Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Read Online Free Page A

Dworkin, who from a legal-moral perspective defined liberalism as consisting of a particular theory of equality, whereby citizens are treated as equal by insisting ‘that government must be neutral on what might be called the question of the good life’. The assumption here is that an individual is the best choice exerciser for her or his own life and that governments should steer clear of dictating moral options in the private sphere.

Box 1 The temporal layers of liberalism
1. A theory of restrained power aimed at protecting individual rights and securing the space in which people can live without governmental oppression
2. A theory of economic interactions and free markets enabling individuals to benefit from the mutual exchange of goods.
3. A theory of human progress over time intended to enable individuals to develop their potential and capacities as long as they do not harm others.
4. A theory of mutual interdependence and state-regulated welfare that is necessary for individuals to achieve both liberty and flourishing.
5. A theory that recognizes the diversity of group life-styles and beliefs and aims for a plural and tolerant society.
    But liberalism, as already mentioned, is also an ideology competing over space in a crowded ideological world. That means that it displays all the characteristics ideologies have in common, as an action-oriented set of ideas, beliefs, and values that exhibit a recurring pattern. Ideologies aim to justify, contest, or change the social and political arrangements of a political community. Liberalism, too, campaigns to control public policy and political language in that manner, but it is of course only one ideology among many, and it has had, and still needs, to struggle for recognition and influence.
    On a third dimension, liberalism constitutes a philosophical view of the world, attempting to establish the principles of the good life that all reasonable human beings ought to adopt. In that sense it positions itself above the political fray, setting out the true and unified ethical standards that civilized societies everywhere should, upon reflection, maintain. Such philosophical viewpoints only occasionally take into account the actual temporal and cultural constraints that render the realization of those ideals very problematic. Nonetheless, the elaboration of liberal philosophical principles has been at the heart of recent political philosophy, and we will accordingly devote space to exploring those arguments in Chapter 6 .
    If, however, there are many liberalisms, they may best be identified through historical and ideological analysis rather than through the philosophical postulation of an ideal-type, which is by its very nature unitary. The diversity of those liberalisms exists on two levels. The first, as already illustrated, pertains to the level of geographical and cultural differences. Even the most universal of liberalisms, were there indeed such a thing, would have to pass through the cultural filters of the society in question. As with cooking, local and regional ingredients and flavours have a considerable impact on the liberal cuisine. In commercial and financial centres, the entrepreneurial attributes that liberalism encourages come to the fore. In societies that have undergone secularization, the belief in human decency rather than God-willed natural rights underpins the liberal sensitivity to, and respect for, others. In societies that are multi-cultural, the constitutional rights to a measure of self-determination of various groups within that society—ethnic, geographic, religious, or gender-based—are prominent in liberal discourse. All those nuances emerge as a consequence of our awareness of where we stand in relation to time and space.

Box 2 The conceptual morphology of liberalism
Liberalism is an ideology that contains seven political concepts that interact at its core: liberty, rationality, individuality, progress, sociability, the general interest, and