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Liberalism | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica

Liberalism | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica

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liberalism

Table of Contents

Introduction & Top QuestionsGeneral characteristicsClassical liberalismPolitical foundationsLiberalism and democracySeparation of powersPeriodic electionsRightsEconomic foundationsLiberalism and utilitarianismLiberalism in the 19th centuryModern liberalismProblems of market economiesThe modern liberal programLimited intervention in the marketGreater equality of wealth and incomeWorld War I and the Great DepressionPostwar liberalism to the 1960sContemporary liberalismThe revival of classical liberalismCivil rights and social issuesLegacy and prospects

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Written by

Terence Ball

Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Arizona State University, Tempe. Author of Reappraising Political Theory and others.

Terence Ball,

Harry K. Girvetz

Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1951–74. Author of The Evolution of Liberalism.

Harry K. Girvetz,

Kenneth Minogue

Emeritus Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics. Author of The Liberal Mind and others.

Kenneth MinogueSee All

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What is liberalism?Liberalism is a political and economic doctrine that emphasizes individual autonomy, equality of opportunity, and the protection of individual rights (primarily to life, liberty, and property), originally against the state and later against both the state and private economic actors, including businesses.Who were the intellectual founders of liberalism?The intellectual founders of liberalism were the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who developed a theory of political authority based on natural individual rights and the consent of the governed, and the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90), who argued that societies prosper when individuals are free to pursue their self-interest within an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and competitive markets, controlled neither by the state nor by private monopolies. John LockeLearn more about John Locke.Adam SmithLearn more about Adam Smith.How is liberalism related to democracy?In John Locke’s theory, the consent of the governed was secured through a system of majority rule, whereby the government would carry out the expressed will of the electorate. However, in the England of Locke’s time and in other democratic societies for centuries thereafter, not every person was considered a member of the electorate, which until the 20th century was generally limited to propertied white males. There is no necessary connection between liberalism and any specific form of democratic government, and indeed Locke’s liberalism presupposed a constitutional monarchy.

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Classical liberalism: Liberalism and democracyHow does classical liberalism differ from modern liberalism?Classical liberals (now often called libertarians) regard the state as the primary threat to individual freedom and advocate limiting its powers to those necessary to protect basic rights against interference by others. Modern liberals have held that freedom can also be threatened by private economic actors, such as businesses, that exploit workers or dominate governments, and they advocate state action, including economic regulation and provision of social services, to ameliorate conditions (e.g., extreme poverty) that may hamper the exercise of basic rights or undermine individual autonomy. Many also recognize broader rights such as the rights to adequate employment, health care, and education.

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Modern liberalismHow does modern liberalism differ from conservatism?Modern liberals are generally willing to experiment with large-scale social change to further their project of protecting and enhancing individual freedom. Conservatives are generally suspicious of such ideologically driven programs, insisting that lasting and beneficial social change must proceed organically, through gradual shifts in public attitudes, values, customs, and institutions. conservatismRead about conservatism.liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the American Revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary evil.” Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual’s life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against the individual. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.The problem is compounded when one asks whether this is all that government can or should do on behalf of individual freedom. Classical liberalism, an early form of liberalism, and modern "neoclassical liberals" (i.e., libertarians), answer that it is. Since the late 19th century, however, most liberals have insisted that the powers of government can promote as well as protect the freedom of the individual. According to modern liberalism, the chief task of government is to remove obstacles that prevent individuals from living freely or from fully realizing their potential. Such obstacles include poverty, disease, discrimination, and ignorance. The disagreement among liberals over whether government should promote individual freedom rather than merely protect it is reflected to some extent in the different prevailing conceptions of liberalism in the United States and Europe since the late 20th century. In the United States, liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies (see below Contemporary liberalism). This article discusses the political foundations and history of liberalism from the 17th century to the present. For coverage of classical and contemporary philosophical liberalism, see political philosophy. For biographies of individual philosophers, see John Locke; John Stuart Mill; John Rawls. General characteristics Liberalism is derived from two related features of Western culture. The first is the West’s preoccupation with individuality, as compared to the emphasis in other civilizations on status, caste, and tradition. Throughout much of history, individuals have been submerged in and subordinate to their clan, tribe, ethnic group, or kingdom. Liberalism is the culmination of developments in Western society that produced a sense of the importance of human individuality, a liberation of the individual from complete subservience to the group, and a relaxation of the tight hold of custom, law, and authority. In this respect, liberalism stands for the emancipation of the individual. See also individualism. Liberalism also derives from the practice of adversariality, or adversariness, in European political and economic life, a process in which institutionalized competition—such as the competition between different political parties in electoral contests, between prosecution and defense in adversary procedure, or between different producers in a market economy (see monopoly and competition)—generates a dynamic social order. Adversarial systems have always been precarious, however, and it took a long time for the belief in adversariality to emerge from the more traditional view, traceable at least to Plato, that the state should be an organic structure, like a beehive, in which the different social classes cooperate by performing distinct yet complementary roles. The belief that competition is an essential part of a political system and that good government requires a vigorous opposition was still considered strange in most European countries in the early 19th century. Underlying the liberal belief in adversariality is the conviction that human beings are essentially rational creatures capable of settling their political disputes through dialogue and compromise. This aspect of liberalism became particularly prominent in 20th-century projects aimed at eliminating war and resolving disagreements between states through organizations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice (World Court).

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Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the centre of democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.

Like other political doctrines, liberalism is highly sensitive to time and circumstance. Each country’s liberalism is different, and it changes in each generation. The historical development of liberalism over recent centuries has been a movement from mistrust of the state’s power, on the grounds that it tends to be misused, to a willingness to use the power of government to correct perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth resulting from economic competition—inequities that purportedly deprive some people of an equal opportunity to live freely. The expansion of governmental power and responsibility sought by liberals in the 20th century was clearly opposed to the contraction of government advocated by liberals a century earlier. In the 19th century liberals generally formed the party of business and the entrepreneurial middle class, but for much of the 20th century they were more likely to work to restrict and regulate business in order to provide greater opportunities for labourers and consumers. In each case, however, the liberals’ inspiration was the same: a hostility to concentrations of power that threaten the freedom of individuals and prevent them from realizing their full potential, along with a willingness to reexamine and reform social institutions in the light of new needs. This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical. It is this very eagerness to welcome and encourage useful change, however, that distinguishes the liberal from the conservative, who believes that change is at least as likely to result in loss as in gain.

Liberalism 和 libertarianism 有什么区别？ - 知乎

Liberalism 和 libertarianism 有什么区别？ - 知乎首页知乎知学堂发现等你来答​切换模式登录/注册政治哲学Liberalism 和 libertarianism 有什么区别？在国外上大学，突然接触之前在国内没有接触过的政治哲学，完全政治盲啊。。。求大神指点关注者8被浏览10,477关注问题​写回答​邀请回答​添加评论​分享​1 个回答默认排序Wayne生活行者​ 关注一些浅见，仅从收入再分配角度来粗略谈一下首先介绍一下utilitarianism，功利主义。边沁认为，社会进行收入再分配的原则是效用（utility）最大化，或者说幸福感最大化。倡导每个人的效用平等。每一美元的边际效用对一个穷人和一个富人是不一样的，这样就希望把给高收入人群的一美元分配给低收入人群，可以提高社会的总效用。这样做的结果就是社会效率（efficiency）的损失。而且实现完全的效用平等，政府是不会这么做的。liberalism，自由主义。John Stuart Mill说，如果我们相当客观的来评价如何把收入进行再分配，可以设想，有一个“无知的面纱”挡着我们，我们并不知道我们以后会处于收入的哪个阶层。假如我们所有人在出生前就关于收入如何再分配进行探讨，由于我们不知道出生后会处于低收入人群还是高收入人群，最好的决定就是让收入低的人群得到保障。其实是一种保险论，因为你不知道以后处于哪个阶层，让穷人得倒保障，也就是给自己买了一个保险。它是偏向功利主义的。实质上倡导的也是效用最大化。libertarianism，自由至上主义。诺齐克认为，人们应该关注的是机会平等，而不是结果平等。举个例子，相对于一场考试后每个人的成绩分布到底均匀不均匀，每个人应该关心的应该是考试过程公正不公正。每个人的结果是过程决定的。所以要关注过程，而不是努力使每个人的结果平等。双方的交易完全出于双方自愿，而不是由他人由政府去决定是否应该进行收入再分配。 下课了...发布于 2016-04-18 17:26​赞同 32​​3 条评论​分享​收藏​喜欢收起​​

自由主义（意识形态）_百度百科

（意识形态）_百度百科 网页新闻贴吧知道网盘图片视频地图文库资讯采购百科百度首页登录注册进入词条全站搜索帮助首页秒懂百科特色百科知识专题加入百科百科团队权威合作下载百科APP个人中心自由主义是一个多义词，请在下列义项上选择浏览（共4个义项）展开添加义项自由主义[zì yóu zhǔ yì]播报讨论上传视频意识形态收藏查看我的收藏0有用+10自由主义是一种意识形态和哲学，是以自由为主要政治价值的一系列思想流派的集合。其特色为追求发展、相信人类本性善良、拥护个人自治权。更广泛地，自由主义追求维护个人思想自由的社会、以法律限制政府对权力的运用、保障自由贸易的观念、支持私人企业的市场经济以及透明地保障每一个公民的权利。在现代社会，自由主义者支持以共和制或君主立宪制为架构的自由民主制，建立开放而公平的选举制度，使所有公民都有相等的权利参与政务。自由主义反对许多早期的主流政治架构，例如君权神授、世袭制和国教制度。自由主义的基本人权主张为生命权、自由权、财产权。在许多国家，现代自由主义者从原本的古典自由主义里脱离出来，主张政府应该通过抽取税赋为人们提供最小数量的物质福利。自由主义在启蒙时代生根，到了自由主义一词出现时，已经包含了许多不同的政治思想，从左派至右派，支持者政治光谱的分布相当广泛。中文名自由主义外文名liberalism外文名independence基本观点将个人自由，团体自由，集体自由，人人自由置于最优先地位。目录1发展历程2代表人物▪洛克▪孟德斯鸠▪伏尔泰▪卢梭▪休谟▪亚当·斯密▪康德发展历程播报编辑自由主义一词源于西班牙语“Li－berales”，19世纪初被首次用作西班牙自由党的名称，表示该政党在政治上既不激进也不保守的折中态度，后在欧洲、北美广泛流行使用，成为一种资产阶级思想流派的代名词。自由主义者主张，国家的政治生活、经济生活和社会生活都应以维护个人自由为目的，反对任何形式的专制，无论是国家的、教会的，还是社会习俗的、舆论的，生命、自由和财产是公民不可剥夺的基本权利，公民在法律许可的范围内享有广泛的自由权，国家应实行代议制民主，国家权力必须受到限制，国家为保障公民的权利应实行法治与分权。“自由”一词最早源于拉丁文liber。提图斯·李维在他的巨著《罗马史》里描述了罗马平民阶级向贵族阶级争取自由的斗争行动。马尔库斯·奥列里乌斯在他的《沉思录》一书里对此写道：“……一种主张在政治上应该有著同等权利和同等言论自由的思想，以及一种尊重大多数自由政治的政府……”这种进展在漫长的中世纪里都暂时停止了，直到意大利文艺复兴争取自由的斗争才再度开始，自由城市国家的支持者和教宗的支持者产生了冲突。尼可罗·马基亚维利在他的《论李维》一书中阐述了共和制政府的原则。英国的约翰·洛克和法国启蒙运动思想家的巨著中叙述了这种争取自由权利的斗争。牛津英语词典指出“自由”（liberal）一词在英语中存在已久，意思是“得体、高尚而慷慨的自由人”，以及文科（Liberal arts）一词代表了“免于受压抑的言论和行动自由”。这一词本来作为一种贬义词，但到了1776年——1788年在吉本和其他人的使用下开始转变为较正面的词汇“容忍、免于歧视的自由”。在法国大革命中较温和的资产阶级者也试图建立一个根基于自由概念上的政府。美国独立战争使美国制定了第一部根植于自由政府概念的宪法，尤其规定了政府应该在人民的支持下进行管理。经济学家如亚当·斯密在他的国富论一书中则阐述了自由贸易的原则。自由主义的西班牙语“Liberales”最早出1812年的西班牙，当时西班牙自由党用这个词来标榜他们促进立宪政府形成的决心。1816年英国的托利党人则首先用带有蔑视的口吻使用“自由主义”一词来贬低对手。1822年，英国文学家和诗人拜伦和雪莱等创办了名为《自由主义》的杂志，但影响甚微。直到19世纪三十年代，“自由主义”才被广泛应用。虽然“自由主义”一词直到19世纪初才出现，到19世纪将近中叶才被广泛接纳，但自由主义作为一种人类思想和理论，则有更长的历史。到了20世纪晚期，自由主义成为了几乎所有发达国家的主要意识形态。代表人物播报编辑洛克约翰·洛克强调“自由”为人类之必要权利的政治在历史上不断重复。如以上所述及的古罗马庶民和贵族间的冲突、以及意大利城市与教廷国间的斗争。在整个15世纪佛罗伦萨和威尼斯的共和政体组成了选举制度、法规和对自由企业的追求，直到于16世纪被其他外部势力支配为止。荷兰人抵抗（西班牙）天主教的镇压也经常发生—尽管他们也拒绝给予天主教徒自由。作为一种意识形态，自由主义最早可以追溯至文艺复兴时期人文主义对于国教的对抗。以及英国光荣革命中的辉格党人声称人们拥有选择君王的权力，可以视为宣扬人民主权的先驱。不过，一般到了启蒙时代这些运动才开始被认定为真的“自由主义”，特别是英国的辉格党人、法国的哲学家、以及迈向自治的北美洲殖民地。这些运动反对君主专制、重商主义以及其他各种宗教的正统和政教势力。他们也是第一个将个人权利的观念以法规加以阐述，以及同样重要的以选举的议会制来达成自治。而自由主义开始产生明确的定义，是在提出了自由的个人能够组成稳定社会的根基的概念后。这个概念首先在约翰·洛克（1632——1704）的作品里提出，在他的《政府契约论》中他提出了关于自由的两个基本概念：经济自由，意味著拥有和运用财产的权利，以及知识上的自由，包括道德观的自由。不过，他并没有将他在信仰自由上的观点延伸至天主教徒。洛克助长了早期自然权利的观念，将其定义为“生命、自由和财产”。他的自然权利观念成为现代人权观念的先驱。不过对于洛克而言，他认为财产权比参与政府和公众决策的权利更为重要：他并没有替民主背书，因为他担心给予人民权力会破坏财产权至高无上的地位。无论如何，自然权利的观念替后来的美国革命和法国大革命提供了意识形态上的根据。孟德斯鸠在欧洲大陆，以法律限制君王权力的原则最早由孟德斯鸠所阐述，他在《论法的精神》一书里主张“更好的说法是，与自然状态最一致的政府，便是与人民的性情和性格最为吻合，在人民支持下建立的政府”而不仅是以统治的力量来作为政府的状态。跟随著孟德斯鸠的想法，政治经济学家如扎伊尔·让·巴蒂斯特和德斯蒂·德·特拉西热烈的阐述市场的“和谐状态”，或许也是因此而产生了自由放任一词。这也牵涉到了重农主义以及让·雅各·卢梭的政治经济学。伏尔泰接下来法国的启蒙运动也出现了两名对自由主义思潮产生巨大影响的人物：伏尔泰主张法国应该采纳君主立宪制，并废止第二阶级，以及主张人类拥有自然权利的卢梭。两人都以不同的形式，主张社会有可能抑制一个人的自然权利，但却不能抹灭他的自然状态。伏尔泰的观念较偏向智慧上的，而卢梭的观念则与本质的自然权利有关，或许类似于德尼·狄德罗的观念。卢梭卢梭主张一种在自由主义思潮的历史上不断出现的观念，那就是统治者和被统治者间的社会契约。他将此立基于个人的自然状态上，并声称每个人都知道要如何采取对他们最有利的行动。他声称每个人生下来都是自由的，但教育将能充分的将他限制在那个社会的规范里，这个说法震摇了当时的君主社会。他宣称国民有著根本意志的民意，主张应该让人民自决，这也违反了当时的政治传统。他的观念成为了法国大革命中国民大会宣言的重要成分，也影响了美国的思想家如本杰明·富兰克林和托玛斯·杰弗逊。他的观点认为国家的统一是经由人们同意的协定行为产生的，或者是经由“国民的意志”产生的。这样的统一行为能让国家在不受既有社会秩序（如贵族政治）的捆绑下存在。替自由主义思潮贡献了相当大一部分作品的主要思想家团体是那些和“苏格兰启蒙运动”有关的人物，包括大卫·休谟和亚当·斯密，以及德国的启蒙运动哲学家伊曼努尔·康德。休谟大卫·休谟所贡献的类别和数量都相当地多，而最重要的是他在《人性论》一书中所主张的，人类行为的根本惯例将会战胜那些试图限制和管制他们的事物。当中的一个例子便是他对重商主义的轻蔑，以及轻蔑累积黄金和银块的行为。他主张价格与货币的数量有关，而累积黄金和纸币的行为只会导致通货膨胀产生。亚当·斯密虽然亚当·斯密是最知名的经济自由主义思想家，但他并非第一个提出类似概念的人。更早的法国重农主义便已提出有系统的政治经济学研究，以及市场能够自我组织的状态。本杰明·富兰克林在1750年的著作中支持美国产业的自由。1718年至1772年在瑞典芬兰的自由和议会政府则产生了芬兰的国会议员安德斯·屈德纽斯，他是最早提出自由贸易和产业不受管制的概念的人之一。他的概念对北欧国家有着特别长期的影响，之后也对其他地区产生了巨大的影响。苏格兰人亚当·斯密在他的学说中，阐述了个人能够建立同时有著经济和道德价值的生命，无须政府进行指引。而一个国家的公民若能拥有自由采取行动的权利，则那个国家将会变的更为强大。他主张终结封建制度、以及由国家垄断独占的重商主义管制，提倡“自由放任”的政府。在他的《道德情操论》（1759年）一书中，他发展了一套以动机为主的理论，试图调解人类私利和无管制的社会秩序。在《国富论》一书中，他主张市场在一些状况下，将能自然的调节自身的问题，并且能产生比当时饱受管制的市场更为有效的状态。他分配给政府的角色是一些无法交由利益动机托管的工作，例如能使个人免受暴力和诈骗行为终止竞争、贸易和生产的保护。他对于税赋的观点是，政府只能征收不会伤害到经济的税赋数量，而“每个人缴纳给国家的税赋比率，应该取决于他在国家的保护下所赚取的收入多寡而定。”他同意大卫·休谟的看法，“资本”才是国家的财富来源——而不是黄金。康德伊曼努尔·康德则受到大卫·休谟的实验主义和理性主义的强烈影响，他对自由主义思潮最大的贡献是在伦理学的领域上，他提出了绝对命令的概念。康德主张理性和道德的接收系统是低于自然法则的，也因此，试图遏止自然法则必定会导致失败。他的理想主义发挥的影响力越来越大，他宣称在认知系统的根基上还存在着更重要的真相。新手上路成长任务编辑入门编辑规则本人编辑我有疑问内容质疑在线客服官方贴吧意见反馈投诉建议举报不良信息未通过词条申诉投诉侵权信息封禁查询与解封©2024 Baidu 使用百度前必读 | 百科协议 | 隐私政策 | 百度百科合作平台 | 京ICP证030173号 京公网安备110000020000

Liberalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Liberalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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LiberalismFirst published Thu Nov 28, 1996; substantive revision Tue Feb 22, 2022

Liberalism is more than one thing. On any close examination, it seems

to fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions.

In this entry we focus on debates within the liberal tradition. (1) We

contrast three interpretations of liberalism’s core commitment

to liberty. (2) We contrast ‘old’ and ‘new’

liberalism. (3) We ask whether liberalism is a

‘comprehensive’ or a ‘political’ doctrine. (4)

We close with questions about the ‘reach’ of liberalism

— does it apply to all humankind? Must all political communities

be liberal? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying

No? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying Yes?

1. The Debate About Liberty

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

1.2 Negative Liberty

1.3 Positive Liberty

1.4 Republican Liberty

2. The Debate Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’

2.1 Classical Liberalism

2.2 The ‘New Liberalism’

2.3 Liberal Theories of Social Justice

3. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism

3.1 Political Liberalism

3.2 Liberal Ethics

3.3 Liberal Theories of Value

3.4 The Metaphysics of Liberalism

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

4.1 Is Liberalism Justified in All Political Communities?

4.2 Is Liberalism a Cosmopolitan or a State-centered Theory?

4.3 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: International

4.4 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: Domestic

5. Conclusion

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1. The Debate About Liberty

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

“By definition,” Maurice Cranston says, “a liberal

is a man who believes in liberty” (1967: 459). In two ways,

liberals accord liberty primacy as a political value.

(i) Liberals have typically maintained that humans are naturally in

“a State of perfect Freedom to order their

Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or

depending on the Will of any other Man” (Locke, 1960 [1689]:

287). Mill too argued that “the burden of proof is supposed to

be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction

or prohibition…. The a priori assumption is in favour

of freedom…” (1963, vol. 21: 262). Recent liberal

thinkers such as as Joel Feinberg (1984: 9), Stanley Benn (1988: 87)

and John Rawls (2001: 44, 112) agree. Liberalism is a philosophy that

starts from a premise that political authority and law must be

justified. If citizens are obliged to exercise self-restraint, and

especially if they are obliged to defer to someone else’s authority,

there must be a reason why. Restrictions on liberty must be

justified.

(ii) That is to say, although no one classifies Hobbes as a liberal,

there is reason to regard Hobbes as an instigator of liberal

philosophy (see also Waldron 2001), for it was Hobbes who asked on

what grounds citizens owe allegiance to the sovereign. Implicit in

Hobbes’s question is a rejection of the presumption that

citizens are the king’s property; on the contrary, kings are

empowered by citizens who are themselves, initially, sovereign in the

sense of having a meaningful right to say no. In the culture at large,

this view of the relation between citizen and king had been taking

shape for centuries. The Magna Carta was a series of agreements,

beginning in 1215, arising out of disputes between the barons and King

John. The Magna Carta eventually settled that the king is bound by the

rule of law. In 1215, the Magna Carta was part of the beginning rather

than the end of the argument, but by the mid-1300s, concepts of

individual rights to trial by jury, due process, and equality before

the law were more firmly established. The Magna Carta was coming to be

seen as vesting sovereignty not only in nobles but in “the

People” as such. By the mid-1400s, John Fortescue,

England’s Chief Justice from 1442 to 1461, would write The

Difference Between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, a plea for

limited monarchy that arguably represents the beginning of English

political thought (Schmidtz and Brennan, 2010: chap. 2).

Hobbes generally is treated as one of the first and greatest social

contract thinkers. Typically, Hobbes also is seen as an advocate of

absolute sovereignty. On Hobbes’s theory, Leviathan’s

authority is almost absolute along a particular dimension: namely,

Leviathan is authorized to do whatever it takes to keep the peace.

This special end justifies almost any means, including drastic

limitations on liberty. Yet, note the limitations implicit in the end

itself. Leviathan’s job is to keep the peace: not to do

everything worth doing, but simply to secure the peace. Hobbes, the

famed absolutist, in fact developed a model of government sharply

limited in this most important way.

Paradigmatic liberals such as Locke also maintain that justified

limitations on liberty are fairly modest. Only a limited government

can be justified; indeed, the basic task of government is to protect

the equal liberty of citizens. Thus John Rawls’s

paradigmatically liberal first principle of justice: “Each

person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal

basic liberty compatible with a similar system for all” (Rawls,

1999b: 220).

1.2 Negative Liberty

Liberals disagree, however, about the concept of liberty, and as a

result the liberal ideal of protecting individual liberty can lead to

different conceptions of the task of government. Isaiah Berlin

famously advocated a negative conception of liberty:

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of

men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is

simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If

I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to

that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond

a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be,

enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of

inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the

air, or cannot read because I am blind…it would be eccentric to

say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the

deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which

I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if

you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings (Berlin, 1969:

122).

For Berlin and those who follow him, then, the heart of liberty is the

absence of coercion by other agents; consequently, the liberal

state’s commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, the

job of ensuring that citizens do not coerce each other without

compelling justification. So understood, negative liberty is a matter

of which options are left to our discretion, or more precisely, which

options are foreclosed by the actions of others, and with what

warrant, and this is so regardless of whether we exercise such options

(Taylor, 1979).

1.3 Positive Liberty

Many liberals have been attracted to more ‘positive’

conceptions of liberty. Although Rousseau (1973 [1762]) seemed to

advocate a positive conception of liberty, according to which one was

free when one acted according to one’s true will (the general

will), the positive conception was best developed by the British

neo-Hegelians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

such as Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet (2001 [1923]). Green

acknowledged that “…it must be of course admitted that

every usage of the term [i.e., ‘freedom’] to express

anything but a social and political relation of one man to other

involves a metaphor…It always implies…some exemption

from compulsion by another…”(1986 [1895]: 229).

Nevertheless, Green went on to claim that a person can be unfree in

another way, a psychological rather than political way, if he is

subject to an impulse or craving that cannot be controlled. Such a

person, Green argued, is “…in the condition of a bondsman

who is carrying out the will of another, not his own” (1986

[1895]: 228). Just as a slave is not doing what he really

wants to do, one who is, say, an alcoholic, is being led by a craving

to look for satisfaction where it cannot, ultimately, be found.

For Green, a person is free only if she is self-directed or

autonomous. Running throughout liberal political theory is an ideal of

a free person as one whose actions are in some sense her own.

In this sense, positive liberty is an exercise-concept. One

is free merely to the degree that one has effectively determined

oneself and the shape of one’s life (Taylor, 1979). Such a

person is not subject to compulsions, critically reflects on her

ideals and so does not unreflectively follow custom, and does not

ignore her long-term interests for short-term pleasures. This ideal of

freedom as autonomy has its roots not only in Rousseau’s and

Kant’s political theory, but also in John Stuart Mill’s

On Liberty. And today it is a dominant strain in liberalism,

as witnessed by the work of S.I. Benn (1988), Gerald Dworkin (1988),

and Joseph Raz (1986); see also the essays in Christman and Anderson

(2005).

Green’s autonomy-based conception of positive freedom is often

run together with a notion of ‘positive’ freedom: freedom

as effective power to act or to pursue one’s ends. In the words

of the British socialist R. H. Tawney, freedom thus understood is

‘the ability to act’ (1931: 221; see also Gaus, 2000; ch.

5.) On this positive conception, a person not prohibited from being a

member of a Country Club but too poor to afford membership is not free

to be a member: she lacks an effective power to act. Positive freedom

qua effective power to act closely ties freedom to material

resources. (Education, for example, should be easily available so that

all can develop their capacities.) It was this conception of positive

liberty that Hayek had in mind when he insisted that although

“freedom and wealth are both good things…they still

remain different” (1960: 17–18). To Hayek, wealth implies

capability in a way that freedom does not.

1.4 Republican Liberty

An older notion of liberty that has recently resurfaced is the

republican, or neo-Roman, conception of liberty, which has roots in

the writings of Cicero and Niccolo Machiavelli (1950 [1513]).

According to Philip Pettit,

The contrary of the liber, or free, person in Roman,

republican usage was the servus, or slave, and up to at least

the beginning of the last century, the dominant connotation of

freedom, emphasized in the long republican tradition, was not having

to live in servitude to another: not being subject to the arbitrary

power of another (Pettit, 1996: 576).

On this view, the opposite of freedom is domination. To be unfree is

to be “subject to the potentially capricious will or the

potentially idiosyncratic judgement of another” (Pettit, 1997:

5). The ideal liberty-protecting government, then, ensures that no

agent, including the government, has arbitrary power over any citizen.

This is accomplished through an equal disbursement of power. Each

person has power that offsets the power of another to arbitrarily

interfere with her activities (Pettit, 1997: 67).

