Liberalism and the Moral Life

Liberalism and the Moral

EDITED

BY

NANCY L. ROSENBLUM

H A R V A R D UNI V E R S I T Y P R E S S
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1 989

Life

Copyright 1 989 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 876 5 4 3 21
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been chosen for
strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Liberalism and the moral life I edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum.

p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
Contents: Introduction I Nancy L. Rosenblum-The liberalism of fear I Judith N.
Shklar-Humanist liberalism I Susan Moller Okin-Liberal democracy and the costs of
consent I Benjamin R. Barber-Undemocratic education I Amy Gutmann-Civic edu
cation in the liberal state I William Galston-Class conflict and constitutionalism in J. S.
Mill's thought I Richard Ashcraft-Making sense of moral conflict I Steven Lukes-Liberal
dialogue versus a critical theory of discursive legitimation I Seyla Benhabib-Cross pur
poses: the liberal-communitarian debate I Charles Taylor-Democratic individuality and
the meaning of rights I George Kateb-Pluralism and self-defense I Nancy L. Rosenblum
The permanent structure of antiliberal thought I Stephen Holmes.
ISBN 0-674- 53020- 9 (alk. paper)
1. Liberalism-Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Social values. I. Rosenblum, Nancy L.,
194
7- .
.,
JC571.L5375 1 989
320.5'1-dcl 9
89 -30983
CIP

Contents

Introduction, Nancy L. Rosenblum

Varieties of Liberalism Today

19

The Liberalism of Fear, Judith N. Shklar

21

Humanist Liberalism, Susan Moller Okin

39

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,

Benjamin R. Barber

54

II Education and the Moral Life

69

Undemocratic Education, Amy Gutmann

71

Civic Education in the Liberal State, William Galston

89

III Moral Conflict

103

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in J. S . Mill's

Thought, Richard Ashcraft

105

Making Sense of Moral Conflict, Steven Lukes

127

Liberal Dialogue Versus a Critical Theory of Discursive

Legitimation, Sey/a Benhabib

143

Contents

IV

9
10

11
12

v1

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

157

Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate,

Charles Taylor

159

Democratic Individuality and the Meaning o f Rights,

George Kateb

183

Pluralism and Self-Defense, Nancy L. Rosenblum

207

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought,

Stephen Holmes

227

Notes
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index

255
293
295
297

Liberalism and the Moral

Life

Introduction
N A NC Y L . R O S E N B L U M

Like any academic discipline, political theory has its internal dynamic:
its dialogue and development, conceptual conflicts , and intellectual
common ground. The immediate background to this volume is the
ambitious reworking of liberal political thought that began in the
1960s in response to dissatisfaction with classic utilitarianism and to
challenges from critics of liberalism on the political left. The most
influential of these works in political philosophy is John Rawls's A
Theo ry ofJustice ( 1 971) . For almost twenty years, Rawls and other
theorists have worked to broaden liberalism's foundations beyond its
conventional basis in Locke, drawing on sophisticated versions of
social-choice theory and on the moral and political arguments of Kant
and Hume. They have used these resources to reassert the priority of
personal liberty-but also to extend liberalism beyond its classical
preoccupation with liberty, taking up questions of distributive j ustice,
among others. This renaissance of liberal theory inspired a fresh spate
of criticism, mainly from republicans and communitarians who appeal
to Aristotle and Hegel and to a recently revived tradition of civic
humanism. The latest phase of this discussion has focused on liber
alism's relation to moral life, and the authors of the chapters in this
book situate themselves on or at the margins of the map of liberalism
they are helping to redraw.
Developments within the field of political theory are only part of
the picture, however; they take place against the background of ex
ternal p olitical events . Witnesses to the 1988 United States presidential
elections will have little difficulty recalling the political climate when
this book was being written; it may have helped to shape the authors'
arguments, and it certainly adds to their import. During that cam-

