Liberalism is more than one thing. On any close examination, it seemsto fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions.In this entry we focus on debates within the liberal tradition. (1) Wecontrast three interpretations of liberalism’s core commitmentto 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 communitiesbe liberal? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by sayingNo? 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
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. The Debate About Liberty

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

“By definition,” Maurice Cranston says, “a liberalis 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“aState of perfect Freedom to order theirActions…as they think fit…without asking leave, ordepending on the Will of any other Man” (Locke, 1960 [1689]:287). Mill too argued that “the burden of proof is supposed tobe with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restrictionor prohibition…. Thea priori assumption is in favourof freedom…” (1963, vol. 21: 262). Recent liberalthinkers such as as Joel Feinberg (1984: 9), Stanley Benn (1988: 87)and John Rawls (2001: 44, 112) agree. Liberalism is a philosophy thatstarts from a premise that political authority and law must bejustified. If citizens are obliged to exercise self-restraint, andespecially if they are obliged to defer to someone else’s authority,there must be a reason why. Restrictions on liberty must bejustified.

(ii) That is to say, although no one classifies Hobbes as a liberal,there is reason to regard Hobbes as an instigator of liberalphilosophy (see also Waldron 2001), for it was Hobbes who asked onwhat grounds citizens owe allegiance to the sovereign. Implicit inHobbes’s question is a rejection of the presumption thatcitizens are the king’s property; on the contrary, kings areempowered by citizens who are themselves, initially, sovereign in thesense of having a meaningful right to say no. In the culture at large,this view of the relation between citizen and king had been takingshape for centuries. The Magna Carta was a series of agreements,beginning in 1215, arising out of disputes between the barons and KingJohn. The Magna Carta eventually settled that the king is bound by therule of law. In 1215, the Magna Carta was part of the beginning ratherthan the end of the argument, but by the mid-1300s, concepts ofindividual rights to trial by jury, due process, and equality beforethe law were more firmly established. The Magna Carta was coming to beseen as vesting sovereignty not only in nobles but in “thePeople” as such. By the mid-1400s, John Fortescue,England’s Chief Justice from 1442 to 1461, would writeTheDifference Between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, a plea forlimited monarchy that arguably represents the beginning of Englishpolitical thought (Schmidtz and Brennan, 2010: chap. 2).

Hobbes generally is treated as one of the first and greatest socialcontract thinkers. Typically, Hobbes also is seen as an advocate ofabsolute sovereignty. On Hobbes’s theory, Leviathan’sauthority 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 drasticlimitations on liberty. Yet, note the limitations implicit in the enditself. Leviathan’s job is to keep the peace: not to doeverything worth doing, but simply to secure the peace. Hobbes, thefamed absolutist, in fact developed a model of government sharplylimited in this most important way.

Paradigmatic liberals such as Locke also maintain that justifiedlimitations on liberty are fairly modest. Only a limited governmentcan be justified; indeed, the basic task of government is to protectthe equal liberty of citizens. Thus John Rawls’sparadigmatically liberal first principle of justice: “Eachperson is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equalbasic 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 aresult the liberal ideal of protecting individual liberty can lead todifferent conceptions of the task of government. Isaiah Berlinfamously advocated a negative conception of liberty:

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body ofmen interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense issimply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. IfI am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am tothat degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyonda certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be,enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form ofinability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in theair, or cannot read because I am blind…it would be eccentric tosay that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies thedeliberate interference of other human beings within the area in whichI could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only ifyou 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 theabsence of coercion by other agents; consequently, the liberalstate’s commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, thejob of ensuring that citizens do not coerce each other withoutcompelling justification. So understood, negative liberty is a matterof which options are left to our discretion, or more precisely, whichoptions are foreclosed by the actions of others, and with whatwarrant, 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 toadvocate a positive conception of liberty, according to which one wasfree when one acted according to one’s true will (the generalwill), the positive conception was best developed by the Britishneo-Hegelians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,such as Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet (2001 [1923]). Greenacknowledged that “…it must be of course admitted thatevery usage of the term [i.e., ‘freedom’] to expressanything but a social and political relation of one man to otherinvolves a metaphor…It always implies…some exemptionfrom compulsion by another…”(1986 [1895]: 229).Nevertheless, Green went on to claim that a person can be unfree inanother way, a psychological rather than political way, if he issubject to an impulse or craving that cannot be controlled. Such aperson, Green argued, is “…in the condition of a bondsmanwho is carrying out the will of another, not his own” (1986[1895]: 228). Just as a slave is not doing what hereallywants to do, one who is, say, an alcoholic, is being led by a cravingto look for satisfaction where it cannot, ultimately, be found.

