The Antinomies of a Liberal Identity: Reason, Emotion and Volition in the Work of R.F.A. Hoernlé and W.M. Macmillan

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reassesses the complex and controversial phenomenon of white liberalism in South Africa between 1920 and 1940 through a re-examination of the work of the philosopher, R.F.A. Hoernlé, and economic historian, W.M. Macmillan, both of whom worked at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. These two men considered their analyses and recommendations to be embodiments of a Western liberal tradition, thereby contributing a particular dimension to the evolution of white identity in South Africa. Informed by aspects of Isaiah Berlin's critique of Western liberalism, we indicate how Hoernlé and Macmillan's emphasis on the rational nature of Western liberalism had to confront, and accommodate, the realities of intransigent white emotion and resolute volition that maintained white supremacy in South Africa. As white dissidents, their work reflects the antinomous nature of their particular liberal white South African identity, which had to grapple perennially with the often incompatible relationship between reason, emotion and volition in its formulation of an encompassing vision of an integrated and just future for this society.