Neoliberal Röpke framed freedom and the market as heirs of Catholic personalist philosophy

Evidence

Against both the ‘doctrinaire ideology of modern democracy’ and laissez-faire, Röpke upheld an idea of freedom that ‘guarantees the rights of the person, limits the action of the State’ and secures the rights of families, minorities and religious groups. A précis for liberalism, he argues, could be written drawing only on the writings of the Roman statesman Cicero and the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, in whom we find the ‘venerable patrimony of the personalist philosophy’ that was crystallised in the political philosophy of the Catholic Church. The social goal of the Church, Röpke argued, was to dissipate class struggle and rescue the economy from ‘an omnivorous collectivism’ – which was ‘exactly what the representatives of neo-liberalism hold’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 355

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘personalist philosophy’ tradition that Röpke claimed as the patrimony of liberalism, tracing it from Cicero through Aquinas to Catholic social thought.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on the ethics of markets and how market discourses borrow vocabularies of freedom and human rights from religious and Enlightenment traditions. — connects to: Röpke and Rüstow crossed disciplinary lines to supply market economies with sociocultural foundations — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 506; Neoliberal pension privatization was built by a former Catholic critic of monetarism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 352; Neoliberalism treats freedom as an absolute moral principle divorced from religion — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 181 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals treated individual freedom as a moral principle yet sought reconciliation with religion #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2135
• Neoliberalism treats freedom as an absolute moral principle divorced from religion #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 181
• Neoliberals framed the spread of markets as dependent on moral and religious foundations #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120