For Green, a person is free only if she is self-directed orautonomous. Running throughout liberal political theory is an ideal ofa free person as one whose actions are in some sense herown.In this sense, positive liberty is anexercise-concept. Oneis free merely to the degree that one has effectively determinedoneself and the shape of one’s life (Taylor, 1979). Such aperson is not subject to compulsions, critically reflects on herideals and so does not unreflectively follow custom, and does notignore her long-term interests for short-term pleasures. This ideal offreedom as autonomy has its roots not only in Rousseau’s andKant’s political theory, but also in John Stuart Mill’sOn 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 oftenrun together with a notion of ‘positive’ freedom: freedomas effective power to act or to pursue one’s ends. In the wordsof 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 amember of a Country Club but too poor to afford membership is not freeto be a member: she lacks an effective power to act. Positive freedomqua effective power to act closely ties freedom to materialresources. (Education, for example, should be easily available so thatall can develop their capacities.) It was this conception of positiveliberty that Hayek had in mind when he insisted that although“freedom and wealth are both good things…they stillremain different” (1960: 17–18). To Hayek, wealth impliescapability in a way that freedom does not.

1.4 Republican Liberty

An older notion of liberty that has recently resurfaced is therepublican, or neo-Roman, conception of liberty, which has roots inthe writings of Cicero and Niccolo Machiavelli (1950 [1513]).According to Philip Pettit,

The contrary of theliber, or free, person in Roman,republican usage was theservus, or slave, and up to at leastthe beginning of the last century, the dominant connotation offreedom, emphasized in the long republican tradition, was not havingto live in servitude to another: not being subject to the arbitrarypower of another (Pettit, 1996: 576).

On this view, the opposite of freedom is domination. To be unfree isto be “subject to the potentially capricious will or thepotentially idiosyncratic judgement of another” (Pettit, 1997:5). The ideal liberty-protecting government, then, ensures that noagent, including the government, has arbitrary power over any citizen.This is accomplished through an equal disbursement of power. Eachperson has power that offsets the power of another to arbitrarilyinterfere with her activities (Pettit, 1997: 67).

The republican conception of liberty is distinct from both Greenianpositive 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 higherself. When all dominating power has been dispersed, republicantheorists are generally silent about these goals (Larmore 2001).Unlike negative liberty, republican liberty is primarily focused upon“defenseless susceptibility to interference, rather than actualinterference” (Pettit, 1996: 577). Thus, in contrast to theordinary negative conception, on the republican conception the merepossibility of arbitrary interference is a limitation ofliberty. Republican liberty thus seems to involve a modal claim aboutthe possibility of interference, and this is often cashed out in termsof complex counterfactual claims. It is not clear whether these claimscan 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), viewrepublicanism as an alternative to liberalism. When republican libertyis seen as a basis for criticizing market liberty and market society,this is plausible (Gaus, 2003b). However, when liberalism isunderstood more expansively, and not so closely tied to eithernegative liberty or market society, republicanism becomesindistinguishable 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 ofliberty. In practice, another crucial fault line concerns the moralstatus of private property and the market order. For classicalliberals — ‘old’ liberals — liberty andprivate property are intimately related. From the eighteenth centuryto the present day, classical liberals have insisted that an economicsystem based on private property is uniquely consistent withindividual liberty, allowing each to live her life —includingemploying her labor and her capital — as she sees fit. Indeed,classical liberals and libertarians have often asserted that in someway liberty and property are really the same thing; it has beenargued, for example, that all rights, including liberty rights, areforms of property; others have maintained that property is itself aform of freedom (Gaus, 1994; Steiner, 1994). A market order based onprivate property is thus seen as anembodiment of freedom(Robbins, 1961: 104). Unless people are free to make contracts andsell their labour, save and invest their incomes as they see fit, andfree to launch enterprises as they raise the capital, they are notreally free.

Classical liberals employ a second argument connecting liberty andprivate property. Rather than insisting that the freedom to obtain andemploy private property is simply one aspect of people’sliberty, this second argument insists that private propertyeffectively protects liberty, and no protection can be effectivewithout private property. Here the idea is that the dispersion ofpower that results from a free market economy based on privateproperty protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments by thestate. As F.A. Hayek argues, “There can be no freedom of pressif the instruments of printing are under government control, nofreedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedomof movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly”(1978: 149).

Although classical liberals agree on the fundamental importance ofprivate property to a free society, the classical liberal traditionitself is a spectrum of views, from near-anarchist to those thatattribute a significant role to the state in economic and socialpolicy (on this spectrum, see Mack and Gaus, 2004). At the libertarianend of the classical liberal spectrum are views of justified states aslegitimate monopolies that may with justice charge for essentialrights-protection services: taxation is legitimate if necessary andsufficient for effective protection of liberty and property. Further‘leftward’ we encounter classical liberal views that allowtaxation for public education in particular, and more generally forpublic goods and social infrastructure. Moving yet further‘left’, some classical liberal views allow for a modestsocial minimum.(e.g., Hayek, 1976: 87). Most nineteenth centuryclassical 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 fireregulations, banking regulations, commercial infrastructure (roads,harbors and canals) and often encouraged unionization (Gaus, 1983b).Although classical liberalism today often is associated withlibertarianism, the broader classical liberal tradition was centrallyconcerned with bettering the lot of the working class, women, blacks,immigrants, and so on. The aim, as Bentham put it, was to make thepoor richer, not the rich poorer (Bentham, 1952 [1795]: vol. 1, 226n).Consequently, classical liberals treat the leveling of wealth andincome as outside the purview of legitimate aims of governmentcoercion.

