Johannes Voelz

The Aspiration for Impossible Security: Revisiting Liberal Political Thought

Security, a growing number of critical theorists maintains, is a political idea whose current prevalence we owe to liberalism.1 Against the views of liberals themselves, who tend to describe liberalism as espousing values such as individual freedom, toleration, pluralism, and the rule of law, critics of liberalism—and particularly those writing in the wake of Michel Foucault—have emphasized that security constitutes both liberalisms ultimate legitimation of power and a distinctly liberal technology of rule.2 At least regarding the role that security plays in legitimating power, their case seems to be a strong one. Indeed, it appears that one only needs to…