Gray’s Elegy for Progress

Abstract

Gray’s alternative to liberalism is unworkable in practice and implausible in theory. The essay distinguishes Socratic, Durkheimian and Scottish Enlightenment liberalism, arguing that Gray’s critique of liberalism as historically contingent is ineffective against the Socratic version of liberalism. Whereas the liberalism of Durkheim and Adam Smith is perhaps dependent on historical circumstances, Socratic liberalism simply upholds an iconoclastic ideal of individualism and gauges societies’ progress by their proximity to this ideal. Thus there is no reason to endorse Gray’s view that history has refuted the liberal view of progress. Gray takes value‐pluralism to subvert the liberal aspiration to universal values, and though he admits there are universal human evils, he argues that regimes which shield their citizens against these may be highly illiberal. But liberal societies are much better at protecting their citizens against the generic evils of poverty and inequality of status than are modern or historical authoritarian societies. Gray’s espousal of modus vivendi fails to protect cultural diversity. In conclusion, the essay affirms, against the myths of diversity, spirituality and democracy which pervade modern liberal societies, its faith in an ideal of progress based on technocratic liberal capitalism.