Does Classical Liberalism Belong to the Fantastic Genre?

In 1970, Tzvetan Todorov characterised the fantastic genre as a subjective, doubtful, and fugitive branch of literature. As soon as the reader finishes a fantastic story, his mind is full of uncertainties on the explanation of its ending. He doubts whether the story conveys a super natural element or it could be understood as an oddity, something strange but realistic. Todorov stated that the story belonged to the fantastic genre only during the time the reader took to choose the former or the latter explanation. Since he inclined towards one of them, the story shifted either onto the fantastic marvellous genre or onto the fantastic uncanny one.

I think Classical Liberalism has much of the sort. To use Hayek's terminology, it navigates between the waters of Constructivism and Conservatism. Classical Liberalism tends to distrust on the involvement of government in education, but at the same time it promotes the individual intellectual emancipation. Classical liberals endorse a competitive economic system, but are not fond of anti-trust policies. Almost in every relevant matter we could find these crossroads. It seems Classical Liberalism walks on "the edge of the razor". We are tempted to state that Classical Liberalism lasts the time we are pondering whether to take a Constructivist or a Conservative approach.

I think the“Constructivist explanation” and the “Conservative explanation” are both shortcuts to cope with the complexity of the social order disregarding change. On the other hand, the Classical Liberalism Friedrich Hayek tried to restate was a cultural evolutionist one. An Evolutionist Classical Liberalism is made of principles which adjust their relative positions in response to the changes in the environment. Sometimes this adjustment is made by a theorist, but most of the times it is the social reality itself, acting as a sort of feedback system, that provokes the shift in the balance of principles. The main point to keep in mind is that this process of weighing principles is blind. So, no one could assess “the course of the History” (a common point of view to Conservatism and Constructivism, by the way).

In resume, Classical Liberalism will keep its own identity as long as it remains loyal to its evolutionist trait.