The republican conception of liberty is distinct from both Greenian

positive and negative conceptions. Unlike Greenian positive liberty,

republican liberty is not primarily concerned with rational autonomy,

realizing one’s true nature, or becoming one’s higher

self. When all dominating power has been dispersed, republican

theorists are generally silent about these goals (Larmore 2001).

Unlike negative liberty, republican liberty is primarily focused upon

“defenseless susceptibility to interference, rather than actual

interference” (Pettit, 1996: 577). Thus, in contrast to the

ordinary negative conception, on the republican conception the mere

possibility of arbitrary interference is a limitation of

liberty. Republican liberty thus seems to involve a modal claim about

the possibility of interference, and this is often cashed out in terms

of complex counterfactual claims. It is not clear whether these claims

can be adequately explicated (Gaus, 2003; cf. Larmore, 2004).

Some republican theorists, such as Quentin Skinner (1998: 113),

Maurizio Viroli (2002: 6) and Pettit (1997: 8–11), view

republicanism as an alternative to liberalism. When republican liberty

is seen as a basis for criticizing market liberty and market society,

this is plausible (Gaus, 2003b). However, when liberalism is

understood more expansively, and not so closely tied to either

negative liberty or market society, republicanism becomes

indistinguishable from liberalism (Ghosh, 2008; Rogers, 2008; Larmore,

2001; Dagger, 1997).

2. The Debate Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’

2.1 Classical Liberalism

Liberal political theory, then, fractures over how to conceive of

liberty. In practice, another crucial fault line concerns the moral

status of private property and the market order. For classical

liberals — ‘old’ liberals — liberty and

private property are intimately related. From the eighteenth century

to the present day, classical liberals have insisted that an economic

system based on private property is uniquely consistent with

individual liberty, allowing each to live her life —including

employing her labor and her capital — as she sees fit. Indeed,

classical liberals and libertarians have often asserted that in some

way liberty and property are really the same thing; it has been

argued, for example, that all rights, including liberty rights, are

forms of property; others have maintained that property is itself a

form of freedom (Gaus, 1994; Steiner, 1994). A market order based on

private property is thus seen as an embodiment of freedom

(Robbins, 1961: 104). Unless people are free to make contracts and

sell their labour, save and invest their incomes as they see fit, and

free to launch enterprises as they raise the capital, they are not

really free.

Classical liberals employ a second argument connecting liberty and

private property. Rather than insisting that the freedom to obtain and

employ private property is simply one aspect of people’s

liberty, this second argument insists that private property

effectively protects liberty, and no protection can be effective

without private property. Here the idea is that the dispersion of

power that results from a free market economy based on private

property protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments by the

state. As F.A. Hayek argues, “There can be no freedom of press

if the instruments of printing are under government control, no

freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom

of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly”

(1978: 149).

Although classical liberals agree on the fundamental importance of

private property to a free society, the classical liberal tradition

itself is a spectrum of views, from near-anarchist to those that

attribute a significant role to the state in economic and social

policy (on this spectrum, see Mack and Gaus, 2004). At the libertarian

end of the classical liberal spectrum are views of justified states as

legitimate monopolies that may with justice charge for essential

rights-protection services: taxation is legitimate if necessary and

sufficient for effective protection of liberty and property. Further

‘leftward’ we encounter classical liberal views that allow

taxation for public education in particular, and more generally for

public goods and social infrastructure. Moving yet further

‘left’, some classical liberal views allow for a modest

social minimum.(e.g., Hayek, 1976: 87). Most nineteenth century

classical liberal economists endorsed a variety of state policies,

encompassing not only the criminal law and enforcement of contracts,

but the licensing of professionals, health, safety and fire

regulations, banking regulations, commercial infrastructure (roads,

harbors and canals) and often encouraged unionization (Gaus, 1983b).

Although classical liberalism today often is associated with

libertarianism, the broader classical liberal tradition was centrally

concerned with bettering the lot of the working class, women, blacks,

immigrants, and so on. The aim, as Bentham put it, was to make the

poor richer, not the rich poorer (Bentham, 1952 [1795]: vol. 1, 226n).

Consequently, classical liberals treat the leveling of wealth and

income as outside the purview of legitimate aims of government

coercion.

2.2 The ‘New Liberalism’

What has come to be known as ‘new’,

‘revisionist’, ‘welfare state’, or perhaps

best, ‘social justice’, liberalism challenges this

intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property

based market order (Freeden, 1978; Gaus, 1983b; Paul, Miller and Paul,

2007). Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist theory.

First, the new liberalism was clearly taking its own distinctive shape

by the early twentieth century, as the ability of a free market to

sustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a ‘prosperous

equilibrium’ was being questioned. Believing that a private

property based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynes

argued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with high

unemployment, new liberals came to doubt, initially on empirical

grounds, that classical liberalism was an adequate foundation for a

stable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just as

the new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith in

government as a means of supervising economic life was increasing.

This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, in

which government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed

(Dewey, 1929: 551–60); more importantly, this reevaluation of

the state was spurred by the democratization of western states, and

the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly

be, in J.A. Hobson’s phrase ‘representatives of the

community’ (1922: 49). As D.G. Ritchie proclaimed:

be it observed that arguments used against ‘government’

action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a

ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or

grandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force just

in proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely the

government of the people by the people themselves. (1896: 64)

The third factor underlying the currency of the new liberalism was

probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from

being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26),

property rights foster an unjust inequality of power. They entrench a

merely formal equality that in actual practice systematically fails to

secure the kind of equal positive liberty that matters on the ground

for the working class. This theme is central to what is now called

‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strong

endorsement of civil and personal liberties with indifference or even

hostility to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism can

be found in Mill’s On Liberty. Although Mill insisted

that the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on

‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle of

individual liberty’ (1963, vol. 18: 293), he nevertheless

insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were

distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy, Mill

consistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personal

liberty can flourish without private property (1963, vol. 2;

203–210), a view that Rawls was to reassert over a century later

(2001: Part IV).

2.3 Liberal Theories of Social Justice

One consequence of Rawls’s great work, A Theory of

Justice (1999 [first published in 1971]) is that the ‘new

liberalism’ has become focused on developing a theory of social

justice. Since the 1960s when Rawls began to publish the elements of

his emerging theory, liberal political philosophers have analyzed, and

disputed, his famous ‘difference principle’ according to

which a just basic structure of society arranges social and economic

inequalities such that they are to the greatest advantage of the least

well off representative group (1999b:266). For Rawls, the default is

not liberty but rather an equal distribution of (basically) income and

wealth; only inequalities that best enhance the long-term prospects of

the least advantaged are just. As Rawls sees it, the difference

principle constitutes a public recognition of the principle of

reciprocity: the basic structure is to be arranged such that no social

group advances at the cost of another (2001: 122–24). Many

followers of Rawls have focused less on the ideal of reciprocity than

on the commitment to equality (Dworkin, 2000). Indeed, what was

previously called ‘welfare state’ liberalism is now often

described as liberal egalitarianism. However, see Jan Narveson’s

essay on Hobbes’s seeming defense of the welfare state (in

Courtland 2018) for historical reflections on the difference.

And in one way that is especially appropriate: in his later work Rawls

insists that welfare-state capitalism does not constitute a just basic

structure (2001: 137–38). If some version of capitalism is to be

just it must be a ‘property owning democracy’ with a wide

diffusion of ownership; a market socialist regime, in Rawls’s

view, is more just than welfare-state capitalism (2001: 135-38). Not

too surprisingly, classical liberals such as Hayek (1976) insist that

the contemporary liberal fixation on ‘the mirage of social

justice’ leads modern liberals to ignore the extent to which, as

a matter of historical observation, freedom depends on a decentralized

market based on private property, the overall results of which are

unpredictable.

Thus, Robert Nozick (1974: 160ff) famously classifies Rawls’s

difference principle as patterned but not historical: prescribing a

distribution while putting no moral weight on who produced the goods

being distributed. One stark difference that emerges from this is that

Rawlsian liberalism’s theory of justice is a theory about how to

distribute the pie while old liberalism’s theory of justice is a

theory about how to treat bakers (Schmidtz, 2022).

The problem with patterned principles is that, in Nozick’s

words, liberty upsets patterns. “No end-state principle or

distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously

realized without continuous interference with people’s

lives” (1974: 163). To illustrate, Nozick asks you to imagine

that society achieves a pattern of perfect justice by the lights of

whatever principle you prefer. Then someone offers Wilt Chamberlain a

dollar for the privilege of watching Wilt play basketball. Before we

know it, thousands of people are paying Wilt a dollar each, every time

Wilt puts on a show. Wilt gets rich. The distribution is no longer

equal, and no one complains. Nozick’s question: If justice is a

pattern, achievable at a given moment, what happens if you achieve

perfection? Must you then prohibit everything—no further

consuming, creating, trading, or even giving—so as not

to upset the perfect pattern? Notice: Nozick neither argues nor

presumes people can do whatever they want with their property. Nozick,

recalling the focus on connecting property rights to liberty that

animated liberalism in its classical form, notes that if there is

anything at all people can do, even if the only thing they

are free to do is give a coin to an entertainer, then even that

tiniest of liberties will, over time, disturb the favored pattern.

Nozick is right that if we focus on time slices, we focus on isolated

moments, and take moments too seriously, when what matters is not the

pattern of holdings at a moment but the pattern of how people treat

each other over time. Even tiny liberties must upset the pattern of a

static moment. By the same token, however, there is no reason why

liberty must upset an ongoing pattern of fair treatment. A moral

principle forbidding racial discrimination, for example, prescribes no

particular end-state. Such a principle is what Nozick calls weakly

patterned, sensitive to history as well as to pattern, and prescribing

an ideal of how people should be treated without prescribing an

end-state distribution. It affects the pattern without

prescribing a pattern. And if a principle forbidding racial

discrimination works its way into a society via cultural progress

rather than legal intervention, it need not involve any interference

whatsoever. So, although Nozick sometimes speaks as if his critique

applies to all patterns, we should take seriously his concession that

“weak” patterns are compatible with liberty. Some may

promote liberty, depending on how they are introduced and maintained.

See Schmidtz (2006: chap.6). For work by modern liberals that

resonates with Nozick’s dissection of the dimensions of equality

that plausibly can count as liberal, see also Anderson (1999), Young

(1990), and Sen (1992).

Accordingly, even granting to Nozick that time-slice principles

license immense, constant, intolerable interference with everyday

life, there is some reason to doubt that Rawls intended to embrace any

such view. In his first article, Rawls said, “we cannot

determine the justness of a situation by examining it at a single

moment” (1951: 191) Years later, Rawls added, “It is a

mistake to focus attention on the varying relative positions of

individuals and to require that every change, considered as a single

transaction viewed in isolation, be in itself just. It is the

arrangement of the basic structure which is to be judged, and judged

from a general point of view” (1999b: 76). Thus, to Rawls, basic

structure’s job is not to make every transaction work to the

working class’s advantage, let alone to the advantage of each

member of the class. Rawls was more realistic than that. Instead, it

is the trend of a whole society over time that is supposed to benefit

the working class as a class. To be sure, Rawls was a kind of

egalitarian, but the pattern Rawls meant to endorse was a pattern of

equal status, applying not so much to a distribution as to an ongoing

relationship. This is not to say that Nozick’s critique had no

point. Nozick showed what an alternative theory might look like,

portraying Wilt Chamberlain as a separate person in a more robust

sense (unencumbered by nebulous debts to society) than Rawls could

countenance. To Nozick, Wilt’s advantages are not what Wilt

finds on the table; Wilt’s advantages are what Wilt

brings to the table. And respecting what Wilt brings to the

table is the exact essence of respecting him as a separate person. In

part due to Nozick, today’s egalitarians now acknowledge that

any equality worthy of aspiration will focus less on justice as a

property of a time-slice distribution and more on how people are

treated: how they are rewarded for their contributions and

enabled over time to make contributions worth rewarding.

(Schmidtz, 2006).

3. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism

3.1 Political Liberalism

As his work evolved, Rawls (1996: 5ff) insisted that his liberalism

was not a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine, that is, one which

includes an overall theory of value, an ethical theory, an

epistemology, or a controversial metaphysics of the person and

society. Our modern societies, characterized by a ‘reasonable

pluralism’, are already filled with such doctrines. The aim of

political liberalism is not to add yet another sectarian doctrine, but

to provide a political framework that is neutral between such

controversial comprehensive doctrines (Larmore, 1996: 121ff).

Rawls’s notion of a purely political conception of liberalism

seems more austere than the traditional liberal political theories

discussed above, being largely restricted to constitutional principles

upholding basic civil liberties and the democratic process.

Gaus (2004) argues that the distinction between

‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberalism

misses a great deal. Liberal theories form a broad continuum, from

those that constitute full-blown philosophical systems, to those that

rely on a full theory of value and the good, to those that rely on a

theory of the right (but not the good), all the way to those that seek

to be purely political doctrines. Nevertheless, it is important to

appreciate that, though we treat liberalism as primarily a political

theory, it has been associated with broader theories of ethics, value,

and society. Indeed, many believe that liberalism cannot rid itself of

all controversial metaphysical (Hampton, 1989) or epistemological

(Raz, 1990) commitments.

3.2 Liberal Ethics

Following Wilhelm von Humboldt (1993 [1854]), in On Liberty

Mill argues that one basis for endorsing freedom (Mill

believes there are many), is the goodness of developing individuality

and cultivating capacities:

Individuality is the same thing with development, and…it is

only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce,

well-developed human beings…what more can be said of any

condition of human affairs, than that it brings human beings

themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can be

said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? (Mill,

1963, vol. 18: 267)

This is not just a theory about politics: it is a substantive,

perfectionist, moral theory about the good. On this view, the right

thing to do is to promote development or perfection, but only a regime

securing extensive liberty for each person can accomplish this (Wall,

1998). This moral ideal of human perfection and development dominated

liberal thinking in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and

much of the twentieth: not only Mill, but T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse,

Bernard Bosanquet, John Dewey and even Rawls show allegiance to

variants of this perfectionist ethic and the claim that it provides a

foundation for endorsing a regime of liberal rights (Gaus, 1983a). And

it is fundamental to the proponents of liberal autonomy discussed

above, as well as ‘liberal virtue’ theorists such as

William Galston (1980). That the good life is necessarily a freely

chosen one in which a person develops his unique capacities as part of

a plan of life is probably the dominant liberal ethic of the past

century.