2.2 The ‘New Liberalism’

What has come to be known as ‘new’,‘revisionist’, ‘welfare state’, or perhapsbest, ‘social justice’, liberalism challenges thisintimate connection between personal liberty and a private propertybased 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 shapeby the early twentieth century, as the ability of a free market tosustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a ‘prosperousequilibrium’ was being questioned. Believing that a privateproperty based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynesargued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with highunemployment, new liberals came to doubt, initially on empiricalgrounds, that classical liberalism was an adequate foundation for astable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just asthe new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith ingovernment as a means of supervising economic life was increasing.This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, inwhich government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed(Dewey, 1929: 551–60); more importantly, this reevaluation ofthe state was spurred by the democratization of western states, andthe conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could trulybe, in J.A. Hobson’s phrase ‘representatives of thecommunity’ (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 aruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal orgrandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force justin proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely thegovernment of the people by the people themselves. (1896: 64)

The third factor underlying the currency of the new liberalism wasprobably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far frombeing ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26),property rights foster an unjust inequality of power. They entrench amerely formal equality that in actual practice systematically fails tosecure the kind of equal positive liberty that matters on the groundfor the working class. This theme is central to what is now called‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strongendorsement of civil and personal liberties with indifference or evenhostility to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism canbe found in Mill’sOn Liberty. Although Mill insistedthat the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle ofindividual liberty’ (1963, vol. 18: 293), he neverthelessinsisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty weredistinct. And in hisPrinciples of Political Economy, Millconsistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personalliberty 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 ofJustice (1999 [first published in 1971]) is that the ‘newliberalism’ has become focused on developing a theory of socialjustice. Since the 1960s when Rawls began to publish the elements ofhis emerging theory, liberal political philosophers have analyzed, anddisputed, his famous ‘difference principle’ according towhich a just basic structure of society arranges social and economicinequalities such that they are to the greatest advantage of the leastwell off representative group (1999b:266). For Rawls, the default isnot liberty but rather an equal distribution of (basically) income andwealth; only inequalities that best enhance the long-term prospects ofthe least advantaged are just. As Rawls sees it, the differenceprinciple constitutes a public recognition of the principle ofreciprocity: the basic structure is to be arranged such that no socialgroup advances at the cost of another (2001: 122–24). Manyfollowers of Rawls have focused less on the ideal of reciprocity thanon the commitment to equality (Dworkin, 2000). Indeed, what waspreviously called ‘welfare state’ liberalism is now oftendescribed as liberal egalitarianism. However, see Jan Narveson’sessay on Hobbes’s seeming defense of the welfare state (inCourtland 2018) for historical reflections on the difference.

And in one way that is especially appropriate: in his later work Rawlsinsists that welfare-state capitalism does not constitute a just basicstructure (2001: 137–38). If some version of capitalism is to bejust it must be a ‘property owning democracy’ with a widediffusion of ownership; a market socialist regime, in Rawls’sview, is more just than welfare-state capitalism (2001: 135-38). Nottoo surprisingly, classical liberals such as Hayek (1976) insist thatthe contemporary liberal fixation on ‘the mirage of socialjustice’ leads modern liberals to ignore the extent to which, asa matter of historical observation, freedom depends on a decentralizedmarket based on private property, the overall results of which areunpredictable.

Thus, Robert Nozick (1974: 160ff) famously classifies Rawls’sdifference principle as patterned but not historical: prescribing adistribution while putting no moral weight on who produced the goodsbeing distributed. One stark difference that emerges from this is thatRawlsian liberalism’s theory of justice is a theory about how todistribute the pie while old liberalism’s theory of justice is atheory about how to treat bakers (Schmidtz, 2022).

