ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a critical presentation of Georg Henrik von Wright’s critique of Western culture and especially liberal society. Von Wright claims that the ecological and social problems of industrialized liberal societies stem from a foundational crisis in Western culture. Von Wright’s critique of liberal society displays some striking similarities to the communitarian criticism of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. Von Wright translates phronesis in various contexts by such expressions as ‘practical reason’, ‘practical wisdom’, ‘deliberation’, ‘value-rationality’, or more extensively, ‘comprehension of the right way of life’. Value-rationality is a method of excluding arbitrary ends from other subjective preferences. Neither liberalism nor liberal society is included in von Wright’s explicit targets. Demands for efficiency and productivity invade all levels and structures of society as political institutions lose their control over the unified ‘technosystem’ of the market, science and industry. Von Wright introduces distinction between the ‘overall’ and the ‘merely personal’ good of man.