The main challenge to Millian perfectionism’s status as the

distinctly liberal ethic comes from moral

contractualism/contractarianism, which can be divided into what might

very roughly be labeled ‘Kantian’ and

‘Hobbesian’ versions. According to Kantian contractualism,

“society, being composed of a plurality of persons, each with

his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged

when it is governed by principles that do not themselves

presuppose any particular conception of the good…”

(Sandel, 1982: 1). On this view, respect for the personhood of others

demands that we refrain from imposing our view of the good life on

them. Only principles that can be justified to all respect the

personhood of each. We thus witness the tendency of recent liberal

theory (Reiman, 1990; Scanlon, 1998) to transform the social contract

from an account of the state to an overall justification of morality,

or at least a social morality. This is not to deny, however, that

liberalism is, after all, essentially a view that there is such a

thing as minding one’s own business, and that there is a sphere within

which we have the right to say “It’s my life” while politely declining

invitations to justify ourselves. Liberalism is the idea that there

are limits to any need for public justification.

In contrast, distinctively Hobbesian contractarianism supposes only

that individuals are self-interested and correctly perceive that each

person’s ability to effectively pursue her interests is enhanced

by a framework of norms that structure social life and divide the

fruits of social cooperation (Gauthier, 1986; Hampton, 1986; Kavka,

1986). Morality, then, is a common framework that advances the

self-interest of each. The claim of Hobbesian contractarianism to be a

distinctly liberal conception of morality stems from the importance of

individual freedom and property in such a common framework: only

systems of norms that allow each person great freedom to pursue her

interests as she sees fit could, it is argued, be the object of

consensus among self-interested agents (Courtland, 2008; Gaus, 2012;

Ridge, 1998; Gauthier, 1995). The continuing problem for Hobbesian

contractarianism is the apparent rationality of free-riding: if

everyone (or enough) complies with the terms of the contract, and so

social order is achieved, it would seem rational to defect, and act

immorally when one can gain by doing so. This is essentially the

argument of Hobbes’s ‘Foole’, and from Hobbes (1948

[1651]: 94ff) to Gauthier (1986: 160ff), Hobbesians have tried to

reply to it.

3.3 Liberal Theories of Value

Turning from rightness to goodness, we can identify three main

candidates for a liberal theory of value. We have already encountered

the first: perfectionism. Insofar as perfectionism is a theory of

right action, it can be understood as an account of morality.

Obviously, however, it is an account of rightness that presupposes a

theory of value or the good: the ultimate human value is developed

personality or an autonomous life. Competing with this objectivist

theory of value are two other liberal accounts: pluralism and

subjectivism.

In his famous defence of negative liberty, Berlin insisted that values

or ends are plural, and further, the pursuit of one end necessarily

implies that other ends will not be achieved. In this sense ends

collide. In economic terms, the pursuit of one end entails opportunity

costs: foregone pursuits which cannot be impersonally shown to be less

worthy. There is no interpersonally justifiable way to rank the ends,

and no way to achieve them all. Each person must devote herself to

some ends at the cost of ignoring others. For the pluralist, then,

autonomy, perfection or development are not necessarily ranked higher

than hedonistic pleasures, environmental preservation or economic

equality. All compete for our allegiance, but because they are

incommensurable, no choice can be interpersonally justified.

The pluralist is not a subjectivist: that values are many, competing

and incommensurable does not imply that they are somehow dependent on

subjective experiences. But the claim that what a person values rests

on experiences that vary from person to person has long been a part of

the liberal tradition. To Hobbes, what one values depends on what one

desires (1948 [1651]: 48). Locke advances a ‘taste theory of

value’:

The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and you will

as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all Man with Riches or Glory,

(which yet some Men place their Happiness in,) as you would satisfy

all men’s Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters; which, though very

agreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous

and offensive: And many People would with reason preferr [sic] the

griping of an hungry Belly, to those Dishes, which are a Feast to

others. Hence it was, I think, that the Philosophers of old did in

vain enquire, whether the Summum bonum consisted in Riches,

or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And they might have

as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found in

Apples, Plumbs or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects upon

it. For…pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves,

but their agreeableness to this or that particulare Palate, wherein

there is great variety…(1975 [1706]: 269).

The perfectionist, the pluralist and the subjectivist concur on the

crucial point: the nature of value is such that reasonable people

pursue different ways of living. To the perfectionist, this is because

each person has unique capacities, the development of which confers

value on her life; to the pluralist, it is because values are many and

conflicting, and no one life can include them all, or make the

interpersonally correct choice among them; and to the subjectivist, it

is because our ideas about what is valuable stem from our desires or

tastes, and these differ from one individual to another. All three

views, then, defend the basic liberal idea that people rationally

follow different ways of living. But in themselves, such notions of

the good are not full-fledged liberal ethics, for an additional

argument is required linking liberal value with norms of equal

liberty, and to the idea that other people command a certain respect

and a certain deference simply by virtue of having values of their

own. To be sure, Berlin seems to believe this is a very quick

argument: the inherent plurality of ends points to the

political preeminence of liberty (see, for example, Gray:

2006). Guaranteeing each a measure of negative liberty is, Berlin

argues, the most humane ideal, as it recognizes that ‘human

goals are many’, and no one can make a choice that is right for

all people (1969: 171). It is here that subjectivists and pluralists

alike sometimes rely on versions of moral contractualism. Those who

insist that liberalism is ultimately nihilistic can be interpreted as

arguing that this transition cannot be made successfully: liberals, on

their view, are stuck with a subjectivistic or pluralistic theory of

value, and no account of the right emerges from it.

3.4 The Metaphysics of Liberalism

Throughout the last century, liberalism has been beset by

controversies between, on the one hand, those broadly identified as

‘individualists’ and, on the other,

‘collectivists’, ‘communitarians’ or

‘organicists’ (for skepticism about this, though, see

Bird, 1999). These vague and sweeping designations have been applied

to a wide array of disputes; we focus here on controversies concerning

(i) the nature of society; (ii) the nature of the self.

Liberalism is, of course, usually associated with individualist

analyses of society. ‘Human beings in society’, Mill

claimed, ‘have no properties but those which are derived from,

and which may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual

men’ (1963, Vol. 8: 879; see also Bentham: 1970 [1823]: chap. I,

sec. 4). Herbert Spencer agreed: “the properties of the mass are

dependent upon the attributes of its component parts” (1995

[1851]: 1). In the last years of the nineteenth century this

individualist view was increasingly subject to attack, especially by

those who were influenced by idealist philosophy. D. G. Ritche,

criticizing Spencer’s individualist liberalism, denies that

society is simply a ‘heap’ of individuals, insisting that

it is more akin to an organism, with a complex internal life (1896:

13). Liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and Dewey refused to adopt

radically collectivist views such as those advocated by Bernard

Bosanquet (2001), but they too rejected the radical individualism of

Bentham, Mill and Spencer. Throughout most of the first half of the

twentieth century such ‘organic’ analyses of society held

sway in liberal theory, even in economics (see A.F Mummery and J. A.

Hobson, 1956: 106; J.M. Keynes, 1972: 275).

During and after the Second World War the idea that liberalism was

based on inherently individualist analysis of humans-in-society arose

again. Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies

(1945) presented a sustained critique of Hegelian and Marxist theory

and its collectivist and historicist, and to Popper, inherently

illiberal, understanding of society. The reemergence of economic

analysis in liberal theory brought to the fore a thoroughgoing

methodological individualism. Writing in the early 1960s, James

Buchanan and Gordon Tullock adamantly defended the

‘individualistic postulate’ against all forms of

‘organicism’: “This [organicist] approach or theory

of the collectivity….is essentially opposed to the Western

philosophical tradition in which the human individual is the primary

philosophical entity” (1965: 11–12). Human beings,

insisted Buchanan and Tullock, are the only real choosers and

decision-makers, and their preferences determine both public and

private actions. The renascent individualism of late-twentieth century

liberalism was closely bound up with the induction of Hobbes as a

member of the liberal pantheon. Hobbes’s relentlessly

individualistic account of society, and the manner in which his

analysis of the state of nature lent itself to game-theoretical

modeling, yielded a highly individualist, formal analysis of the

liberal state and liberal morality.

Of course, as is widely known, we have recently witnessed a renewed

interest in collectivist analyses of liberal society —though the

term ‘collectivist’ is abjured in favor of

‘communitarian’. Writing in 1985, Amy Gutmann observed

that “we are witnessing a revival of communitarian criticisms of

liberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s, those of the

1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and irreparably

individualistic” (1985: 308). Starting with Michael

Sandel’s (1982) famous criticism of Rawls, a number of critics

charge that liberalism is necessarily premised on an abstract

conception of individual selves as pure choosers, whose commitments,

values and concerns are possessions of the self, but never constitute

the self. Although the ‘liberal-communitarian’ debate

ultimately involved wide-ranging moral, political and sociological

disputes about the nature of communities, and the rights and

responsibilities of their members, the heart of the debate was about

the nature of liberal selves. For Sandel the flaw at the heart of

Rawls’s liberalism is its implausibly abstract theory of the

self, the pure autonomous chooser. Rawls, he charges, ultimately

assumes that it makes sense to identify us with a pure capacity for

choice, and that such pure choosers might reject any or all of their

attachments and values and yet retain their identity.

From the mid-1980s onwards various liberals sought to show how

liberalism may consistently advocate a theory of the self which finds

room for cultural membership and other non-chosen attachments and

commitments which at least partially constitute the self (Kymlicka,

1989). Much of liberal theory has became focused on the issue as to

how we can be social creatures, members of cultures and raised in

various traditions, while also being autonomous choosers who employ

our liberty to construct lives of our own.

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

4.1 Is Liberalism Justified in All Political Communities?

In On Liberty Mill argued that “Liberty, as a

principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the

time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and

equal discussion” (1963, vol. 18: 224). Thus “Despotism is

a legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, provided

the end be their improvement…” (1963, vol. 18: 224). This

passage — infused with the spirit of nineteenth century

imperialism (and perhaps, as some maintain, latent racism) — is

often ignored by defenders of Mill as an embarrassment (Parekh, 1994;

Parekh, 1995; Mehta, 1999; Pitts, 2005).This is not to say that such

Millian passages are without thoughtful defenders. See, for example,

Inder Marawah (2011). Nevertheless, it raises a question that still

divides liberals: are liberal political principles justified for all

political communities? In The Law of Peoples Rawls argues

that they are not. According to Rawls there can be a ‘decent

hierarchical society’ which is not based on the liberal

conception of all persons as free and equal, but instead views persons

as “responsible and cooperating members of their respective

groups” but not inherently equal (1999a: 66). Given this, the

full liberal conception of justice cannot be constructed out of shared

ideas of this ‘people’, though basic human rights,

implicit in the very idea of a social cooperative structure, apply to

all peoples. David Miller (2002) develops a different defense of this

anti-universalistic position, while those such as Thomas Pogge (2002:

ch. 4) and Martha Nussbaum (2002) reject Rawls’s position,

instead advocating versions of moral universalism: they claim that

liberal moral principles apply to all states.

4.2 Is Liberalism a Cosmopolitan or a State-centered Theory?

The debate about whether liberal principles apply to all political

communities should not be confused with the debate as to whether

liberalism is a state-centered theory, or whether, at least ideally,

it is a cosmopolitan political theory for the community of all

humankind. Immanuel Kant — a moral universalist if ever there

was one — argued that all states should respect the dignity of

their citizens as free and equal persons, yet denied that humanity

forms one political community. Thus he rejected the ideal of a

universal cosmopolitan liberal political community in favor of a world

of states, all with internally just constitutions, and united in a

confederation to assure peace (1970 [1795]).

On a classical liberal theory, the difference between a world of

liberal communities and a world liberal community is not of

fundamental importance. Since the aim of government in a community is

to assure the basic liberty and property rights of its citizens,

borders are not of great moral significance in classical liberalism

(Lomasky, 2007). In contrast under the ‘new’ liberalism,

which stresses redistributive programs to achieve social justice, it

matters a great deal who is included within the political or moral

community. If liberal principles require significant redistribution,

then it is crucially important whether these principles apply only

within particular communities, or whether their reach is global. Thus

a fundamental debate between Rawls and many of his followers is

whether the difference principle should only be applied within a

liberal state such as the United States (where the least well off are

the least well off Americans), or whether it should be applied

globally (where the least well off are the least well off in the

world) (Rawls, 1999a: 113ff; Beitz, 1973: 143ff; Pogge, 1989: Part

Three).

4.3 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: International

Liberal political theory also fractures concerning the appropriate

response to groups (cultural, religious, etc.) which endorse illiberal

policies and values. These groups may deny education to some of their

members, advocate female genital mutilation, restrict religious

freedom, maintain an inequitable caste system, and so on. When, if

ever, should a liberal group interfere with the internal governance of

an illiberal group?

Suppose first that the illiberal group is another political community

or state. Can liberals intervene in the affairs of non-liberal states?

Mill provides a complicated answer in his 1859 essay ‘A Few

Words on Non-Intervention’. Reiterating his claim from On

Liberty that civilized and non-civilized countries are to be

treated differently, he insists that “barbarians have no rights

as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may, at the

earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral

laws for the relation between a civilized and a barbarous government,

are the universal rules of morality between man and man” (1963,

vol. 21: 119). Although this strikes us today as simply a case for an

objectionable paternalistic imperialism (and it certainly was such a

case), Mill’s argument for the conclusion is more complex,

including a claim that, since international morality depends on

reciprocity, ‘barbarous’ governments that cannot be

counted on to engage in reciprocal behavior have no rights

qua governments. In any event, when Mill turns to

interventions among ‘civilized’ peoples he develops an

altogether more sophisticated account as to when one state can

intervene in the affairs of another to protect liberal principles.