The problem with patterned principles is that, in Nozick’swords, liberty upsets patterns. “No end-state principle ordistributional patterned principle of justice can be continuouslyrealized without continuous interference with people’slives” (1974: 163). To illustrate, Nozick asks you to imaginethat society achieves a pattern of perfect justice by the lights ofwhatever principle you prefer. Then someone offers Wilt Chamberlain adollar for the privilege of watching Wilt play basketball. Before weknow it, thousands of people are paying Wilt a dollar each, every timeWilt puts on a show. Wilt gets rich. The distribution is no longerequal, and no one complains. Nozick’s question: If justice is apattern, achievable at a given moment, what happens if you achieveperfection? Must you then prohibit everything—no furtherconsuming, creating, trading, or evengiving—so as notto upset the perfect pattern? Notice: Nozick neither argues norpresumes people can do whatever they want with their property. Nozick,recalling the focus on connecting property rights to liberty thatanimated liberalism in its classical form, notes that if there isanything at all people can do, even if the only thing theyare free to do is give a coin to an entertainer, then even thattiniest of liberties will, over time, disturb the favored pattern.Nozick is right that if we focus on time slices, we focus on isolatedmoments, and take moments too seriously, when what matters is not thepattern of holdings at a moment but the pattern of how people treateach other over time. Even tiny liberties must upset the pattern of astatic moment. By the same token, however, there is no reason whyliberty must upset an ongoing pattern of fair treatment. A moralprinciple forbidding racial discrimination, for example, prescribes noparticular end-state. Such a principle is what Nozick calls weaklypatterned, sensitive to history as well as to pattern, and prescribingan ideal of how people should be treated without prescribing anend-state distribution. Itaffects the pattern withoutprescribing a pattern. And if a principle forbidding racialdiscrimination works its way into a society via cultural progressrather than legal intervention, it need not involve any interferencewhatsoever. So, although Nozick sometimes speaks as if his critiqueapplies to all patterns, we should take seriously his concession that“weak” patterns are compatible with liberty. Some maypromote liberty, depending on how they are introduced and maintained.See Schmidtz (2006: chap.6). For work by modern liberals thatresonates with Nozick’s dissection of the dimensions of equalitythat plausibly can count as liberal, see also Anderson (1999), Young(1990), and Sen (1992).

Accordingly, even granting to Nozick that time-slice principleslicense immense, constant, intolerable interference with everydaylife, there is some reason to doubt that Rawls intended to embrace anysuch view. In his first article, Rawls said, “we cannotdetermine the justness of a situation by examining it at a singlemoment” (1951: 191) Years later, Rawls added, “It is amistake to focus attention on the varying relative positions ofindividuals and to require that every change, considered as a singletransaction viewed in isolation, be in itself just. It is thearrangement of the basic structure which is to be judged, and judgedfrom a general point of view” (1999b: 76). Thus, to Rawls, basicstructure’s job is not to make every transaction work to theworking class’s advantage, let alone to the advantage of eachmember of the class. Rawls was more realistic than that. Instead, itis the trend of a whole society over time that is supposed to benefitthe working classas a class. To be sure, Rawls was a kind ofegalitarian, but the pattern Rawls meant to endorse was a pattern ofequal status, applying not so much to a distribution as to an ongoingrelationship. This is not to say that Nozick’s critique had nopoint. Nozick showed what an alternative theory might look like,portraying Wilt Chamberlain as a separate person in a more robustsense (unencumbered by nebulous debts to society) than Rawls couldcountenance. To Nozick, Wilt’s advantages are not what Wiltfinds on the table; Wilt’s advantages are what Wiltbrings to the table. And respecting what Wilt brings to thetable is the exact essence of respecting him as a separate person. Inpart due to Nozick, today’s egalitarians now acknowledge thatany equality worthy of aspiration will focus less on justice as aproperty of a time-slice distribution and more on how people aretreated: how they are rewarded for their contributions andenabled 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 liberalismwas not a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine, that is, one whichincludes an overall theory of value, an ethical theory, anepistemology, or a controversial metaphysics of the person andsociety. Our modern societies, characterized by a ‘reasonablepluralism’, are already filled with such doctrines. The aim ofpolitical liberalism is not to add yet another sectarian doctrine, butto provide a political framework that is neutral between suchcontroversial comprehensive doctrines (Larmore, 1996: 121ff).Rawls’s notion of a purely political conception of liberalismseems more austere than the traditional liberal political theoriesdiscussed above, being largely restricted to constitutional principlesupholding basic civil liberties and the democratic process.

Gaus (2004) argues that the distinction between‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberalismmisses a great deal. Liberal theories form a broad continuum, fromthose that constitute full-blown philosophical systems, to those thatrely on a full theory of value and the good, to those that rely on atheory of the right (but not the good), all the way to those that seekto be purely political doctrines. Nevertheless, it is important toappreciate that, though we treat liberalism as primarily a politicaltheory, it has been associated with broader theories of ethics, value,and society. Indeed, many believe that liberalism cannot rid itself ofall controversial metaphysical (Hampton, 1989) or epistemological(Raz, 1990) commitments.

