Christina Hoff Sommers, Ryszard Legutko, Radek Sikorski, Michael Novak

On November 1, 2002, AEI scholars Michael Novak, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Radek Sikorski joined Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko in a lively discussion on his book Society as a Department Store (Lexington Books, 2002). The book illuminates the different perceptions of libertarianism in the United States and Central Europe.

Ryszard Legutko
Jagiellonian University

Legutko identified a striking tendency in Western political and philosophical discourse to consider the multiplicity of cultural values in society and conclude that cohesion requires as few philosophical or moral assumptions as possible. Such an ideal society has been characterized as a department store in which consumers choose from a vast array of value systems as if combing store shelves for the item with the most appeal. In such a society, political discourse is no longer about values, but about keeping all values equal.

Legutko finds the idea of society as a department store disturbing and ultimately impossible just as Friedrich Hayek decried the constructivism from which it draws. Individuals cannot, after all, differentiate themselves culturally from each other and simultaneously engage in value-blind cooperation in society. In schools, for example, students cannot be taught the equality of all cultural values and be expected to develop any meaningful concept of truth and goodness. Any framework set to establish cooperation would be doomed to failure by its own philosophical opaqueness. Culture wars are the inevitable result.

Society as a department store is an idea conceived to be anti-political. Yet, it actually leads to the politicization of every value it comes to encompass. It requires constant vigilance, constant assessment of the political impact of new ideas on the common, cooperative culture. Isaiah Berlin's essay "Concepts of Liberty" exemplifies this danger. In making political acceptability the criterion for evaluating ideas, Berlin's logic leads directly to political authoritarianism of the kind Poles knew all too well.

Legutko is not against laissez faire economics, not against discourse about what should and should not be political, and certainly not against America herself, as one might construe from his book. As a philosopher, Legutko refrains from judgment on society and the book cannot be understood as such; it was written about a utopia, not a real society. Philosophy must be kept separate from politics lest the mind itself become politicized, Legutko concluded.

Christina Hoff Sommers
AEI

Sommers took issue with two aspects of Legutko's work: the case his book makes against Western libertarianism in general and, by association, against America in particular. In fact, it was Legutko's hero Plato who first came up with a society in which all was politicized, in his Republic.

In Legutko's work, it is libertarianism that enables his "department store society." Legutko describes libertarianism as a doctrine tottering on the brink of cultural relativism in its acceptance of diverse, morally opposed groups in the name of freedom. In doing so, Legutko mistakenly equates toleration and acceptance. Libertarians do not accept the equality of all groups in society and the values they hold. On the contrary, libertarianism accepts the right of the individual to be wrong, not the idea that all are right. Libertarianism has proven itself to be a moral doctrine in that American society has resisted moral emptiness. Libertarians find communism, socialism, and fascism to be morally reprehensible.

Legutko's critique of libertarianism falls apart when one considers the example of America, the most libertarian of all countries. America is clearly not a country of empty relativism. As Seymour Martin Lipset famously pointed out, Americans are exceptionally moralistic. Americans are the most religious, optimistic, rights-oriented, philosophical, religious, and patriotic. Our unique political religion, our American creed, allows us to live together despite extreme political differences.

Michael Novak
AEI

Michael Novak placed Society as a Department Store in the context of Poland's transformation from a communist society to a free society. The work is a beautiful exposition of what is possible in Poland, where people have a profound thirst for a society that respects the truth about human nature after so many years of having truth hidden from them.

Legutko's critical view of "department store society" is somewhat misunderstood as a direct attack on libertarianism. Libertarian philosophy is indeed misunderstood in Central and Eastern Europe, where there is a fear of losing the moral framework of society. In this book, however, Legutko attempts to examine some of the foundations of political thought, and one ought not construe his argument as simply an attack on one school of political philosophy.

Novak recommended Legutko's chapter on Isaiah Berlin. Berlin defined the concept of negative liberty in very narrow terms, putting positive philosophers in the dustbin, in Novak's words. Berlin had a fundamental anti-metaphysical thrust, the logical result of which is a utilitarian, hegemonic power not unlike the communism once faced by Central and Eastern Europe. Legutko cleverly draws out this similarity.

AEI research assistant Krista Shaffer prepared this summary.