Here Mill is generally against intervention. “The reason is,

that there can seldom be anything approaching to assurance that

intervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the people

themselves. The only test possessing any real value, of a

people’s having become fit for popular institutions, is that

they, or a sufficient proportion of them to prevail in the contest,

are willing to brave labour and danger for their liberation”

(1963, vol. 21: 122).

In addition to questions of efficacy, to the extent that peoples or

groups have rights to collective self-determination, intervention by a

liberal group to induce a non-liberal community to adopt liberal

principles will be morally objectionable. As with individuals,

liberals may think that peoples or groups have freedom to make

mistakes in managing their collective affairs. If people’s

self-conceptions are based on their participation in such groups, even

those whose liberties are denied may object to, and perhaps in some

way be harmed by, the imposition of liberal principles (Margalit and

Raz, 1990; Tamir, 1993). Thus rather than proposing a doctrine of

intervention, many liberals propose various principles of

toleration which specify to what extent liberals must

tolerate non-liberal peoples and cultures. As is usual, Rawls’s

discussion is subtle and enlightening. In his account of the foreign

affairs of liberal peoples, Rawls argues that liberal peoples must

distinguish ‘decent’ non-liberal societies from

‘outlaw’ and other states; the former have a claim on

liberal peoples to tolerance while the latter do not (1999a:

59–61). Decent peoples, argues Rawls, ‘simply do not

tolerate’ outlaw states which ignore human rights: such states

may be subject to ‘forceful sanctions and even to

intervention’ (1999a: 81). In contrast, Rawls insists that

“liberal peoples must try to encourage [non-liberal] decent

peoples and not frustrate their vitality by coercively insisting that

all societies be liberal” (1999a: 62). Chandran Kukathas (2003)

— whose liberalism derives from the classical tradition —

is inclined to almost complete toleration of non-liberal peoples, with

the non-trivial proviso that there must be exit rights.

4.4 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: Domestic

The status of non-liberal groups within liberal societies has

increasingly become a subject of debate, especially with respect to

some citizens of faith. We should distinguish two questions: (i) to

what extent should non-liberal cultural and religious communities be

exempt from the requirements of the liberal state? and, (ii) to what

extent can they be allowed to participate in decision-making in the

liberal state?

Turning to (i), liberalism has a long history of seeking to

accommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certain

public policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Sikhs. The most

difficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children and

education (see Galston, 2003; Fowler, 2010; Andersson, 2011) Mill, for

example, writes:

Consider … the case of education. Is it not almost a

self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the

education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born

its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and

assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of

the most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand,

the father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to

that being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life

towards others and towards himself … . that to bring a child

into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to

provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind,

is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against

society … . (1963, vol. 18)

Over the last thirty years, there has been a particular case that is

at the core of this debate — Wisconsin vs. Yoder: [406

U.S. 205 (1972)]. In this case, the United States Supreme Court upheld

the right of Amish parents to avoid compulsory schooling laws and

remove their children from school at the age of 14 — thus,

according to the Amish, avoiding secular influences that might

undermine the traditional Amish way of life. Because cultural and

religious communities raise and educate children, they cannot be seen

as purely voluntary opt-outs from the liberal state: they exercise

coercive power over children, and so basic liberal principles about

protecting the innocent from unjustified coercion come into play. Some

have maintained that liberal principles require that the state should

intervene (against groups like the Amish) in order to [1] provide the

children with an effective right of exit that would otherwise be

denied via a lack of education (Okin, 2002), [2] to protect the

children’s right to an autonomous and ‘open future’

(Feinberg, 1980) and/or [3] to insure that children will have the

cognitive tools to prepare them for their future role as citizens

(Galston, 1995: p. 529; Macedo, 1995: pp. 285–6). Other liberal

theorists, on the other hand, have argued that the state should not

intervene because it might undermine the inculcation of certain values

that are necessary for the continued existence of certain

comprehensive doctrines (Galston, 1995: p. 533; Stolzenberg, 1993: pp.

582–3). Moreover, some such as Harry Brighouse (1998) have

argued that the inculcation of liberal values through compulsory

education might undermine the legitimacy of liberal states because

children would not (due to possible indoctrination) be free to consent

to such institutions.

Question (ii) — the extent to which non-liberal beliefs and

values may be employed in liberal political discussion— has

become the subject of sustained debate in the years following

Rawls’s Political Liberalism. According to

Rawls’s liberalism — and what we might call ‘public

reason liberalism’ more generally — because our societies

are characterized by ‘reasonable pluralism’, coercion

cannot be justified on the basis of comprehensive moral or religious

systems of belief. But many friends of religion (e.g., Eberle, 2002;

Perry, 1993) argue that this is objectionably

‘exclusionary’: conscientious believers are barred from

voting on their deepest convictions. Again liberals diverge in their

responses. Some such as Stephen Macedo take a pretty hard-nosed

attitude: ‘if some people…feel “silenced” or

“marginalized” by the fact that some of us believe that it

is wrong to shape basic liberties on the basis of religious or

metaphysical claims, I can only say “grow up!”’

(2000: 35). Rawls, in contrast, seeks to be more accommodating,

allowing that arguments based on religious comprehensive doctrines may

enter into liberal politics on issues of basic justice “provided

that, in due course, we give properly public reasons to support the

principles and policies that our comprehensive doctrine is said to

support” (1999a: 144). Thus Rawls allows the legitimacy of

religious-based arguments against slavery and in favor of the United

States civil rights movement, because ultimately such arguments were

supported by public reasons. Others (e.g., Greenawalt, 1995) hold that

even this is too restrictive: it is difficult for liberals to justify

a moral prohibition on a religious citizen from voicing her view in

liberal political debate.

5. Conclusion

Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature

of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the

comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might

wonder whether there is any point in talking of

‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant or

trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding

political value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value of

equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness

trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to

freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order

itself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these

conceptions of political right.

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LIBERALISM中文(简体)翻译：剑桥词典

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liberalism 在英语-中文（简体）词典中的翻译

liberalismnoun [ U ] uk

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/ˈlɪb.ər.əl.ɪ.zəm/ us

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an attitude of respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behaviour

自由主义

Sexual liberalism has not gone unchallenged.

性自由主义并不是没有受到过质疑。

the anything-goes liberalism of Hollywood

好莱坞随心所欲的自由主义

(also Liberalism) the political belief that there should be free trade, that people should be allowed more personal freedom, and that changes in society should be made gradually

经济自由主义

He was confident that working men would support Liberalism.

他相信劳动人民会支持经济自由主义。

更多范例减少例句In the 20th century, liberalism in most countries was overtaken by socialism as the major radical challenge to conservative parties.Many people feel that woolly liberalism sympathizes more with the criminals than with the victims of crime. There is a broadening gap between the liberalism of the big cities and the conservatism of the rural areas.Liberalism believes that for all of its imperfections, government still has a mighty role to play in this country.

(liberalism在剑桥英语-中文（简体）词典的翻译 © Cambridge University Press)

liberalism的例句

liberalism

Accordingly, this justification holds that political liberalism is justified because it satisfies the criterion of reflective equilibrium.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Such actors may be motivated less by the genuine commitment to economic liberalism and fiscal federalism than by pragmatic considerations.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Economic liberalism favors transferring the public lands to the private sector.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Readers are likely to focus on particular themes as ambitiously covered by the book - political liberalism, conservatism, socialism, ecology and feminism.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Just as there was no imperial logic to liberalism, so the relationship between utilitarianism and empire is rather more ambiguous than is sometimes recognized.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Upon analysis, the ideas of stability and reflective equilibrium can be combined to form two different second-order justifications for political liberalism.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

Nationalism had surely played a positive role in modern liberalism in the nineteenth century, but now its historic mission had ceased.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

This liberalism of the kings came from their piety.

来自 Cambridge English Corpus

示例中的观点不代表剑桥词典编辑、剑桥大学出版社和其许可证颁发者的观点。

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see liberalism.

John LockeJohn Locke, oil on canvas by Herman Verelst, 1689; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.(more)liberalism, Political and economic doctrine that emphasizes the rights and freedoms of the individual and the need to limit the powers of government. Liberalism originated as a defensive reaction to the horrors of the European wars of religion of the 16th century (see Thirty Years’ War). Its basic ideas were given formal expression in works by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both of whom argued that the power of the sovereign is ultimately justified by the consent of the governed, given in a hypothetical social contract rather than by divine right (see divine kingship). In the economic realm, liberals in the 19th century urged the end of state interference in the economic life of society. Following Adam Smith, they argued that economic systems based on free markets are more efficient and generate more prosperity than those that are partly state-controlled. In response to the great inequalities of wealth and other social problems created by the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America, liberals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries advocated limited state intervention in the market and the creation of state-funded social services, such as free public education and health insurance. In the U.S. the New Deal program undertaken by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt typified modern liberalism in its vast expansion of the scope of governmental activities and its increased regulation of business. After World War II a further expansion of social welfare programs occurred in Britain, Scandinavia, and the U.S. Economic stagnation beginning in the late 1970s led to a revival of classical liberal positions favouring free markets, especially among political conservatives in Britain and the U.S. Contemporary liberalism remains committed to social reform, including reducing inequality and expanding individual rights. See also conservatism; individualism.

Liberal Party of Canada Summary

Liberal Party of Canada, centrist Canadian political party, one of the major parties in the country since the establishment of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. The Liberal Party has been the governing party at the federal level for most of the period since the late 1890s, bringing together pragmatic

Labour Party Summary

Labour Party, British political party whose historic links with trade unions have led it to promote an active role for the state in the creation of economic prosperity and in the provision of social services. In opposition to the Conservative Party, it has been the major democratic socialist party

John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton Summary

John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton was an English Liberal historian and moralist, the first great modern philosopher of resistance to the state, whether its form be authoritarian, democratic, or socialist. A comment that he wrote in a letter, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute

Lord Palmerston Summary

Lord Palmerston English Whig-Liberal statesman whose long career, including many years as British foreign secretary (1830–34, 1835–41, and 1846–51) and prime minister (1855–58 and 1859–65), made him a symbol of British nationalism. The christening of Henry John Temple in the “House of Commons

Liberalism - Oxford Reference

Liberalism - Oxford Reference

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A political ideology centred upon the individual (see individualism), thought of as possessing rights against the government, including rights of due process under the law, equality of respect, freedom of expression and action, and freedom from religious and ideological constraint. Liberalism is attacked from the left as the ideology of free markets, with no defence against the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and as lacking any analysis of the social and political nature of persons. It is attacked from the right as insufficiently sensitive to the value of settled institutions and customs, or to the need for social structure and constraint in providing the matrix for individual freedoms.

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Reference entries

Liberalism

in

Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World

Length: 12170 words

Liberalism

in

Oxford Companion to Australian Politics

Length: 2985 words

liberalism

in

The Oxford Companion to Canadian History

Length: 465 words

Liberalism.

in

The Oxford Companion to United States History

Length: 1255 words

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Liberalism - Individualism, Free Markets, Liberty | Britannica

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liberalism

Table of Contents

Introduction & Top QuestionsGeneral characteristicsClassical liberalismPolitical foundationsLiberalism and democracySeparation of powersPeriodic electionsRightsEconomic foundationsLiberalism and utilitarianismLiberalism in the 19th centuryModern liberalismProblems of market economiesThe modern liberal programLimited intervention in the marketGreater equality of wealth and incomeWorld War I and the Great DepressionPostwar liberalism to the 1960sContemporary liberalismThe revival of classical liberalismCivil rights and social issuesLegacy and prospects

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Who were the intellectual founders of liberalism?