Introduction

paign, "liberal" was used as a pejorative term. It was identified nar

rowly with the growth of government and with the welfare state,
and welfare-state liberalism has come to be associated with indiffer
ence to the moral effects of policies . "Liberalism" has become a neg
ative label signaling a lack of concern for character and moral
education, the displacement of parental authority, and the erosion of
every vestige of shared values-in particular civic virtue among men
and women who see themselves as beneficiaries of governm ent ser
vices rather than as responsible citizens.
The identification of liberalism with welfarism is bound to be pro
vocative, certainly to political theorists who are aware that the map
of liberalism is liberally dotted with libertarian defenders of free
market arrangements and with civil libertarians mainly concerned
with a set of basic rights and the legal institutions that support them.
Equating liberalism with egalitarianism is especially jolting because
for most of its history liberalism was concerned almost exclusively
with questions of personal liberty, privacy, civil rights, and due pro
cess. Indeed, liberals have had to defend themselves against socialists
and egalitarians for this lapse, and those liberal theorists who argued
for greater substantive equality had to fight a hard fight (and still do)
against ideological resistance from within as well as without . All this
is forgotten in the partisan politics of the day, which in the United
States is blatantly, bizarrely, antiliberal. Political theorists writing
against a background where liberalism is a term of abuse also know
that the main antiliberal catchwords-"community, " for example,
or " values, " or the older "Moral Majority"-are alien to mainstream
democratic politics in a way that programs to insure a minimum of
social security are not; these have been entrenched in practice and
approved by public opinion since the time of Franklin Delano Roo
sevelt.
Political rhetoric may not help us to chart accurately the field of
liberal political thought, but it does provide an incentive to do so.
Moreover, it points up a curiosity that needs explaining: at the same
time that rhetorical assaults are on the rise in the electoral arena, there
is an unmistakable surge of serious reflection on the nature and ad
vantages of liberalism, to which political theorists in America and
abroad increasingly turn their attention . Political conditions that make
up the deeper background to these essays go some way toward ex
plaining both the openings for partisan attack and the reasons why
at another level liberalism is once again compelling.
One development is the continuing decline of the intellectual hold

Introduction

of Marxism, certainly of Marxist utopianism, in both the communist

societies of eastern Europe and the industrial democracies of the West.
The inadequacies of liberal democratic welfare states seem less severe
compared to the desperate productive and distributive failures of
many socialist economies, and the equally plain fact that central own
ership and planning have not promoted a widespread sense ofjustice
any more than they have produced prosperity. The merits of markets
and private ownership (especially if they are considered undogmati
cally and in the context of concrete difficulties) are important aspects
of liberalism's resurgence. The failure of Marxism either to eliminate
ethnic and religious pluralism or to accommodate pluralist claims is
probably even more important. And there is the unceasing demand
for political liberty in s tates where rights are tenuous and arbitrariness
is an everyday experience. In this context, the characteristic strengths
of liberal democracy emerge, pointing up the fact that liberalism has
survived the century, outliving the transitional historical stage to
which it was consigned by Marxist theory and to which it has some
times seemed doomed by crushing tyrannies of the right as well. The
survival ofliberalism has insured its intellectual life. Versions ofliberal
theory proliferate, along with interpretations of their relative suita
bility for understanding, evaluating, and prescribing for the political
world. Our fin de siecle has begun with a veritable "liberalizing" of
political thought.
This is not to suggest that every radical alternative to liberalism
has been exhausted or found wanting. Critical Theory continues its
challenges (as do other more esoteric forms of radicalism) ; communal
and individualist anarchism are untried; feminist obj ections to liber
alism abound. Still, events have helped to reduce the fascination of
other doctrines , putting liberal theory and the institutions it supports
once again at the center of study; political and intellectual energies
have turned there, in Great Britian and France especially.
Since few American political theorists ever stray too far from lib
eralism, their interest appears less dramatic, but political develop
ments have affected their thinking too . The rise of conservative
challenges is the most important. It has resulted in attacks on tradi
tional freedoms of the press in Great Britain and on newer rights to
privacy (including the right of women to choose abortion) in the
United States ; it has meant a falling off of the spirit of toleration let
alone respect for differences, and, as we have seen, disparagement if
not dismantling of the welfare state. There is a well-documented
programmatic division within conservatism today, between social

