ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study that takes its title from Michael Polanyi's "Beyond Nihilism." Just as he argued that freedom was endangered by the nihilism implicit in the "suspended logic" of Anglo-American liberalism. It proposes to show that the reformulation of liberalism which Polanyi deemed necessary and which the author began, must go further than perhaps Polanyi anticipated and eventually beyond liberalism altogether. Like other movements of thought, liberalism has included several and sometimes divergent trends, and shades off into other positions. Even in the nineteenth century there were other elements within liberalism and rival interpretations of it. The chapter suggests that frequently these resulted from the differing situations in which liberals found themselves. In Britain liberalism was largely a movement seeking to build upon and to extend existing institutions, rights and principles, such as representative and elected legislative bodies, the rule of law, and free trade.