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Politics, Law & Government

Politics & Political Systems

Classical liberalism Political foundations Although liberal ideas were not noticeable in European politics until the early 16th century, liberalism has a considerable “prehistory” reaching back to the Middle Ages and even earlier. In the Middle Ages the rights and responsibilities of individuals were determined by their place in a hierarchical social system that placed great stress upon acquiescence and conformity. Under the impact of the slow commercialization and urbanization of Europe in the later Middle Ages, the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance, and the spread of Protestantism in the 16th century, the old feudal stratification of society gradually began to dissolve, leading to a fear of instability so powerful that monarchical absolutism was viewed as the only remedy to civil dissension. By the end of the 16th century, the authority of the papacy had been broken in most of northern Europe, and rulers tried to consolidate the unity of their realms by enforcing conformity either to Roman Catholicism or to the ruler’s preferred version of Protestantism. These efforts culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which did immense damage to much of Europe. Where no creed succeeded in wholly extirpating its enemies, toleration was gradually accepted as the lesser of two evils; in some countries where one creed triumphed, it was accepted that too minute a concern with citizens’ beliefs was inimical to prosperity and good order. The ambitions of national rulers and the requirements of expanding industry and commerce led gradually to the adoption of economic policies based on mercantilism, a school of thought that advocated government intervention in a country’s economy to increase state wealth and power. However, as such intervention increasingly served established interests and inhibited enterprise, it was challenged by members of the newly emerging middle class. This challenge was a significant factor in the great revolutions that rocked England and France in the 17th and 18th centuries—most notably the English Civil Wars (1642–51), the Glorious Revolution (1688), the American Revolution (1775–83), and the French Revolution (1789). Classical liberalism as an articulated creed is a result of those great collisions. Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes, detail of an oil painting by John Michael Wright; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.(more)In the English Civil Wars, the absolutist king Charles I was defeated by the forces of Parliament and eventually executed. The Glorious Revolution resulted in the abdication and exile of James II and the establishment of a complex form of balanced government in which power was divided between the monarch, ministers, and Parliament. In time this system would become a model for liberal political movements in other countries. The political ideas that helped to inspire these revolts were given formal expression in the work of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that the absolute power of the sovereign was ultimately justified by the consent of the governed, who agreed, in a hypothetical social contract, to obey the sovereign in all matters in exchange for a guarantee of peace and security. Locke also held a social-contract theory of government, but he maintained that the parties to the contract could not reasonably place themselves under the absolute power of a ruler. Absolute rule, he argued, is at odds with the point and justification of political authority, which is that it is necessary to protect the person and property of individuals and to guarantee their natural rights to freedom of thought, speech, and worship. Significantly, Locke thought that revolution is justified when the sovereign fails to fulfill these obligations. Indeed, it appears that he began writing his major work of political theory, Two Treatises of Government (1690), precisely in order to justify the revolution of two years before. By the time Locke had published his Treatises, politics in England had become a contest between two loosely related parties, the Whigs and the Tories. These parties were the ancestors of Britain’s modern Liberal Party and Conservative Party, respectively. Locke was a notable Whig, and it is conventional to view liberalism as derived from the attitudes of Whig aristocrats, who were often linked with commercial interests and who had an entrenched suspicion of the power of the monarchy. The Whigs dominated English politics from the death of Queen Anne in 1714 to the accession of King George III in 1760. Liberalism and democracy The early liberals, then, worked to free individuals from two forms of social constraint—religious conformity and aristocratic privilege—that had been maintained and enforced through the powers of government. The aim of the early liberals was thus to limit the power of government over the individual while holding it accountable to the governed. As Locke and others argued, this required a system of government based on majority rule—that is, one in which government executes the expressed will of a majority of the electorate. The chief institutional device for attaining this goal was the periodic election of legislators by popular vote and of a chief executive by popular vote or the vote of a legislative assembly. John AdamsJohn Adams, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1800–15; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 73.7 × 61 cm.(more)But in answering the crucial question of who is to be the electorate, classical liberalism fell victim to ambivalence, torn between the great emancipating tendencies generated by the revolutions with which it was associated and middle-class fears that a wide or universal franchise would undermine private property. Benjamin Franklin spoke for the Whig liberalism of the Founding Fathers of the United States when he stated: As to those who have no landed property in a county, the allowing them to vote for legislators is an impropriety. They are transient inhabitants, and not so connected with the welfare of the state, which they may quit when they please, as to qualify them properly for such privilege. John Adams, in his Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), was more explicit. If the majority were to control all branches of government, he declared, “debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded and voted.” French statesmen such as François Guizot and Adophe Thiers expressed similar sentiments well into the 19th century. Most 18th- and 19th-century liberal politicians thus feared popular sovereignty. For a long time, consequently, they limited suffrage to property owners. In Britain even the important Reform Bill of 1867 did not completely abolish property qualifications for the right to vote. In France, despite the ideal of universal male suffrage proclaimed in 1789 and reaffirmed in the Revolutions of 1830, there were no more than 200,000 qualified voters in a population of about 30,000,000 during the reign of Louis-Philippe, the “Citizen King” who had been installed by the ascendant bourgeoisie in 1830. In the United States, the brave language of the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, it was not until 1860 that universal male suffrage prevailed—for whites. In most of Europe, universal male suffrage remained a remote ideal until late in the 19th century. Racial and sexual prejudice also served to limit the franchise—and, in the case of slavery in the United States, to deprive large numbers of people of virtually any hope of freedom. Efforts to extend the vote to women met with little success until the early years of the 20th century (see women’s suffrage). Indeed, Switzerland, which is sometimes called the world’s oldest continuous democracy, did not grant full voting rights to women until 1971. Despite the misgivings of men of the propertied classes, a slow but steady expansion of the franchise prevailed throughout Europe in the 19th century—an expansion driven in large part by the liberal insistence that “all men are created equal.” But liberals also had to reconcile the principle of majority rule with the requirement that the power of the majority be limited. The problem was to accomplish this in a manner consistent with democratic principles. If hereditary elites were discredited, how could the power of the majority be checked without giving disproportionate power to property owners or to some other “natural” elite? Separation of powers Asher B. Durand: portrait of James MadisonJames Madison, detail of an oil painting by Asher B. Durand, 1833; in the collection of The New-York Historical Society.(more)The liberal solution to the problem of limiting the powers of a democratic majority employed various devices. The first was the separation of powers—i.e., the distribution of power between such functionally differentiated agencies of government as the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. This arrangement, and the system of checks and balances by which it was accomplished, received its classic embodiment in the Constitution of the United States and its political justification in the Federalist papers (1787–88), by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Of course, such a separation of powers also could have been achieved through a “mixed constitution”—that is, one in which power is shared by, and governing functions appropriately differentiated between, a monarch, a hereditary chamber, and an elected assembly; this was in fact the system of government in Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution. The U.S. Constitution also contains elements of a mixed constitution, such as the division of the legislature into the popularly elected House of Representatives and the “aristocratic” Senate, the members of which originally were chosen by the state governments. But it was despotic kings and functionless aristocrats—more functionless in France than in Britain—who thwarted the interests and ambitions of the middle class, which turned, therefore, to the principle of majoritarianism. Periodic elections The second part of the solution lay in using staggered periodic elections to make the decisions of any given majority subject to the concurrence of other majorities distributed over time. In the United States, for example, presidents are elected every four years and members of the House of Representatives every two years, and one-third of the Senate is elected every two years to terms of six years. Therefore, the majority that elects a president every four years or a House of Representatives every two years is different from the majority that elects one-third of the Senate two years earlier and the majority that elects another one-third of the Senate two years later. These bodies, in turn, are “checked” by the Constitution, which was approved and amended by earlier majorities. In Britain an act of Parliament immediately becomes part of the uncodified constitution; however, before acting on a highly controversial issue, Parliament must seek a popular mandate, which represents a majority other than the one that elected it. Thus, in a constitutional democracy, the power of a current majority is checked by the verdicts of majorities that precede and follow it.

Liberalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Spring 2010 Edition)

Liberalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Spring 2010 Edition)

 

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©

Metaphysics Research Lab,

CSLI,

Stanford University

This is a file in the archives of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

LiberalismFirst published Thu Nov 28, 1996; substantive revision Mon Sep 10, 2007

As soon as one examines it, ‘liberalism’ fractures into a

variety of types and competing visions. In this entry we focus on

debates within the liberal tradition. We begin by (1) examining

different interpretations of liberalism's core commitment —

liberty. We then consider (2) the longstanding debate between the

‘old’ and the ‘new’ liberalism. In section (3)

we turn to the more recent controversy about whether liberalism is a

‘comprehensive’ or a ‘political’ doctrine. We

close in (4) by considering disagreements as to ‘the

reach’ of liberalism — does it apply to all humankind, and

must all political communities be liberal?

1. The Debate About Liberty

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

1.2 Negative Liberty

1.3 Positive Liberty

1.4 Republican Liberty

2. The Debate Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’

2.1 Classical Liberalism

2.2 The ‘New Liberalism’

2.3 Liberal Theories of Social Justice

3. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism

3.1 Political Liberalism

3.2 Liberal Ethics

3.3 Liberal Theories of Value

3.4 The Metaphysics of Liberalism

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

4.1 Is Liberalism Justified in All Political Communities?

4.2 Is Liberalism a Cosmopolitan or a State-centered Theory?

4.3 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: International

4.4 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: Domestic

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

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1. The Debate About Liberty

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

‘By definition’, Maurice Cranston rightly points out,

‘a liberal is a man who believes in liberty’ (1967:

459). In two different ways, liberals accord liberty primacy as a

political value. (i) Liberals have typically maintained that humans

are naturally in ‘a State of perfect Freedom to order

their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or

depending on the Will of any other Man’ (Locke, 1960 [1689]:

287). Mill too argued that ‘the burden of proof is supposed to

be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction

or prohibition…. The a priori assumption is in favour

of freedom…’ (1963, vol. 21: 262). Recent liberal

thinkers such as as Joel Feinberg (1984: 9), Stanley Benn (1988: 87)

and John Rawls (2001: 44, 112) agree. This might be called the

Fundamental Liberal Principle (Gaus, 1996: 162-166): freedom is

normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who

would limit freedom, especially through coercive means. It follows

from this that political authority and law must be justified, as they

limit the liberty of citizens. Consequently, a central question of

liberal political theory is whether political authority can be

justified, and if so, how. It is for this reason that social contract

theory, as developed by Thomas Hobbes (1948 [1651]), John Locke (1960

[1689]), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1973 [1762]) and Immanuel Kant (1965

[1797]), is usually viewed as liberal even though the actual political

prescriptions of, say, Hobbes and Rousseau, have distinctly illiberal

features. Insofar as they take as their starting point a state of

nature in which humans are free and equal, and so argue that any

limitation of this freedom and equality stands in need of

justification (i.e., by the social contract), the contractual

tradition expresses the Fundamental Liberal Principle.

(ii) The Fundamental Liberal Principle holds that restrictions on

liberty must be justified, and because he accepts this, we can

understand Hobbes as espousing a liberal political theory. But Hobbes

is at best a qualified liberal, for he also argues that drastic

limitations on liberty can be justified. Paradigmatic

liberals such as Locke not only advocate the Fundamental Liberal

Principle, but also maintain that justified limitations on liberty are

fairly modest. Only a limited government can be justified; indeed, the

basic task of government is to protect the equal liberty of

citizens. Thus John Rawls's first principle of justice: ‘Each

person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal

basic liberty compatible with a similar system for all’ (Rawls,

1999b: 220).

1.2 Negative Liberty

Liberals disagree, however, about the concept of liberty, and as a

result the liberal ideal of protecting individual liberty can lead to

very different conceptions of the task of government. As is well-known,

Isaiah Berlin advocated a negative conception of liberty:

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man

or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this

sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by

others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise

do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other

men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or,

it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every

form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet

in the air, or cannot read because I am blind…it would be

eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion

implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the

area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or

freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by other human

beings (Berlin, 1969: 122).

For Berlin and those who follow him, then, the heart of liberty is

the absence of coercion by others; consequently, the liberal state's

commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, the job of ensuring

that citizens do not coerce each other without compelling

justification.

1.3 Positive Liberty

Many liberals have been attracted to more ‘positive’

conceptions of liberty. Although Rousseau (1973 [1762]) seemed to

advocate a positive conception of liberty, according to which one was

free when one acted according to one's true will (the general will),

the positive conception was best developed by the British

neo-Hegelians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

such as Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet (2001 [1923]). Green

acknowledged that ‘…it must be of course admitted that

every usage of the term [i.e., ‘freedom’] to express

anything but a social and political relation of one man to other

involves a metaphor…It always implies…some exemption

from compulsion by another…’(1986 [1895]:

229). Nevertheless, Green went on to claim that a person can be unfree

if he is subject to an impulse or craving that cannot be

controlled. Such a person, Green argued, is ‘…in the

condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the will of another, not

his own’ (1986 [1895]: 228). Just as a slave is not doing what

he really wants to do, one who is, say, an alcoholic, is

being led by a craving to look for satisfaction where it cannot,

ultimately, be found.

For Green, a person is free only if she is self-directed or

autonomous. Running throughout liberal political theory is an ideal of

a free person as one whose actions are in some sense her own.

Such a person is not subject to compulsions, critically reflects on

her ideals and so does not unreflectively follow custom, and does not

ignore her long-term interests for short-term pleasures. This ideal of

freedom as autonomy has its roots not only in Rousseau's and Kant's

political theory, but also in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

And today it is a dominant strain in liberalism, as witnessed by the

work of S.I. Benn (1988), Gerald Dworkin (1988), and Joseph Raz

(1986); see also the essays in Christman and Anderson (2005).

This Greenian, autonomy-based, conception of positive freedom is often

run together with a very different notion of ‘positive’

freedom: freedom as effective power to act or to pursue one's ends. In

the words of the British socialist R. H. Tawney, freedom thus

understood is ‘the ability act’ (1931: 221; see also Gaus,

2000; ch. 5.) On this view of positive freedom, a person who is not

prohibited from being a member of a Country Club but who is too poor

to afford membership is not free to be a member: she does not have an

effective power to act. Although the Greenian autonomy-based

conception of positive freedom certainly had implications for the

distribution of resources (education, for example, should be easily

available so that all can develop their capacities), positive freedom

qua effective power to act closely ties freedom to material

resources. It was this conception of positive liberty that Hayek had

in mind when he insisted that although ‘freedom and wealth are

both good things…they still remain different’ (1960:

17-18).

1.4 Republican Liberty

An older notion of liberty that has recently undergone resurgence is

the republican, or neo-Roman, conception of liberty which has it roots

in the writings of Cicero and Niccolo Machiavelli (1950

[1513]). According to Philip Pettit, ‘The contrary of the

liber, or free, person in Roman, republican usage was the

servus, or slave, and up to at least the beginning of the

last century, the dominant connotation of freedom, emphasized in the

long republican tradition, was not having to live in servitude to

another: not being subject to the arbitrary power of another’

(Pettit, 1996: 576). On this view, the opposite of freedom is

domination. An agent is said to be unfree if she is ‘subject to

the potentially capricious will or the potentially idiosyncratic

judgement of another’ (Pettit, 1997: 5). The ideal

liberty-protecting government, then, ensures that no agent, including

itself, has arbitrary power over any citizen. The key method by which

this is accomplished is through an equal disbursement of power. Each

person has power that offsets the power of another to arbitrarily

interfere with her activities (Pettit, 1997: 67).

The republican conception of liberty is certainly distinct from both

Greenian positive and negative conceptions. Unlike Greenian positive

liberty, republican liberty is not primarily concerned with rational

autonomy, realizing one's true nature, or becoming one's higher

self. When all dominating power has been dispersed, republican

theorists are generally silent about these goals (Larmore

2001). Unlike negative liberty, republican liberty is primarily

focused upon ‘defenseless susceptibility to interference, rather

than actual interference’ (Pettit, 1996: 577). Thus, in contrast

to the ordinary negative conception, on the republican conception the

mere possibility of arbitrary interference appears to

constitute a limitation of liberty. Republican liberty thus seems to

involve a modal claim about the possibility of interference, and this

is often cashed out in terms of complex counterfactual claims. It is

not clear whether these claims can be adequately explicated (Gaus,

2003; cf. Larmore, 2004).