Introduction

conservatism and economic libertarianism. And in political philoso

phy the variations are even more complex. Nothing is more striking
than the rapid increase in strands of thought that may not be avowedly
conservative but that assign priority to responsibility to community
over personal liberty, while rejecting the socialist emphasis on a col
lectivist economy. Today the premier challenges to liberalism in
political philosophy are Catholic, civic republican, and the com
munitarianism that champions the particularist claims of groups, fam
ilies, or " traditions of shared meaning" against neutral principles and
universal rights. This new wave of antiliberalism cannot be ascribed
to the loosening of Marxism's hold on intellectuals, but it is the
beneficiary of the waning of radical thought. As even the New Left
has lost its subversive thrust, the way is clear for civic republicans
and comm unitarians to represent themselves as the bearers of visions
of a new morality and new society.
The outstanding common characteristic of the present challenge to
liberalism is its moralistic cast, its disdain for what it sees as the moral
purposes and j ustifications of conventional liberalism . Not all criti
cisms of liberalism are moral criticisms. Consider the familiar au
thoritarian attacks on the workings of liberal government: the claim
that liberal democracies are weak and unable to preserve order, or
the claim that the bonds of liberal societies are so loose and anomic
that they are incapable of collective action-especially in war. It is a
peculiarity of antiliberalism today to be moralistic rather than prag
matic. The problem with liberal democracy is that it is not gripping
and fails to mold the moral identity of individuals; the problem with
pluralism is that its tendency toward political compromise is corrupt,
a falling away from shared values and the common good. Obsession
with liberalism's moral failing is nothing new. But this time liberal
theorists are not demoralized by attacks. On the contrary, they have
been inspired to rethink, as the authors of these essays do, whether
and how liberalism allows, supports, inculcates, and preserves a de
fensible view of moral life.
Current political conditions have had a number of consequences
for political thought. One is that liberalism has emerged as the political
theory whose resources are most called upon, most severely tested
and extended, and most aggressively explained and justified. Another
is the proliferation of types of liberalism-not surprising since it has
become something of a residual theory for those disaffected with the
available historical alternatives. Finally, as dissatisfaction focuses in
creasingly on moral matters, an opening is created for political the-

Introduction

orists to affirm in the strongest terms the positive connection

betweeen liberalism and moral life.
I will try in this introduction to create some order out of the pro
liferating types of liberalism, the charges of moral failing to which
they are peculiarly prone, and the varieties of response political the
orists make as they move from defensive postures to positive, rec
ognizably idealistic assertions of the moral claims of liberalism.
Liberalism is a political theory of limited government, providing
institutional guarantees for personal liberty. It is clear enough what
liberalism opposed in the past and must stand opposed to still: political
absolutism and arbitrariness, and an array of officially sanctioned
obstacles to the free exercise of religion, speech, and association. It
protects at least some forms of private property and prohibits certain
uses of wealth in public and private life. Although the boundary liberal
theorists have drawn between public and private spheres is shifting
and the content of rights is regularly redefined, its central political
thesis-the need to defend individuals and groups against the op
pressive demands and intrusions of authority-is plain. In contrast,
liberalism's positive promise, especially its moral purposes and j us
tifications, is more elusive. In part this is the result of the fact that
liberalism has two faces.
One face ofliberalism reflects moral idealism. Natural or individual
rights and the personal liberty they prescribe had their origin in boldly
articulated ideals. Enlightenment was one, and not a cold intellectual
rationality but a beneficent reason that could produce real, humane
consequences. Condorcet's liberalism, with its exquisitely detailed
picture of moral progress, epitomizes this ideal, reminding us that
liberalism has had an affinity to utopianism. Infinite perfectability,
the hope of a radically transformed world, is not a necessary part of
its moral idealism, however. Liberalism has also been seen as insep
arable from security for religious faith as an essential element of moral
life and for the realization of divinely sanctioned rights. And it has
been seen as inseparable from the affirmation of secular moral pur
poses by autonomous individuals-keeping in mind that the heart of
this vision is not an arid, circular argument for autonomy for its own
sake but reasoned assent to substantive moral obligations. The rela-,
tionship between liberalism and these various ideals has been con
ceived variously, too : as reflection, support, condition, or political
embodiment. Constitutional government and personal and political
rights are the political conditions most compatible with an undis-

