Introduction: the vicissitudes of liberalism

This Handbook is an attempt to provide a state-of-the-art discussion of liberalism today, when so many anxieties and challenges are being expressed about its future (and its past). Some chapters tackle broad, meta-level questions about the coherence and justificatory limits and possibilities of liberalism; others tackle conceptual issues; still others specific institutional, cultural, historical, and political questions. What the book makes clear is not only the abundance of challenges facing liberalism, but also the diversity and shape-shifting nature of liberalism itself - historically, conceptually, and normatively. In this chapter I provide a taxonomy of different ideal types of liberalism that I think characterize the field today, and which are discussed at various points in the book. I also identify three cross-cutting themes that emerge across the chapters: the complacency of liberalism, the self-undermining of liberalism, and the insufficiency of liberalism. For some, these are fatal flaws, for others, a call for renewal. What isn’t in doubt, as will hopefully become clear, is the sense of liberalism remaining a site of productive debate and concern for contemporary politics.