Some republican theorists, such as Quentin Skinner (1998: 113),

Maurizio Viroli (2002: 6) and Pettit (1997: 8-11), view republicanism

as an alternative to liberalism. Insofar as republican liberty is seen

as a basis for criticizing market liberty and market society, this is

plausible (Gaus, 2003). However, when liberalism is understood more

expansively, and not so closely tied to either negative liberty or

market society, republicanism becomes indistinguishable from

liberalism (Larmore 2001; Dagger, 1997).

2. The Debate Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’

2.1 Classical Liberalism

Liberal political theory, then, fractures over the conception of

liberty. But a more important division concerns the place of private

property and the market order. For classical liberals —

sometimes called the ‘old’ liberalism — liberty and

private property are intimately related. From the eighteenth century

right up to today, classical liberals have insisted that an economic

system based on private property is uniquely consistent with

individual liberty, allowing each to live her life —including

employing her labor and her capital — as she sees fit. Indeed,

classical liberals and libertarians have often asserted that in some

way liberty and property are really the same thing; it has been

argued, for example, that all rights, including liberty rights, are

forms of property; others have maintained that property is itself a

form of freedom (Gaus, 1994; Steiner, 1994). A market order based on

private property is thus seen as an embodiment of freedom

(Robbins, 1961: 104). Unless people are free to make contracts and to

sell their labour, or unless they are free to save their incomes and

then invest them as they see fit, or unless they are free to run

enterprises when they have obtained the capital, they are not really

free.

Classical liberals employ a second argument connecting liberty and

private property. Rather than insisting that the freedom to obtain and

employ private property is simply one aspect of people's liberty, this

second argument insists that private property is the only effective

means for the protection of liberty. Here the idea is that the

dispersion of power that results from a free market economy based on

private property protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments

by the state. As F.A. Hayek argues, ‘There can be no freedom of

press if the instruments of printing are under government control, no

freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom

of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly’

(1978: 149).

Although classical liberals agree on the fundamental importance of

private property to a free society, the classical liberal tradition

itself refracts into a spectrum of views, from near-anarchist to those

that attribute a significant role to the state in economic and social

policy (on this spectrum, see Mack and Gaus, 2004). Towards the most

extreme ‘libertarian’ end of the classical liberal

spectrum are views of justified states as legitimate monopolies that

may with justice charge for their necessary rights-protection

services: taxation is legitimate so long as it is necessary to protect

liberty and property rights. As we go further ‘leftward’

we encounter classical liberal views that allow taxation for (other)

public goods and social infrastructure and, moving yet further

‘left’, some classical liberal views allow for a modest

social minimum.(e.g., Hayek, 1976: 87). Most nineteenth century

classical liberal economists endorsed a variety of state policies,

encompassing not only the criminal law and enforcement of contracts,

but the licensing of professionals, health, safety and fire

regulations, banking regulations, commercial infrastructure (roads,

harbors and canals) and often encouraged unionization (Gaus,

1983b). Although today classical liberalism is often associated with

extreme forms of libertarianism, the classical liberal tradition was

centrally concerned with bettering the lot of the working class. The

aim, as Bentham put it, was to make the poor richer, not the rich

poorer (Bentham, 1952 [1795]: vol. 1, 226n). Consequently, classical

liberals reject the redistribution of wealth as a legitimate aim of

government.

2.2 The ‘New Liberalism’

What has come to be known as ‘new’,

‘revisionist’, ‘welfare state’, or perhaps

best, ‘social justice’, liberalism challenges this

intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property

based market order (Freeden, 1978; Gaus, 1983b; Paul, Miller and Paul,

2007). Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist

theory. First, the new liberalism arose in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries, a period in which the ability of a free

market to sustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a

‘prosperous equilibrium’ was being questioned. Believing

that a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could,

as Keynes argued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with high

unemployment, new liberals came to doubt that it was an adequate

foundation for a stable, free society. Here the second factor comes

into play: just as the new liberals were losing faith in the market,

their faith in government as a means of supervising economic life was

increasing. This was partly due to the experiences of the First World

War, in which government attempts at economic planning seemed to

succeed (Dewey, 1929: 551-60); more importantly, this reevaluation of

the state was spurred by the democratization of western states, and

the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly

be, in J.A. Hobson's phrase ‘representatives of the

community’ (1922: 49). As D.G. Ritchie proclaimed:

be it observed that arguments used against

‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or

mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or

unwisely a paternal or grandmotherly authority — such arguments

lose their force just in proportion as the government becomes more and

more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves

(1896: 64).

The third factor underlying the development of the new liberalism was

probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from

being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26),

property rights generated an unjust inequality of power that led to a

less-than-equal liberty (typically, ‘positive liberty’)

for the working class. This theme is central to what is usually called

‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strong

endorsement of civil and personal liberties with, at best, an

indifference, and often enough an antipathy, to private ownership. The

seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill's On

Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the ‘so-called

doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on ‘equally solid’

grounds as did the ‘principle of individual liberty’

(1963, vol. 18: 293), he nevertheless insisted that the justifications

of personal and economic liberty were distinct. And in his

Principles of Political Economy Mill consistently emphasized

that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish

without private property (1963, vol. 2; 203-210), a view that Rawls

was to reassert over a century later (2001: Part IV).

2.3 Liberal Theories of Social Justice

One of the many consequences of Rawls's great work, A Theory of

Justice (1999 [first published in 1971]) is that the ‘new

liberalism’ has become focused on developing a theory of social

justice. For over thirty-five years liberal political philosophers

have analyzed, and disputed, his famous ‘difference

principle’ according to which a just basic structure of society

arranges social and economic inequalities such that they are to the

greatest advantage of the least well off representative group (1999b:

266). For Rawls, the default is an equal distribution of (basically)

income and wealth; only inequalities that best enhance the long-term

prospects of the least advantaged are just. As Rawls sees it, the

difference principle constitutes a public recognition of the principle

of reciprocity: the basic structure is to be arranged such that no

social group advances at the cost of another (2001: 122-24). Many

followers of Rawls have focused less on the ideal of reciprocity than

the commitment to equality (Dworkin, 2000). Indeed, what was

previously called ‘welfare state’ liberalism is now often

described as ‘egalitarian’ liberalism. And in one way

that is especially appropriate: in his later work Rawls insists that

welfare-state capitalism does not constitute a just basic structure

(2001: 137-38). If some version of capitalism is to be just it must be

a ‘property owning democracy’ with a wide diffusion of

ownership; a market socialist regime, in Rawls's view, is more just

than welfare-state capitalism (2001: 135-38). Not too surprisingly,

classical liberals such as Hayek (1976) insist that the contemporary

liberal fixation on ‘the mirage of social justice’ leads

them to ignore the way that freedom depends on a decentralized market

based on private property, the overall results of which are

unpredictable. In a similar vein, Robert Nozick (1974: 160ff) famously

argued that any attempt to ensure that market transactions conform to

any specific pattern of holdings will involve constant interferences

with individual freedom.

3. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism

3.1 Political Liberalism

As his work evolved, Rawls (1996: 5ff) insisted that his liberalism

was not a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine, that is, one which

includes an overall theory of value, an ethical theory, an

epistemology, or a controversial metaphysics of the person and

society. Our modern societies, characterized by a ‘reasonable

pluralism’, are already filled with such doctrines. The aim of

‘political liberalism’ is not to add yet another sectarian

doctrine, but to provide a political framework that is neutral between

such controversial comprehensive doctrines (Larmore, 1996: 121ff). If

it is to serve as the basis for public reasoning in our diverse

western societies, liberalism must be restricted to a core set of

political principles that are, or can be, the subject of consensus

among all reasonable citizens. Rawls's notion of a purely political

conception of liberalism seems more austere than the traditional

liberal political theories discussed above, being largely restricted

to constitutional principles upholding basic civil liberties and the

democratic process.

As Gaus (2004) has argued, the distinction between

‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberalism

misses a great deal. Liberal theories form a broad continuum, from

those that constitute full-blown philosophical systems, to those that

rely on a full theory of value and the good, to those that rely on a

theory of the right (but not the good), all the way to those that seek

to be purely political doctrines. Nevertheless, it is important to

appreciate that, though liberalism is primarily a political theory, it

has been associated with broader theories of ethics, value and

society. Indeed, many believe that liberalism cannot rid itself of all

controversial metaphysical (Hampton, 1989) or epistemological (Raz,

1990) commitments.

3.2 Liberal Ethics

Following Wilhelm von Humboldt (1993 [1854]), in On Liberty

Mill argues that one basis for endorsing freedom (Mill believes

that there are many), is the goodness of developing individuality and

cultivating capacities:

Individuality is the same thing with development,

and…it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces,

or can produce, well-developed human beings…what more can be

said of any condition of human affairs, than that it brings human

beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse

can be said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this?

(Mill, 1963, vol. 18: 267)

This is not just a theory about politics: it is a substantive,

perfectionist, moral theory about the good. And, on this view, the

right thing to do is to promote development or perfection, and only a

regime securing extensive liberty for each person can accomplish this

(Wall, 1998). This moral ideal of human perfection and development

dominated liberal thinking in the latter part of the nineteenth, and

for most of the twentieth, century: not only Mill, but T.H. Green,

L.T. Hobhouse, Bernard Bosanquet, John Dewey and even Rawls show

allegiance to variants of this perfectionist ethic and the claim that

it provides a foundation for endorsing a regime of liberal rights

(Gaus, 1983a). And it is fundamental to the proponents of liberal

autonomy discussed above, as well as ‘liberal virtue’

theorists such as William Galston (1980). That the good life is

necessarily a freely chosen one in which a person develops his unique

capacities as part of a plan of life is probably the dominant liberal

ethic of the past century.

The main challenge to Millian perfectionism as the distinctly liberal

ethic comes from moral contractualism, which can be divided into what

might very roughly be labeled ‘Kantian’ and

‘Hobbesian’ versions. According to Kantian contractualism,

‘society, being composed of a plurality of persons, each with

his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged

when it is governed by principles that do not themselves

presuppose any particular conception of the

good…’(Sandel, 1982: 1). On this view, respect for the

person of others demands that we refrain from imposing our view of the

good life on them. Only principles that can be justified to all

respect the personhood of each. We thus witness the tendency of recent

liberal theory (Reiman, 1990; Scanlon, 1998) to transform the social

contract from an account of the state to an overall justification of

morality, or at least a social morality. Basic to such ‘Kantian

contractualism’ is the idea that suitably idealized individuals

are motivated not by the pursuit of gain, but by a commitment or

desire to

publicly justify

the claims they

make on others (Reiman, 1990; Scanlon, 1982). A moral code

that could be the object of agreement among such individuals is

thus a publicly justified morality.

In contrast, the Hobbesian version of contractualism supposes only

that individuals are self-interested, and correctly perceive that each

person's ability to effectively pursue her interests is enhanced by a

framework of norms that structure social life and divide the fruits of

social cooperation (Gauthier, 1986; Kavka, 1986). Morality, then, is

common framework that advances the self-interest of each. The claim of

Hobbesian contractualism to be a distinctly liberal conception of

morality stems from the importance of individual freedom and property

in such a common framework: only systems of norms that allow each

person great freedom to pursue her interests as she sees fit could, it

is argued, be the object of consensus among self-interest agents. The

continuing problem for Hobbesian contractualism is the apparent

rationality of free-riding: if everyone (or enough) complies with the

terms of the contract, and so social order is achieved, it would seem

rational to defect, and act immorally when one can gain by doing so.

This is essentially the argument of Hobbes's ‘Foole’, and

from Hobbes (1948 [1651]: 94ff) to Gauthier (1986: 160ff),

Hobbesians publicly justify

have tried to reply to it.

3.3 Liberal Theories of Value

Turning from rightness to goodness, we can identify three main

candidates for a liberal theory of value. We have already encountered

the first: perfectionism. Insofar as perfectionism is a theory of

right action, it can be understood as an account of

morality. Obviously, however, it is an account of rightness that

presupposes a theory of value or the good: the ultimate human value is

developed personality or an autonomous life. Competing with this

objectivist theory of value are two other liberal accounts: pluralism

and subjectivism.

In his famous defence of negative liberty, Berlin insisted

that values or ends are plural, and no interpersonally justifiable

ranking among these many ends is to be had. More than that, Berlin

maintained that the pursuit of one end necessarily implies that other

ends will not be achieved. In this sense ends collide or, in the more

prosaic terms of economics, the pursuit of one end necessarily entails

opportunity costs in relation to others which cannot be impersonally

shown to be less worthy. So there is no interpersonally justifiable way

to rank the ends, and there is no way to achieve them all. The upshot

is that each person must devote herself to some ends at the cost of

ignoring others. For the pluralist, then, autonomy, perfection or

development are not necessarily ranked higher than hedonistic

pleasures, environmental preservation or economic equality. All compete

for our allegiance, but because they are incommensurable, no choice can

be interpersonally justified as correct.

The pluralist is not a subjectivist: that values are many, competing

and incommensurable does not imply that they are somehow dependent on

subjective experiences. But the claim that what a person values rests

on experiences that vary from person to person has long been a part of

the liberal tradition. To Hobbes, what one values depends on what one

desires (1948 [1651]: 48). Locke advances a ‘taste theory of

value’:

The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and

you will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all Man with Riches or

Glory, (which yet some Men place their Happiness in,) as you would

satisfy all men's Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters; which, though very

agreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous

and offensive: And many People would with reason preferr [sic] the

griping of an hungry Belly, to those Dishes, which are a Feast to

others. Hence it was, I think, that the Philosophers of old did in vain

enquire, whether the Summum bonum consisted in Riches, or

bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And they might have as

reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found in

Apples, Plumbs or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects upon it.

For…pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves, but

their agreeableness to this or that particulare Palate, wherein there

is great variety…(1975 [1706]: 269).