Introduction

turbed moral life, on one view. On a stronger view, they are necessary

political conditions for the exercise ? f certain moral capaci ies that
simply do not come into play at all m the absence of pluralism and
personal freedom. And for some theorists, liberalism is more than
j ust enabling; it has its own distinctive moral purposes and accom
panying virtues, which j ustify its theory of government, give its
institutions an educational character, and impose on those who enjoy
liberty an obligation to enlightenment, or self-realization, or affir
mation of respect for the dignity of others.
The other face of liberalism is resolutely turned away from moral
idealism toward a sober political modus vivendi . It designs public
laws and institutions that can be administered by a nation of devils
and demands that public officials remain indifferent toward the pur
suits of private life and to character so long as men and women are
reasonably law-abiding. It recommends due process and equal pro
tection as neutral, universally desirable defenses against official ar
bitrariness and abuse. And where diverse and rival interests and
opinions (and moral j ustifications) are inescapable, liberalism pre
scribes a framework of institutions and procedures to break the vio
lence of faction, as James Madison instructed, by bringing them into
the frame of government. The alternatives to a pluralist modus vi
vendi must be avoided: separatist movements, or maj ority or minority
tyranny, or civil war among communities each bound by a singular
moral purpose. This deliberate distancing of government, and of
justifications for government action, from official recognition of a
view of the good life is not always based 0n moral skepticism. It may
rest on the commonsense political skepticism born of historical ex
perience. Time, which Thomas Paine thought makes more converts
than reason, makes self-protection against the accumulation of power
imperative, whatever its current form. There is nothing minimalist
about modus-vivendi liberalism. The demands of impartiality are
onerous; the institutional guarantees of due process and representation
are complex; ultimately, this liberalism depends upon men and
women having a keen psychological and historical sensibility .
Both idealist and mod.us-vivendi liberalism provoke charges of
moral failing , and it is useful to designate two categories of criticism
corresponding to the two faces of liberalism. The charge leveled
mainly at liberal idealism assails the adequacy of its substantive ideals,
or, alternatively, the offensiveness ofits presumed indifference toward
an aspect of moral life that liberalism , by privatizing it, seems to
depreciate or neglect. The second type of charge, leveled mainly at

Introduction

modus-vivendi liberalism, is hypocrisy. It says that liberalism will

fully misrepresents its norms and institutions as uncontroversial, ex
aggerating its claim to inclusiveness and impartiality .
Those who accuse liberalism of moral failing often acknowledge
that it rests on and promotes some moral vision for public and private
life, but judge its values deficient, even depraved. Liberal virtues are
really vices (greed, uncontrolled selfishness generally, intellectual hu
bris) . Or signs of pathology (impartiality is a weird and abnormal
sort of self-distancing) . Or, critics charge that the inevitable conse
quence of liberal values is viciousness; for example, tolerance of a
plurality of views of the good life weakens the duties and consolations
of religion and invites abominable license. Liberalism's substantive
values have often been described as bourgeois values, deficient because
private ownership of most forms of property is itself morally unj us
tifiable, or because its inevitable accompaniment is conflict or obsta
cles to the self-realization of workers, or because the moral habits
associated with the acquisition and preservation of property-making
and abiding by contracts, for example-are intolerably cold and
empty. Of course, it is also the case that what critics see as the absence
of a specifically political or civic virtue is by itself a fatal lack, a terrible
personal and collective deprivation that indicates the absence of a
moral life in common and of virtues such as honor, loyalty, and
courage.
Liberalism is perennially prone to these attacks , for one reason
above all. Every version of liberal theory draws a boundary between
public and private life. As a result it is vulnerable to the claim that
some form of virtuous conduct has been assigned wrongly, or left
out of consideration altogether. What belongs to public life has been
erroneously privatized (ownership of productive forces, religious in
spiration, even personal identity itself, which is properly seen as con
stituted by citizenship) . And what belongs to private life has been
allowed to infiltrate and corrupt the public sphere (selfish economic
interests, rigid contractual relations, scientific models of thinking) .
Liberalism is exposed to this attack on two fronts. Contemporary
political theorists seize the opportunity to chart a creative, often so
ciologically sensitive, account of what is contained on either side of
the public-private divide and the way in which this divide serves
moral life.
Hypocrisy makes up the second line of attack, directed chiefly
against modus-vivendi liberalism. It claims that liberal claims to gov
ernment impartiality are false, as are representations of reasons, rights,

