What is Liberalism?

Liberalism is that philosophy, culture, lifestyle, and attitude which began with the discovery and invention of reason and epistemology by the Ionians of classical Greece. This was evidently largely initiated by Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, of Miletus, starting in about 585 B.C. 

These intellectuals are the first known to separate reason and strictly logical thought from emotion and desire, as well as from inborn drives and instincts. These three geniuses also carefully investigated, and sought profound explanations about, the universe, life, society, and the individual, without reference to irrational, superstitious, or supernatural thought. This means these heroic giants rejected the path of their best predecessors, and refused to offer "the gods" or mythology as an explanation for anything. They sought the truth using rational methods, evidence, theories, and explanations only.

The result of this was the monumental creation of science and philosophy!

But these three "scientists" and "physicists" also created, at least in a very rudimentary form: 1) the epistemology of reason, logic, and science; 2) the ethics of individualism, self-interest, and personal happiness; 3) the politics of liberty, justice, and individual rights; 4) the aesthetics of beauty, romanticism, and heroism; and 5) the spirituality of the sublime, transcendent, and triumphant. Such was magnificent Greek liberalism!    

The conquering Romans mostly embraced, and then advanced, liberal theory and society further.

Then philosophical and cultural liberalism in most of Europe went into steep decline during the medieval Dark Age. It was a grim, sad, low era of irrationality -- of epistemological skepticism and relativism mixed with epistemological dogma and faith. Religion, especially Christianity, stepped into the ignorant and immoral breach of the first Dark Age. "God" filled the void left by the extreme retreat of reason and liberalism. 

Then came the highly rational and individualistic Renaissance and Enlightenment. The philosophy, culture, lifestyle, and attitude of liberalism rose higher than ever. But by WWI, liberalism again was declining significantly. Postmodernism, especially socialism, stepped into the ignorant and immoral breach of the second major Dark Age. It filled the void left by the new retreat of reason and liberalism. 

But the philosophy, culture, lifestyle, and attitude of liberalism are now ascending for the third time in the West. The Second Renaissance began in the 1980s or so with Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, and Deng. Its most powerful engine is Ayn Rand and her intellectual descendants like Hicks, Kelley, Peikoff, Binswanger, and Branden. Another strong driver of the rising neoliberal era is the Austrian economics-based revolutionaries like Bastiat, Mises, and Hayek. Still another mover is sundry isolated champions of reborn classical liberalism. 

Soon philosophical right-wing conservatism and left-wing progressivism -- the two deviant, weak, and failed ideologies left over after early-1800s Enlightenment liberalism started to fade -- will probably be crushed by today's emerging up-wing liberalism. It might even happen before the turn of the century. This is because, historically and currently, liberalism is far and away mankind's truest and best philosophy.