How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

Standpoint theory was a form of epistemology which stated that our knowledge of the world was dependent on the social context in which it was learned. If you were a white man, with the experiences of a white man, your view of freedom would be that of a white man. You would prioritise things like free speech, and maybe property rights. You probably wouldn’t prioritise office harassment, or racial discrimination in employment contracts, or domestic violence. Standpoint theory was more than a political argument. It went to the heart of the human ability to process reality. It suggested that people’s imaginative capacity was limited. When they thought about the world, they went through their own experiences and then projected them out as if they were universal. But they weren’t. They were just their experiences. Given the history of liberalism, this theory seemed convincing. Liberal theorists had spent generations talking about universally applicable ideals that had been applied only to the segment of the population that looked like them.