Introduction

and benefits as universal. The array of arguments along these lines is

familiar. Pluralist politics operates to the advantage of some groups
over others; "pure tolerance" cuts against unpopular opinions and
subversive ideas; impartiality itself is a partial and characteristically
masculine norm that eclipses the distinctive moral attitudes and in
clinations of women; the preference for so-called neutral goods such
as material comfort or security is prejudicial to rival goods such as
asceticism or heroic adventurism. Charges of self-delusion or blind
ness to the p ractical consequences of allegedly neutral principles are
only slightly less hostile variations on this theme. That the division
between public and private life, intended or not, inherently traps and
exploits women is a familiar argument. Another is the claim that the
unintended result of legalism and legalistic moralities is to create an
adversarial culture; to elbow out a more expansive and empathic ethic
of caring or reciprocity; to make it impossible to enjoy a community
that is beautiful to its members for its particularities rather than its
universalism .
W e have come t o expect the whole gamut of charges of moral
deficiency and hypocrisy from antiliberals armed with a single, unified
view of the good life and good society, who argue for some official
orthodoxy and invite political authorities to promote, preserve, and
enforce it-from Marxists and other socialists, fascists, authoritarians,
some nationalists, religious fundamentalists, civic republicans, and
feminist critics of patriarchy. And until recently, we have come to
expect that the main line of defense by liberals will be grimly defen
sive. Indebted in both argument and tenor to Isaiah Berlin's "Two
Concepts of Liberty, " this response defines liberalism in terms of its
commitment to a last protective frontier, a sacrosanct private realm
immune from government interference and control. The expected
moral justification for limited government and negative liberty is
taken from Berlin as well: the idea that as much as possible men and
women be left alone follows from the belief that there is a plurality
of ultimate ends and that it is impossible to reconcile these incom
mensurable values.
This book reflects important changes that have emerged in the last
several years. Today accusations about the moral failings ofliberalism
frequently come from North American political theorists who do not
identify themselves with historic antiliberalism of the left or right
and who do not advance a comprehensive moral agenda of their own.
In "The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought, " Stephen
Holmes describes the main outlines of nineteenth- and twentieth-

Introduction

century antiliberalism and points out the peculiar position of contem

porary critics . They employ a set of arguments well known to those
versed in the long history of European antiliberalism; their charges
are not new. And they resort to a recurrent set of fallacies and dis
tortions, which Holmes catalogues and dissects . At the same time,
they tend to dissociate themselves from the anticipated political frame
work of left and right in a way Holmes finds disturbing. Some of
the most vehement charges of liberalism' s moral failing are leveled
by political theorists whose opposition to liberal institutions may be
qualified and who do not always part company with liberals on mat
ters of policy, but who are reluctant to explain j ust when and why
they do . It is clear that they are frankly repulsed by what they see as
liberalism's lack of moral inspiration. They want moral uplift, and
they want to find it in political theory. Yet they neither propose
orthodox Marxist, democratic, or rightist alternatives nor resurrect
the old idealism of revolutionary liberalism-rationality, enlighten
ment, progress , and autonomy.
In a parallel develop ment, liberalism's defenders have assumed a
new stance, too. They do not meet contemporary charges of moral
deficiency by recapitulating the traditional argument for a sacrosanct
private sphere, assigning all longings for moral life there. Nor do
they found their defens es as much as before on moral skepticism or
the possibility of discovering and applying neutral principles. Instead,
political theorists are responding to the latest challenges with newly
formulated visions of the moral life consistent with and supported
by a liberal theory of government. They invent fresh arguments for
individualism and its moral status. They consider whether there are
distinctively liberal virtues and practices that are publicly recognized
and constitute a moral life in common. Openings to arguments for
moral education are seized. Increased notice is taken of the concrete
social and institutional contexts, both actual and possible, for devel
oping moral habits and expressing moral values. Theorists are also
rethinking the nature of neutrality in public life, sharpening their
definitions, identifying its obj ectives and limits, pointing out those
opinions and institutions that are simply incompatible with liberalism.
Even arguments for modus-vivendi liberalism are respirited.
While a schematic overview cannot do j ustice to these developments
in liberal thought, it can help to highlight what is new. The sequence
of essays in the book is thematic, but I have chosen to depart from
that order here in the hope of creating some order of a different kind.
I want to suggest that these essays represent three main approaches