3.2 Liberal Ethics

Following Wilhelm von Humboldt (1993 [1854]), inOn LibertyMill argues thatone basis for endorsing freedom (Millbelieves there are many), is the goodness of developing individualityand cultivating capacities:

Individuality is the same thing with development, and…it isonly the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce,well-developed human beings…what more can be said of anycondition of human affairs, than that it brings human beingsthemselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can besaid 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 rightthing to do is to promote development or perfection, but only a regimesecuring extensive liberty for each person can accomplish this (Wall,1998). This moral ideal of human perfection and development dominatedliberal thinking in the latter part of the nineteenth century, andmuch of the twentieth: not only Mill, but T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse,Bernard Bosanquet, John Dewey and even Rawls show allegiance tovariants of this perfectionist ethic and the claim that it provides afoundation for endorsing a regime of liberal rights (Gaus, 1983a). Andit is fundamental to the proponents of liberal autonomy discussedabove, as well as ‘liberal virtue’ theorists such asWilliam Galston (1980). That the good life is necessarily a freelychosen one in which a person develops his unique capacities as part ofa plan of life is probably the dominant liberal ethic of the pastcentury.

The main challenge to Millian perfectionism’s status as thedistinctly liberal ethic comes from moralcontractualism/contractarianism, which can be divided into what mightvery roughly be labeled ‘Kantian’ and‘Hobbesian’ versions. According to Kantian contractualism,“society, being composed of a plurality of persons, each withhis own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arrangedwhen it is governed by principles that do notthemselvespresuppose any particular conception of the good…”(Sandel, 1982: 1). On this view, respect for the personhood of othersdemands that we refrain from imposing our view of the good life onthem. Only principles that can be justified to all respect thepersonhood of each. We thus witness the tendency of recent liberaltheory (Reiman, 1990; Scanlon, 1998) to transform the social contractfrom an account of the state to an overall justification of morality,or at least a social morality. This is not to deny, however, thatliberalism is, after all, essentially a view that there is such athing as minding one’s own business, and that there is a sphere withinwhich we have the right to say “It’s my life” while politely declininginvitations to justify ourselves. Liberalism is the idea that thereare limits to any need for public justification.

In contrast, distinctively Hobbesian contractarianism supposes onlythat individuals are self-interested and correctly perceive that eachperson’s ability to effectively pursue her interests is enhancedby a framework of norms that structure social life and divide thefruits of social cooperation (Gauthier, 1986; Hampton, 1986; Kavka,1986). Morality, then, is a common framework that advances theself-interest of each. The claim of Hobbesian contractarianism to be adistinctly liberal conception of morality stems from the importance ofindividual freedom and property in such a common framework: onlysystems of norms that allow each person great freedom to pursue herinterests as she sees fit could, it is argued, be the object ofconsensus among self-interested agents (Courtland, 2008; Gaus, 2012;Ridge, 1998; Gauthier, 1995). The continuing problem for Hobbesiancontractarianism is the apparent rationality of free-riding: ifeveryone (or enough) complies with the terms of the contract, and sosocial order is achieved, it would seem rational to defect, and actimmorally when one can gain by doing so. This is essentially theargument of Hobbes’s ‘Foole’, and from Hobbes (1948[1651]: 94ff) to Gauthier (1986: 160ff), Hobbesians have tried toreply to it.

3.3 Liberal Theories of Value

Turning from rightness to goodness, we can identify three maincandidates for a liberal theory of value. We have already encounteredthe first: perfectionism. Insofar as perfectionism is a theory ofright action, it can be understood as an account of morality.Obviously, however, it is an account of rightness that presupposes atheory of value or the good: the ultimate human value is developedpersonality or an autonomous life. Competing with this objectivisttheory of value are two other liberal accounts: pluralism andsubjectivism.

In his famous defence of negative liberty, Berlin insisted that valuesor ends are plural, and further, the pursuit of one end necessarilyimplies that other ends will not be achieved. In this sense endscollide. In economic terms, the pursuit of one end entails opportunitycosts: foregone pursuits which cannot be impersonally shown to be lessworthy. There is no interpersonally justifiable way to rank the ends,and no way to achieve them all. Each person must devote herself tosome ends at the cost of ignoring others. For the pluralist, then,autonomy, perfection or development are not necessarily ranked higherthan hedonistic pleasures, environmental preservation or economicequality. All compete for our allegiance, but because they areincommensurable, no choice can be interpersonally justified.

The pluralist is not a subjectivist: that values are many, competingand incommensurable does not imply that they are somehow dependent onsubjective experiences. But the claim that what a person values restson experiences that vary from person to person has long been a part ofthe liberal tradition. To Hobbes, what one values depends on what onedesires (1948 [1651]: 48). Locke advances a ‘taste theory ofvalue’:

The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and you willas fruitlessly endeavour to delight all Man with Riches or Glory,(which yet some Men place their Happiness in,) as you would satisfyall men’s Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters; which, though veryagreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseousand offensive: And many People would with reason preferr [sic] thegriping of an hungry Belly, to those Dishes, which are a Feast toothers. Hence it was, I think, that the Philosophers of old did invain enquire, whether theSummum bonum consisted in Riches,or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And they might haveas reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found inApples, Plumbs or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects uponit. For…pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves,but their agreeableness to this or that particulare Palate, whereinthere is great variety…(1975 [1706]: 269).