The perfectionist, the pluralist and the subjectivist concur on the

crucial point: the nature of value is such that reasonable people pursue

different ways of living. To the perfectionist, this is because each

person has unique capacities, the development of which confers value on

her life; to the pluralist, it is because values are many and

conflicting, and no one life can include them all, or make the

interpersonally correct choice among them; and to the subjectivist, it

is because our ideas about what is valuable stem from our desires or

tastes, and these differ from one individual to another. All three

views, then, defend the basic liberal idea that people rationally

follow very different ways of living. But in themselves, such notions

of the good do not constitute a full-fledged liberal ethic, for an

additional argument is required linking liberal value with norms of

equal liberty. To be sure, Berlin seems to believe this is a very quick

argument: the inherent plurality of ends points to the

political preeminence of liberty. Guaranteeing

each a measure of negative liberty is, Berlin argues, the most humane

ideal, as it recognises that ‘human goals are many’, and no

one can make a choice that is right for all people (1969: 171). But the

move from diversity to equal liberty and individual rights seems a

complicated one; it is here that both subjectivists and pluralists

often rely on versions of moral contractualism. Those who insist that

liberalism is ultimately a nihilistic theory can be interpreted as

arguing that this transition cannot be made successfully: liberals, on

their view, are stuck with a subjectivistic or pluralistic theory of

value, and no account of the right emerges from it.

3.4 The Metaphysics of Liberalism

Throughout the last century, liberalism has been beset by

controversies between, on the one hand, those broadly identified as

‘individualists’ and, on the other,

‘collectivists’, ‘communitarians’ or

‘organicists’ (for skepticism about this, though, see

Bird, 1999). These vague and sweeping designations have been applied

to a wide array of disputes; we focus here on controversies concerning

(i) the nature of society; (ii) the nature of the self.

Liberalism is, of course, usually associated with individualist

analyses of society. ‘Human beings in society’, Mill

claimed, ‘have no properties but those which are derived from,

and which may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual

men’ (1963, Vol. 8: 879; see also Bentham: 1970 [1823]: chap. I,

sec. 4). Herbert Spencer agreed: ‘the properties of the mass are

dependent upon the attributes of its component parts’ (1995

[1851]: 1). In the last years of the nineteenth century this

individualist view was increasingly subject to attack, especially by

those who were influenced by idealist philosophy. D. G. Ritche,

criticizing Spencer's individualist liberalism, explicitly rejected

the idea that society is simply a ‘heap’ of individuals,

insisting that it is more akin to an organism, with a complex internal

life (1896: 13). Liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and Dewey refused to

adopt radically collectivist views such as those advocated by Bernard

Bosanquet (2001), but they too rejected the radical individualism of

Bentham, Mill and Spencer. Throughout most of the first half of the

twentieth century such ‘organic’ analyses of society held

sway in liberal theory, even in economics (see A.F Mummery and

J. A. Hobson, 1956: 106; J.M. Keynes, 1972: 275).

During and after the Second World War the idea that liberalism was

based on inherently individualist analysis of humans-in-society arose

again. Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies (1945)

presented a sustained critique of Hegelian and Marxist theory and its

collectivist and historicist, and to Popper, inherently illiberal,

understanding of society. The reemergence of economic analysis in

liberal theory brought to the fore a thoroughgoing methodological

individualism. Writing in the early 1960s, James Buchanan and Gordon

Tullock adamantly defended the ‘individualistic postulate’

against all forms of ‘organicism’: ‘This

[organicist] approach or theory of the collectivity….is essentially

opposed to the Western philosophical tradition in which the human

individual is the primary philosophical entity’ (1965:

11-12). Human beings, insisted Buchanan and Tullock, are the only real

choosers and decision-makers, and their preferences determine both

public and private actions. The renascent individualism of

late-twentieth century liberalism was closely bound up with the

induction of Hobbes as a member of the liberal pantheon. Hobbes's

relentlessly individualistic account of society, and the manner in

which his analysis of the state of nature lent itself to

game-theoretical modeling, yielded a highly individualist, formal

analysis of the liberal state and liberal morality.

Of course, as is widely known, the last twenty-five years have

witnessed a renewed interest in collectivist analyses of liberal

society —though the term ‘collectivist’ is abjured

in favor of ‘communitarian’. Writing in 1985, Amy Gutmann

observed that ‘we are witnessing a revival of communitarian

criticisms of liberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s,

those of the 1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and

irreparably individualistic’ (1985: 308). Starting with Michael

Sandel's (1982) famous criticism of Rawls, a number of critics charged

that liberalism was necessarily premised on an abstract conception of

individual selves as pure choosers, whose commitments, values and

concerns are possessions of the self, but never constitute the self.

Although the now famous, not to say infamous,

‘liberal-communitarian’ debate ultimately involved

wide-ranging moral, political and sociological disputes about the

nature of communities, and the rights and responsibilities of their

members, the heart of the debate was about the nature of liberal

selves. For Sandel the flaw at the heart of Rawls's liberalism was its

implausibly abstract theory of the self, the pure autonomous chooser.

Rawls, he charges, ultimately assumes that it makes sense to identify

us with a pure capacity for choice, and that such pure choosers might

reject any or all of their attachments and values and yet retain their

identity.

From the mid-1980s onwards various liberals sought to show how

liberalism may consistently advocate a theory of the self which finds

room for cultural membership and other non-chosen attachments and

commitments which at least partially constitute the self (Kymlicka,

1989). Much of liberal theory has became focused on the issue as to

how we can be social creatures, members of cultures and raised in

various traditions, while also being autonomous choosers who employ

our liberty to construct lives of our own.

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

4.1 Is Liberalism Justified in All Political Communities?

In On Liberty Mill argued that ‘Liberty, as a principle,

has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when

mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal

discussion’ (1963, vol. 18: 224). Thus ‘Despotism is a

legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the

end be their improvement…. ’(1963, vol. 18: 224). This passage

— infused with the spirit of nineteenth century imperialism

— is often ignored by defenders of Mill as an

embarrassment. Nevertheless, it raises a question that still divides

liberals: are liberal political principles justified for all political

communities? In The Law of Peoples Rawls argues that they are

not. According to Rawls there can be a ‘decent hierarchical

society’ which is not based on the liberal conception of all

persons as free and equal, but instead views persons as

‘responsible and cooperating members of their respective

groups’ but not inherently equal (1999a: 66). Given this, the

full liberal conception of justice cannot be constructed out of shared

ideas of this ‘people’, though basic human rights,

implicit in the very idea of a social cooperative structure, apply to

all peoples. David Miller (2002) develops a different defense of this

anti-universalistic position, while those such as Thomas Pogge (2002:

ch. 4) and Martha Nussbaum (2002) reject Rawls's position, instead

advocating versions of moral universalism: they claim that liberal

moral principles apply to all states.

4.2 Is Liberalism a Cosmopolitan or a State-centered Theory?

The debate about whether liberal principles apply to all political

communities should not be confused with the debate as to whether

liberalism is a state-centered theory, or whether, at least ideally,

it is a cosmopolitan political theory for the community of all

humankind. Immanuel Kant — a moral universalist if ever there

was one — argued that all states should respect the dignity of

their citizens as free and equal persons, yet denied that humanity

forms one political community. Thus he rejected the ideal of a

universal cosmopolitan liberal political community in favor of a world

of states, all with internally just constitutions, and united in a

confederation to assure peace (1970 [1795]).

On a classical liberal theory, the difference between a world of

liberal communities and a world liberal community is not of

fundamental importance. Since the aim of government in a community is

to assure the basic liberty and property rights of its citizens,

borders are not of great moral significance in classical liberalism

(Lomasky, 2007; but cf. Pogge, 2002: ch. 2). In contrast under the

‘new’ liberalism, which stresses redistributive programs

to achieve social justice, it matters a great deal who is included

within the political or moral community. If liberal principles require

significant redistribution, then it is crucially important whether

these principles apply only within particular communities, or whether

their reach is global. Thus a fundamental debate between Rawls and

many of his followers is whether the difference principle should only

be applied within a liberal state such as the United States (where the

least well off are the least well off Americans), or whether it should

be applied globally (where the least well off are the least well off

in the world) (Rawls, 1999a: 113ff; Beitz, 1973: 143ff; Pogge, 1989:

Part Three).

4.3 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: International

Liberal political theory also fractures concerning the appropriate

response to groups (cultural, religious, etc.) which endorse illiberal

policies and values. These groups may deny education to some of their

members, advocate female genital mutilation, restrict religious

freedom, maintain an inequitable caste system, and so on. When, if

ever, is it reasonable for a liberal group to interfere with the

internal governance of an illiberal group?

Suppose first that the illiberal group is another political community

or state. Can liberals intervene in the affairs of non-liberal states?

Mill provides a complicated answer in his 1859 essay ‘A Few

Words on Non-Intervention’. Reiterating his claim from On

Liberty that civilized and non-civilized countries are to be

treated differently, he insists that ‘barbarians have no rights

as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may, at the

earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral

laws for the relation between a civilized and a barbarous government,

are the universal rules of morality between man and man’ (1963,

vol. 21: 119). Although this strikes us today as simply a case for an

objectionable paternalistic imperialism (and it certainly was such a

case), Mill's argument for the conclusion is more complex, including a

claim that, since international morality depends on reciprocity,

‘barbarous’ governments that cannot be counted on to

engage in reciprocal behavior have no rights qua

governments. In any event, when Mill turns to interventions among

‘civilized’ peoples he develops an altogether more

sophisticated account as to when one state can intervene in the

affairs of another to protect liberal principles. Here Mill is

generally against intervention. ‘The reason is, that there can

seldom be anything approaching to assurance that intervention, even if

successful, would be for the good of the people themselves. The only

test possessing any real value, of a people's having become fit for

popular institutions, is that they, or a sufficient proportion of them

to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labour and danger for

their liberation’ (1963, vol. 21: 122).

In addition to questions of efficacy, to the extent that peoples or

groups have rights to collective self-determination, intervention by a

liberal group to induce a non-liberal community to adopt liberal

principles will be morally objectionable. As with individuals,

liberals may think that peoples or groups have freedom to make

mistakes in managing their collective affairs. If people's

self-conceptions are based on their participation in such groups, even

those whose liberties are denied may object to, and perhaps in some

way harmed by, the imposition of liberal principles (Margalit and Raz,

1990; Tamir, 1993). Thus rather than proposing a doctrine of

intervention many liberals propose various principles of

toleration which specify to what extent liberals must tolerate

non-liberal peoples and cultures. As is usual, Rawls's discussion is

subtle and enlightening. In his account of the foreign affairs of

liberal peoples, Rawls argues that liberal peoples must distinguish

‘decent’ non-liberal societies from ‘outlaw’

and other states; the former have a claim on liberal peoples to

tolerance while the latter do not (1999a: 59-61). Decent peoples,

argues Rawls, ‘simply do not tolerate’ outlaw states which

ignore human rights: such states may be subject to ‘forceful

sanctions and even to intervention’ (1999a: 81). In contrast,

Rawls insists that ‘liberal peoples must try to encourage

[non-liberal] decent peoples and not frustrate their vitality by

coercively insisting that all societies be liberal’ (1999a:

62). Chandran Kukathas (2003) — whose liberalism derives from

the classical tradition — is inclined to almost complete

toleration of non-liberal peoples, with the proviso that there must be

exit rights.

4.4 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: Domestic

The status of non-liberal groups within liberal societies has

increasingly become a subject of debate, especially with respect to

some citizens of faith. We should distinguish two questions: (i) to

what extent should non-liberal cultural and religious communities be

exempt from the requirements of the liberal state? and, (ii) to what

extent can they be allowed to participate in decision-making in the

liberal state?

Turning to (i), liberalism has a long history of seeking to

accommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certain

public policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Sikhs. The most

difficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children and

education (see Galston, 2003). Because cultural and religious

communities raise and educate children, they cannot be seen as purely

voluntary opt-outs from the liberal state: they exercise coercive

power over children, and so basic liberal principles about protecting

the innocent from unjustified coercion come into play. We thus

confront a deep conflict between parental authority and childern's

rights. Because the groups live within the liberal state, full

toleration (even with a right of exit) is usually seen as less

attractive than in the international case. Still some such as Lucas

Swaine (2006) have argued that liberals ought to grant a sort of

quasi-sovereignty to such domestic non-liberal groups, allowing them

great latitude to conduct their own affairs in their own away.

Question (ii) — the extent to which non-liberal beliefs and

values may be employed in liberal political discussion— has

become the subject of sustained debate in the years following Rawls's

Political Liberalism. According to Rawls's liberalism —

and what we might call ‘public reason liberalism’ more

generally — because our societies are characterized by

‘reasonable pluralism’, coercion cannot be justified on

the basis of comprehensive moral or religious systems of belief. But

many friends of religion (e.g., Eberle, 2002; Perry, 1993) argue that

this is objectionably ‘exclusionary’: conscientious

believers are barred from voting on their deepest convictions. Again

liberals diverge in their responses. Some such as Stephen Macedo take

a pretty hard-nosed attitude: ‘if some people…feel

“silenced” or “marginalized” by the fact that

some of us believe that it is wrong to shape basic liberties on the

basis of religious or metaphysical claims, I can only say “grow

up!”’ (2000: 35). Rawls, in contrast, seeks to be more

accommodating, allowing that arguments based on religious

comprehensive doctrines may enter into liberal politics on issues of

basic justice ‘provided that, in due course, we give properly

public reasons to support the principles and policies that our

comprehensive doctrine is said to support’ (1999a: 144). Thus

Rawls allows the legitimacy of religious-based arguments against

slavery and in favor of the United States civil rights movement,

because ultimately such arguments were supported by public reasons.

Others (e.g., Greenawalt, 1995) hold that even this is too

restrictive: it is difficult for liberals to justify a moral

prohibition on a religious citizen from voicing her view in liberal

political debate.

5. Conclusion

Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature

of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the

comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might

wonder whether there is any point in talking of

‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant or

trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding

political value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value of

equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness

trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to

freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order

itself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these

conceptions of political right.

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Related Entries

Berlin, Isaiah |

contractarianism |

Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy |

justice: distributive |

justice: international |

justification, political: public |

Kant, Immanuel: social and political philosophy |

libertarianism |

liberty: positive and negative |

Locke, John: political philosophy |

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republicanism

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Shane D. Courtland