Introduction

10

to the question of liberalism's relation to moral life . One approach

responds directly to liberalism's critics : it asserts that even if their
description of liberalism is accurate, their assessment is wrong. The
argument is that liberalism contains moral resources overlooked by
its critics (and sometimes by liberals themselves) and that these re
sources can be reclaimed and failings corrected . Another approach
actively infuses liberalism with a new moral idealism. It is resonant
of the world-transforming hopes of revolutionary liberalism, but it
is soberly nonutopian in its attention to the evidence of inspiration
and moral life in everyday practices . The third approach defends the
idea of neutrality in public life, while acknowledging its limits and
insisting that there are other j ustifications for neutrality besides moral
indifference or moral skepticism.
One response of the first type accepts the criticism that liberalism has
failed to realize its own moral ideals, without accepting that this failure
is logical or inevitable. It reclaims these ideals and insists that liber
alism has the resources to repair its failings. Most often the faith that
must be kept is with universalism. Indeed, the history of liberal po
litical thought in western Europe and America is a history of thinkers
extending-sometimes reluctantly, sometimes willingly-moral as
sumptions and institutional protections to new groups. Liberal the
orists attend to internal inconsistencies in accounts of who counts as
rational or autonom , and who s h ould_kad w meJ:ts.i:"
dlirogue. anCI dehberatro;:;-f g;Jze failures in affording indi
dllars equarirotectio nand the way substantive inequalities (among
them unequal access to education or health care, employment or
income) affect the worth of nominally universal rights .
In "Humanist Liberalism, " Susan Okin carries on this work of
inclusion from a feminist perspective. She shows that contemporary
liberal theorists persist in developing arguments that have the ap
pearance of universality but that on inspection exclude women; gen
der-neutral language is not a sure sign that gender is taken seriously.
In particular, the ideal of autonomy conceals unacknowledged as
sumptions about moral self-development in the context of the family,
whose structure has been historically uajust. Okin also shows that it
is not a simple matter to include women; theoretically as well as
practically, making universalism real requires changes in liberalism,
among them recasting the separation of personal and public life. Yet
she believes that if only we would attend to them, liberalism contains
conceptual resources uniquely equipped to enable us to recognize the

h;y

Introduction

11

way government reinforces the gendered division of labor within the

family, systematically imposing constraints on women, inhibiting
their liberty and opportunities for individuality. And suitably recast
but not erased, liberalism's notion of separate public and private
spheres can relieve the oppression of women, while respecting privacy
and individual differences.
In "Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent, " Benj amin Bar
ber sets himself a different task of reparation. He argues that although
the idea of original consent had important liberating consequences,
and the idea of periodic consent opened liberalism out to represen
tative government, the thrust of consent is essentially resistant and
reactive. Barber accepts the criticism that liberalism is negative, but
he believes negativity can be turned around. He appeals to neglected
aspects of liberal democratic thought that support active political par
ticipation in a way that preoccupation with consent does not. And
he looks to participation for more than just self-protection. Liberal
democracy, he argues, points beyond self-defense without going all
the _wa ccive unity; he calls this latent ideal "harmony."
5Cvl BenhabllY.Jocuses on another element: the notion ofliberalism
as a
cal cclture of public dialogue. In "Liberal Dialogue Versus
a Critical Theory of Discursive Legitimation," she argues that l!br..<!l
theorists often impose unjustifiable restraints on the conte.nt and scope
of pb_lc:- i.l.?.su.. ,hih .iE.JJ:.i\)j_ i.! .fJlpQJi.11lai_: y f}gi
timizing institutions and relations of power. She is especially critical
oftlie facifassifriipfiOn i:h;fCpeop1e.kno 1n. advance of discussion
what their moral positions are-an assumption that allows liberal
theorists to exclude some differences and disagreements from public
discussion in advance, designating them moral, religious, or aesthetic.
This is an unjustifiable retreat to pragmatic reasoning, she argues,
designed to insure peace more than normative justification. More
over, exclusion and restraint are self-defeating, since it is only through
dialogue that we come to understand the meaning issues have for us.
Benhabib draws attention to the way oppression has been recognized
and lifted only when social movements are able to move issues from
private to public light and redefine them as matters of public policy:
work conditions, civil rights, women's issues. Critical theory, she
argues, supports liberalism's emphasis on proceduralism and dialogue
in particular by showing that procedures are not purely formal, as
some antiliberals charge, but replete with content and themselves
subject to reflection and change. At the same time, critical theory
stands as a severe challenge and corrective to the weakness of liberal

