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THIS ARTICLE STATES THAT JOHN GRAY'S (A CHAMPION OF CLASSICAL LIBERAL THOUGHT) RECENT CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM, AND HIS CASE FOR AN APPARENTLY RELATIVISTIC "POST-PYRRHONIAN" POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, ARE SHOWN TO BE WANTING. WEAKNESSES IN GRAY'S CRITIQUE ARE IDENTIFIED AND DISCUSSED: THE CHARACTERIZATION OF LIBERALISM AS UNIVERSALLY PRESCRIPTIVE CONFUSION, ABOUT WHETHER LIBERALISM IS A GENUINE TRADITION, AND MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATION BETWEEN CONDUCT AND THE VALUE OF FREEDOM. A FORMULATION OF LIBERALISM THAT IS NOT UNIVERSALIST ("TEMPERATE" LIBERALISM) IS OFFERED, AND IT IS SHOWN THAT ONE OF LIBERALISM'S VITAL CONCERNS--CONTROLLING POLITICAL POWER IN ORDER TO PROTECT FREEDOM--IS A HIATUS IN GRAY'S THEORY.

Why is liberalism so often dismissed by thinkers from both the left and the right? To those calling for wholesale transformation or claiming a monopoly on "realistic" conceptions of humanity, liberalism's assured progressivism can seem hard to swallow. Bleak Liberalism makes the case for a renewed understanding of the liberal tradition, showing that it is much more attuned to the complexity of political life than conventional accounts have acknowledged. Amanda Anderson examines canonical works of high realism, political novels from England and the United States, and modernist works to argue that liberalism has engaged sober and even stark views of historical development, political dynamics, and human and social psychology. From Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Hard Times to E. M. Forster's Howards End to Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, this literature demonstrates that liberalism has inventive ways of balancing sociological critique and moral aspiration. A deft blend of intellectual history and literary analysis, Bleak Liberalism reveals a richer understanding of one of the most important political ideologies of the modern era.