Photo: rte.ie Liberal societies risk entering a “new dark age” if they lose the ability to argue through controversial questions with reason, courage and restraint, Prof. Nigel Biggar told an audience at University College Dublin.
Speaking at the Dublin Lectures on Free Speech and Academic Freedom, Prof. Biggar said the culture wars are not superficial disputes but serious moral arguments in which free speech, truth and social peace are at stake. “We’re not yet in the new dark age, but we’re closer to it than we think,” he said.
The lecture, titled ‘The Culture Wars: Why ‘Liberals’ Must Win Them’, drew on themes from his latest book, The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars.
Prof. Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford, a Conservative peer in the House of Lords and chair of the Free Speech Union, said debates around gender, race and colonial history are often treated as matters to be shut down rather than argued through.
“A liberal culture where we’re free to say what we believe to be true and to engage in the frank testing of each other’s views is important because otherwise false orthodoxies… will reign among us,” he said.
He argued that what is at stake in the culture wars is “our individual and social well-being”, warning that when disagreement is met with efforts to silence opponents, the result is polarisation rather than intellectual progress. Quoting W.B. Yeats, Prof. Biggar said the problem facing liberal society was that “the best lack conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”.
However, he argued that liberals must not respond to illiberalism with the same tactics of outrage and intimidation. Instead, he said, the culture wars must be engaged with liberal virtues. Prof. Biggar said universities “have got to train young people to handle controversy in a rational fashion”, adding that liberal culture requires virtues such as courage, temperance and respect.
Prof. Biggar said the problem in many institutions consists of a noisy minority, an intimidated majority, and authorities who confuse “conflict aversion” with liberal principle. “It takes courage to allow other people to speak, because, you know, what they say might be true.”