porar

__

Introduction

12

models insofar as they have lost sight of dialogue's transforming

possibility. Her "discourse model" offers a frankly utopian family
of arguments for social practices embodying the principle of "egali
tarian reciprocity. "
Another approach of the first type also begins with the very ele
ments of liberalism that critics call morally deficient. The chief busi
ness here, however, is less extension and inclusion than redescription.
Critics misunderstand what they see, and liberal theorists redescribe
the very features under attack in a way that is transforming. Judith
Shklar does this in "The Liberalism of Fear, " which pushes a familiar
line of argument-the viciousness of the known political alterna
tives-in a new direction. The standard version of this defense con
cedes that liberalism is a morally truncated theory, prudent rather
than inspired, but claims that assigning limited purposes to limited
government is a lesser evil, j ust as liberalism's characteristic practices
are lesser evils (acquisitiveness is less dangerous than solicitousness
for the souls of others, or hunger for military glory) . Shklar is un
willing to make this concession. She turns the tables on assailants of
modus -vivendi liberalism. Liberalism is uniquely able to avoid the
worst evils inflicted by governments because it is inspired by genuine
moral insight into what is the worst. A coherent account of cruelty
as an absolute political summum malum sustains the theory of limited
government, she argues. Shklar rehabilitates liberalism's preoccupa
tion with public cruelty and the official infliction of pain. From what
some have called a modest (even degraded) attachment to "mere life"
and to a political modus vivendi, she elicits a strong and universal
moral foundation for self-protective liberalism.
Redescription is the approach I take in a chapter that tries to recover
and reassess the pluralist face of liberalism. Individualist and com
munitarian critics of liberalism converge in their aversion to mate
rialist individualism and to what they describe as a cold, fragmented,
and unexpressive public life. Their recommended alternatives are re
spirited Emersonian individualism or the strong grip of civic com
munity. In "Pluralism and Self-Defense, " I argue that although these
attacks on liberalism succeed in capturing a common experience of
"romantic" aversion, they disregard the element of liberalism that
provides an antidote to these discontents: pluralism-the existence of
a complex social structure of groups and spheres, which disperses
power and among which men and women can shift involvements.
Diagnoses of liberalism that start out from either side of the individ
ualist-communitarian dichotomy result in false pictures of pathology

Introduction

13

and i n faulty prescriptions because they fail t o recognize the medi

ating, transforming experience of pluralism. I review the political
advantages of pluralism, but my argument focuses on shifting in
volvements among diverse groups and spheres as the condition and
material for self-development. Pluralism makes exuberant Humboldt
ian promises of the self-realization of "beautiful souls" conceivable.
More modestly, it is a resource for an elementary kind of self-defense,
a protection against dreaded identification with one role and con
finement to one place; against finitude, exhaustion, satiation, and
ennui; against the frustration of familiar longings for individuality
and self-expression that comes from too much "embeddedness" and
"belonging." Ignoring pluralism is particularly costly, given the pro
pensity of contemporary theorists to tie political arguments (especially
arguments for community) to theories of the self. If we are to adopt
the notion of the "constituted self" as a way of thinking about moral
personality, then political theorists should take notice of the multi
plicity of contexts in which self-formation actually goes on, and the
way coherence can be drawn from differentiation.
Approaches of the first kind extend, reclaim, and redescribe familiar
resources from within liberalism to meet contemporary challenges .
In approaches of the second kind, political theorists respond to ac
cusations of moral failing by actively infusing liberalism with a new,
positive idealism. Their efforts have historical antecedents, but instead
of turning to classical liberal ideals of enlightenment, natural rights,
or autonomy, which may be stale or made vulnerable from misuse,
political theorists tap fresh historical and philosophical resources . In
"Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights, " George Kateb
not only defends individualism against communitarian critics who
fail to see it in all its fullness, but respirits it entirely. He speaks of
the "idealism of individualism , " dissociating it from narrow pos
sessive individualism, showing its dependence on a broader tradition
of individual rights, but ultimately attaching it to the inspired Amer
ican individualism of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Liberal
rights-based individualism provides the indispensable cultural setting
for what Kateb calls " democratic individuality." The procedures and
processes of rights -based individualism instruct citizens that govern
ment depends on their sufferance, educating them out of inferiority
and docility, inviting them to demand recognition, mandating tol
eration. And " the mere absence of oppression and degradation is
sweet. " But for Kateb, individualism of rights exists for the sake of
a still richer democratic individuality, which is its completion and