The perfectionist, the pluralist and the subjectivist concur on thecrucial point: the nature of value is such that reasonable peoplepursue different ways of living. To the perfectionist, this is becauseeach person has unique capacities, the development of which confersvalue on her life; to the pluralist, it is because values are many andconflicting, and no one life can include them all, or make theinterpersonally correct choice among them; and to the subjectivist, itis because our ideas about what is valuable stem from our desires ortastes, and these differ from one individual to another. All threeviews, then, defend the basic liberal idea that people rationallyfollow different ways of living. But in themselves, such notions ofthe good are not full-fledged liberal ethics, for an additionalargument is required linking liberal value with norms of equalliberty, and to the idea that other people command a certain respectand a certain deference simply by virtue of having values of theirown. To be sure, Berlin seems to believe this is a very quickargument: the inherent plurality of ends points to thepolitical preeminence of liberty (see, for example, Gray:2006). Guaranteeing each a measure of negative liberty is, Berlinargues, the most humane ideal, as it recognizes that ‘humangoals are many’, and no one can make a choice that is right forall people (1969: 171). It is here that subjectivists and pluralistsalike sometimes rely on versions of moral contractualism. Those whoinsist that liberalism is ultimately nihilistic can be interpreted asarguing that this transition cannot be made successfully: liberals, ontheir view, are stuck with a subjectivistic or pluralistic theory ofvalue, and no account of the right emerges from it.

3.4 The Metaphysics of Liberalism

Throughout the last century, liberalism has been beset bycontroversies between, on the one hand, those broadly identified as‘individualists’ and, on the other,‘collectivists’, ‘communitarians’ or‘organicists’ (for skepticism about this, though, seeBird, 1999). These vague and sweeping designations have been appliedto 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 individualistanalyses of society. ‘Human beings in society’, Millclaimed, ‘have no properties but those which are derived from,and which may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individualmen’ (1963, Vol. 8: 879; see also Bentham: 1970 [1823]: chap. I,sec. 4). Herbert Spencer agreed: “the properties of the mass aredependent upon the attributes of its component parts” (1995[1851]: 1). In the last years of the nineteenth century thisindividualist view was increasingly subject to attack, especially bythose who were influenced by idealist philosophy. D. G. Ritche,criticizing Spencer’s individualist liberalism, denies thatsociety is simply a ‘heap’ of individuals, insisting thatit is more akin to an organism, with a complex internal life (1896:13). Liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and Dewey refused to adoptradically collectivist views such as those advocated by BernardBosanquet (2001), but they too rejected the radical individualism ofBentham, Mill and Spencer. Throughout most of the first half of thetwentieth century such ‘organic’ analyses of society heldsway 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 wasbased on inherently individualist analysis of humans-in-society aroseagain. Karl Popper’sThe Open Society and its Enemies(1945) presented a sustained critique of Hegelian and Marxist theoryand its collectivist and historicist, and to Popper, inherentlyilliberal, understanding of society. The reemergence of economicanalysis in liberal theory brought to the fore a thoroughgoingmethodological individualism. Writing in the early 1960s, JamesBuchanan and Gordon Tullock adamantly defended the‘individualistic postulate’ against all forms of‘organicism’: “This [organicist] approach or theoryof the collectivity….is essentially opposed to the Westernphilosophical tradition in which the human individual is the primaryphilosophical entity” (1965: 11–12). Human beings,insisted Buchanan and Tullock, are the only real choosers anddecision-makers, and their preferences determine both public andprivate actions. The renascent individualism of late-twentieth centuryliberalism was closely bound up with the induction of Hobbes as amember of the liberal pantheon. Hobbes’s relentlesslyindividualistic account of society, and the manner in which hisanalysis of the state of nature lent itself to game-theoreticalmodeling, yielded a highly individualist, formal analysis of theliberal state and liberal morality.

Of course, as is widely known, we have recently witnessed a renewedinterest in collectivist analyses of liberal society —though theterm ‘collectivist’ is abjured in favor of‘communitarian’. Writing in 1985, Amy Gutmann observedthat “we are witnessing a revival of communitarian criticisms ofliberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s, those of the1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and irreparablyindividualistic” (1985: 308). Starting with MichaelSandel’s (1982) famous criticism of Rawls, a number of criticscharge that liberalism is necessarily premised on an abstractconception of individual selves as pure choosers, whose commitments,values and concerns are possessions of the self, but never constitutethe self. Although the ‘liberal-communitarian’ debateultimately involved wide-ranging moral, political and sociologicaldisputes about the nature of communities, and the rights andresponsibilities of their members, the heart of the debate was aboutthe nature of liberal selves. For Sandel the flaw at the heart ofRawls’s liberalism is its implausibly abstract theory of theself, the pure autonomous chooser. Rawls, he charges, ultimatelyassumes that it makes sense to identify us with a pure capacity forchoice, and that such pure choosers might reject any or all of theirattachments and values and yet retain their identity.

