Liberalism as a Human Phenomenon

This article formulates and develops an original hypothesis in a single proposition: “liberalism is a phenomenon.” To support it, I distinguish doctrinal liberalism, understood as a historical family of modern ideologies, from phenomenal liberalism, understood as a recurrent configuration of practices that subjects coercion to justification, recognizes some form of equal standing, protects spheres of autonomy, and renders authority conditional or contestable. The possible independent emergence of this configuration in societies with no demonstrable historical contact with the liberal tradition is examined as supporting evidence. As an auxiliary explanation, I argue that doctrine can abstract, name, and systematize the phenomenon, retrospectively incorporate it into an exclusive genealogy, and subsequently become subject to political appropriation. These developments support the hypothesis but do not form part of its statement. The article engages with independent invention, reverse dominance, plural genealogies of democracy, the morphology of ideologies, and theories of legitimation, while establishing conceptual criteria intended to reduce the risk of anachronism.