbes, who has done more than any other human being to encourage people to listen to their fears as the foundation of their safety and liberty, doesn’t merit a single mention. Hobbes deserves at least a pity mention. 

Kahan’s unwavering goal is to validate the center-left line within liberalism as the true heir. It is not merely a polemic, as much of his account is astute and even-handed, but the larger narrative clearly reveals his preferred offspring. For example, as Kahan explains, in the late nineteenth century, liberalism cleaved into classical liberalism and progressivism (or “modern liberalism” as Kahan prefers to call it) over the use of state power to alleviate the plight of the poor. Classical liberals are reactionaries whereas progressives rightly adapted to the times. One of the advantages, for Kahan’s purposes, of understanding liberalism as a series of responses to fears is that liberalism, at any given time, can shift tactics to address whatever the contemporary fear is. New versions of liberalism can adopt without hesitation ideas and remedies that might have been rejected by earlier versions of liberalism.

This proves a tricky argument for Kahan because he is sufficiently honest to say that it would do contemporary liberalism a lot of good to revisit the ideas of liberals like Benjamin Constant, Tocqueville, and Jane Addams. But today’s progressive liberals, whom Kahan champions as the true heirs of liberalism, aren’t likely to be found reading Democracy in America or revisiting Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In fact, the people most likely to have reading groups on early liberals are classical liberals and various stripes of conservatives. Kahan is so committed to demoting classical liberals and adjacent friendly conservatives within liberalism that he refuses to call upon their aid as allies in the effort to check populism.

One of Kahan’s most interesting arguments explains how liberalism emptied itself of moral content. Since liberalism has little consistent content, what provides continuity, Kahan argues, are the three pillars that support liberalism: political liberty, economic prosperity, and religious and/or moral ideals. Liberalism thrives and blesses the political orders that practice it when all three pillars are harmoniously present. For liberty to be used well, individuals must have some guidance on how to use their liberty to “strive for what is best” and not merely narrow self-interest. Shared social moral principles make trust and comity easier in liberal societies. Kahan understands the social utility of religion and morality and approves of liberal thinkers who drew on the deep wells of religious and moral belief in their day, but he has little guidance on what to do once the wells have dried up. He wishes contemporary liberalism had thicker moral underpinnings but has contempt for today’s traditionally faithful. One gets the impression that he hopes for a revitalization of mainline Protestantism. 

Right-wing populism found such fertile ground because of the “hollowing out” of liberalism’s religious/moral pillar during the latter half of the twentieth century. John Rawls, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick all wished to balance their brand of liberalism on a single pillar and so all three showed contempt for the historical religious and moral arguments within liberalism. Populism grew in the void. Populism poses a “moral challenge” to contemporary liberalism and having jettisoned its moral dimension, it finds itself “flummoxed [and] without clear responses.”

Kahan argues that right-wing populism is the result of “cultural alienation.” The “habits and mores” of elites and non-elites have diverged to the point where a minority of non-elites believe that the elites are responsible for their suffering. These populists are composed of an “overlapping illiberal consensus” (a John Rawls nightmare!) of nationalists, the lonely, traditional religionists, and anyone else who feels culturally left behind. Kahan takes pity on the embattled elites whom he claims have been forced to seek safety from populist rage in modern-day “ghettos”—by which he means cities and university campuses throughout the country. 

Though a numerical minority, populists believe they are a majority who represent the people against liberal elites. Populists reason: “If democracy means majority rule, and populists are the true majority, while liberals always represent an elite minority, then liberal democracy becomes an oxymoron.” 

This is an exaggeration and it is not helpful to Kahan’s project to ameliorate the danger posed by populism. As Kahan presents them, populists are pure illiberals. They are rabid nationalists and religionists who have jettisoned every vestige of liberalism from their hearts and minds. Kahan’s appreciation of the nuances of populism leaves something to be desired, and if there is no common ground, no shared principles, no residual respect or affection for liberal institutions, then that blunts any effort to rebuild a shared and renewed appreciation for the benefits of liberal democracy. Any fair examination of populists in America would reveal a great deal of confidence in and admiration for liberal principles and institutions that could be tapped into. 

Kahan acknowledges that contemporary liberals ought to make some efforts to regain legitimacy in the eyes of populists, but, failing that, they “must find a way to defeat them.” Persuading people and building common ground is hard, painstaking work that requires patience, diligence, compromise, and sometimes a willingness to endure insolence and exasperation from people you find disagreeable but hope to work with. On the other hand, it is easier and much more pleasant to employ tactics that will trounce one’s opponents. Kahan’s advice here will heat up rather than cool down political conflict and resentments.