From the mid-1980s onwards various liberals sought to show howliberalism may consistently advocate a theory of the self which findsroom for cultural membership and other non-chosen attachments andcommitments which at least partially constitute the self (Kymlicka,1989). Much of liberal theory has became focused on the issue as tohow we can be social creatures, members of cultures and raised invarious traditions, while also being autonomous choosers who employour liberty to construct lives of our own.

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

4.1 Is Liberalism Justified in All Political Communities?

InOn Liberty Mill argued that “Liberty, as aprinciple, has no application to any state of things anterior to thetime when mankind have become capable of being improved by free andequal discussion” (1963, vol. 18: 224). Thus “Despotism isa legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, providedthe end be their improvement…” (1963, vol. 18: 224). Thispassage — infused with the spirit of nineteenth centuryimperialism (and perhaps, as some maintain, latent racism) — isoften ignored by defenders of Mill as an embarrassment (Parekh, 1994;Parekh, 1995; Mehta, 1999; Pitts, 2005).This is not to say that suchMillian passages are without thoughtful defenders. See, for example,Inder Marawah (2011). Nevertheless, it raises a question that stilldivides liberals: are liberal political principles justified for allpolitical communities? InThe Law of Peoples Rawls arguesthat they are not. According to Rawls there can be a ‘decenthierarchical society’ which is not based on the liberalconception of all persons as free and equal, but instead views personsas “responsible and cooperating members of their respectivegroups” but not inherently equal (1999a: 66). Given this, thefull liberal conception of justice cannot be constructed out of sharedideas of this ‘people’, though basic human rights,implicit in the very idea of a social cooperative structure, apply toall peoples. David Miller (2002) develops a different defense of thisanti-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 thatliberal 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 politicalcommunities should not be confused with the debate as to whetherliberalism is a state-centered theory, or whether, at least ideally,it is a cosmopolitan political theory for the community of allhumankind. Immanuel Kant — a moral universalist if ever therewas one — argued that all states should respect the dignity oftheir citizens as free and equal persons, yet denied that humanityforms one political community. Thus he rejected the ideal of auniversal cosmopolitan liberal political community in favor of a worldof states, all with internally just constitutions, and united in aconfederation to assure peace (1970 [1795]).

On a classical liberal theory, the difference between a world ofliberal communities and a world liberal community is not offundamental importance. Since the aim of government in a community isto 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, itmatters a great deal who is included within the political or moralcommunity. If liberal principles require significant redistribution,then it is crucially important whether these principles apply onlywithin particular communities, or whether their reach is global. Thusa fundamental debate between Rawls and many of his followers iswhether the difference principle should only be applied within aliberal state such as the United States (where the least well off arethe least well off Americans), or whether it should be appliedglobally (where the least well off are the least well off in theworld) (Rawls, 1999a: 113ff; Beitz, 1973: 143ff; Pogge, 1989: PartThree).

4.3 Liberal Interaction with Non-Liberal Groups: International

Liberal political theory also fractures concerning the appropriateresponse to groups (cultural, religious, etc.) which endorse illiberalpolicies and values. These groups may deny education to some of theirmembers, advocate female genital mutilation, restrict religiousfreedom, maintain an inequitable caste system, and so on. When, ifever, should a liberal group interfere with the internal governance ofan illiberal group?

Suppose first that the illiberal group is another political communityor state. Can liberals intervene in the affairs of non-liberal states?Mill provides a complicated answer in his 1859 essay ‘A FewWords on Non-Intervention’. Reiterating his claim fromOnLiberty that civilized and non-civilized countries are to betreated differently, he insists that “barbarians have no rightsas anation, except a right to such treatment as may, at theearliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only morallaws 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 anobjectionable paternalistic imperialism (and it certainly was such acase), Mill’s argument for the conclusion is more complex,including a claim that, since international morality depends onreciprocity, ‘barbarous’ governments that cannot becounted on to engage in reciprocal behavior have no rightsqua governments. In any event, when Mill turns tointerventions among ‘civilized’ peoples he develops analtogether more sophisticated account as to when one state canintervene 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 thatintervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the peoplethemselves. The only test possessing any real value, of apeople’s having become fit for popular institutions, is thatthey, 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 orgroups have rights to collective self-determination, intervention by aliberal group to induce a non-liberal community to adopt liberalprinciples will be morally objectionable. As with individuals,liberals may think that peoples or groups have freedom to makemistakes in managing their collective affairs. If people’sself-conceptions are based on their participation in such groups, eventhose whose liberties are denied may object to, and perhaps in someway be harmed by, the imposition of liberal principles (Margalit andRaz, 1990; Tamir, 1993). Thus rather than proposing a doctrine ofintervention, many liberals propose various principles oftoleration which specify to what extent liberals musttolerate non-liberal peoples and cultures. As is usual, Rawls’sdiscussion is subtle and enlightening. In his account of the foreignaffairs of liberal peoples, Rawls argues that liberal peoples mustdistinguish ‘decent’ non-liberal societies from‘outlaw’ and other states; the former have a claim onliberal peoples to tolerance while the latter do not (1999a:59–61). Decent peoples, argues Rawls, ‘simply do nottolerate’ outlaw states which ignore human rights: such statesmay be subject to ‘forceful sanctions and even tointervention’ (1999a: 81). In contrast, Rawls insists that“liberal peoples must try to encourage [non-liberal] decentpeoples and not frustrate their vitality by coercively insisting thatall 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, withthe 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 hasincreasingly become a subject of debate, especially with respect tosome citizens of faith. We should distinguish two questions: (i) towhat extent should non-liberal cultural and religious communities beexempt from the requirements of the liberal state? and, (ii) to whatextent can they be allowed to participate in decision-making in theliberal state?

Turning to (i), liberalism has a long history of seeking toaccommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certainpublic policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Sikhs. The mostdifficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children andeducation (see Galston, 2003; Fowler, 2010; Andersson, 2011) Mill, forexample, writes:

Consider … the case of education. Is it not almost aself-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel theeducation, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is bornits citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize andassert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one ofthe 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 tothat being an education fitting him to perform his part well in lifetowards others and towards himself … . that to bring a childinto existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only toprovide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind,is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and againstsociety … . (1963, vol. 18)

Over the last thirty years, there has been a particular case that isat the core of this debate —Wisconsin vs. Yoder: [406U.S. 205 (1972)]. In this case, the United States Supreme Court upheldthe right of Amish parents to avoid compulsory schooling laws andremove their children from school at the age of 14 — thus,according to the Amish, avoiding secular influences that mightundermine the traditional Amish way of life. Because cultural andreligious communities raise and educate children, they cannot be seenas purely voluntary opt-outs from the liberal state: they exercisecoercive power over children, and so basic liberal principles aboutprotecting the innocent from unjustified coercion come into play. Somehave maintained that liberal principles require that the state shouldintervene (against groups like the Amish) in order to [1] provide thechildren with an effective right of exit that would otherwise bedenied via a lack of education (Okin, 2002), [2] to protect thechildren’s right to an autonomous and ‘open future’(Feinberg, 1980) and/or [3] to insure that children will have thecognitive tools to prepare them for their future role as citizens(Galston, 1995: p. 529; Macedo, 1995: pp. 285–6). Other liberaltheorists, on the other hand, have argued that the state should notintervene because it might undermine the inculcation of certain valuesthat are necessary for the continued existence of certaincomprehensive doctrines (Galston, 1995: p. 533; Stolzenberg, 1993: pp.582–3). Moreover, some such as Harry Brighouse (1998) haveargued that the inculcation of liberal values through compulsoryeducation might undermine the legitimacy of liberal states becausechildren would not (due to possible indoctrination) be free to consentto such institutions.

Question (ii) — the extent to which non-liberal beliefs andvalues may be employed in liberal political discussion— hasbecome the subject of sustained debate in the years followingRawls’sPolitical Liberalism. According toRawls’s liberalism — and what we might call ‘publicreason liberalism’ more generally — because our societiesare characterized by ‘reasonable pluralism’, coercioncannot be justified on the basis of comprehensive moral or religioussystems of belief. But many friends of religion (e.g., Eberle, 2002;Perry, 1993) argue that this is objectionably‘exclusionary’: conscientious believers are barred fromvoting on their deepest convictions. Again liberals diverge in theirresponses. Some such as Stephen Macedo take a pretty hard-nosedattitude: ‘if some people…feel “silenced” or“marginalized” by the fact that some of us believe that itis wrong to shape basic liberties on the basis of religious ormetaphysical 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 mayenter into liberal politics on issues of basic justice “providedthat, in due course, we give properly public reasons to support theprinciples and policies that our comprehensive doctrine is said tosupport” (1999a: 144). Thus Rawls allows the legitimacy ofreligious-based arguments against slavery and in favor of the UnitedStates civil rights movement, because ultimately such arguments weresupported by public reasons. Others (e.g., Greenawalt, 1995) hold thateven this is too restrictive: it is difficult for liberals to justifya moral prohibition on a religious citizen from voicing her view inliberal political debate.

5. Conclusion

Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the natureof liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, thecomprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one mightwonder whether there is any point in talking of‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant ortrivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the groundingpolitical value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value ofequality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingnesstrump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion tofreedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social orderitself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting theseconceptions of political right.

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