Introduction

14

perfection, and which aspires t o still greater expressi veness, resistance,

and responsiveness .
Kateb is not the only theorist to articulate a new idealism, or to
marshall evidence that ideals are recognized and realized, even if im
perfectly, in everyday thought and practice. Reconstructing possi
bilities for moral life within liberal democracy and attending to living
instances where it is expressed als.o characterize Charles Taylor's chap
ter, "Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate" -though
the infusion of moral idealism he performs is at the other end of the
spectrum from Kateb ' s "democratic individuality . "
Taylor charges political theorists with insensitivity to the fact that
choice of an ontological position (the choice between atomism and
holism) does not necessarily entail a choice of moral norms and public
policies . Ontology and advocacy are distinct, he argues, and their
relation is complex; atomism and holism structure the field of political
possibilities without pointing directly to individualist or communi
tarian recommendations. Confusion about these issues has restricted
our understanding of the range of options which it is meaningful to
advocate. There have been not only atomist individualists and holist
collectivists, Taylor reminds us, but also atomist collectivists and
holist individualists who recognize that human agents are socially
embedded but prize liberty and individual differences . He goes on to
illustrate what is gained by unlinking ontology and advocacy. Atom
istic ontology sees the common good as a convergence of individual
goods, he argues, and excludes an understanding of an "immediate"
common good whose good is that we share-the kind of common
good that animates patriotism. Thus, the atomistic ontology he says
is commonly adopted by liberal theorists inhibits them from recog
nizing patriotism where it exists. Taylor intends not only to defend
the view that democratic society needs some commonly recognized
definition of the good life but also to point to its presence within the
liberal framework of American political life. Outrage at the crimes
of Watergate was generated by a species of patriotic identification
that is defined by commitment to certain "American" ideals, among
them rule of law. Thus, a holist ontology can sensitize us to the fact
that procedural liberalism rests on internalized discipline and that
motivation for this discipline comes from republican solidarity. A
procedural liberal can be a holist.
The third starting point for evaluating and countering charges of
liberalism's moral deficiency is reconsideration of what is meant and
demanded by neutrality. Political theorists approach the matter from

Introduction

15

a number of directions. The tools of analytic philosophy are employed

to distinguish nondiscrimination and impartiality from neutrality and
to show that even as a conceptual matter, neutrality in a designated
range of disputes need not and should not be translated into an im
possibly extensive neutrality with regard to every conflict of interest
and opinion. Historically minded theorists point out that liberalism
arose amid specific conflicts, principally wars of religion, so that from
its inception liberalis m did not pretend to be neutral among all char
acters or values. The view that state action could not be justified by
appeals to some exclusive idea of the good life had its origin in actual
disputes, in intractable political predicaments rather than in moral
indifference, complacence, or naive disregard of the difficulties and
costs of neutrality.
In "Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in J. S. Mill's Thought, "
Richard Ashcraft gives a genetic account of Mill's efforts to compre
hend and resolve class conflict within the traditional liberal apparatus
of constitutionalism and impartiality. Ashcraft describes how Mill's
growing preoccupation with the clash of class interests corresponded
to his increasingly sociological approach to political thought. It led
him to change his thinking about the public-private divide and to
admit socioeconomic matters into public life, and it led him to reject
the thought that the market is an impartial mechanism for determining
wages . At the same time, Ashcraft shows, Mill rej ected the practi
cability of having government officials act either as neutral arbiters
of opposing class interests or as agents of justice. Though he came
to believe that j ustice supported some sort of cooperative socialism,
Mill did not propose that government should impose justice so long
as the claims of capital and labor rested on rival standards of equity.
His claims for representative government were in the end and of
necessity more modest. By bringing these conflicts of interest and
principle into public life, antagonism will work to avoid social stag
nation, and participatory institutions will be a force against stultifying
bureaucratization.
One recurrent problem political theorists address in this connection
is the tendency of liberalism's critics to carelessly identify neutrality
with amorality or moral indifference. In "Making Sense of Moral
Conflict," Steven Lukes discusses the connection between liberalism
and moral pluralism. He argues against philosophers who say that
moral conflict is more apparent than real, reducing it to a matter of
ignorance or error, logical inconsistency or the failure to recognize
the appropriate cultural contexts of relativist claims. Lukes insists that

Introduction

16

not only a plurality o f morals but also the experience of moral conflict
is a prevailing feature of modern life. He creates a typology of moral
conflict: diversity, incompatibility, and incommensurability-each
more intractable than the one preceding. He goes on to use this
typology to indicate the several respects in which a comprehensive,
all-embracing moral view is impossible. Taking moral conflict seri
ously lends support to a pluralist defense of liberal government, while
answering the charge that such a defense is morally "anemic." If we
take moral conflict seriously we understand that pluralist arguments
for liberalism need not reflect moral indifference, moral skepticism,
or value relativism.
Other political theorists are concerned with correcting the mistaken
notion that neutrality is the sole liberal imperative and with demon
strating its limits. Certainly private life is supposed to be a scene of
privileged particularist attachments and obligations. Impartiality and
respect for others in public life are experienced as a rigorous discipline
precisely because liberty encourages special affections and identifi
cations and the felt obligations arising from them. Standing back from
your own particular opinions describes only one kind of agency; it
is demanded of people only sometimes; and even then the capacity
to set aside certain considerations deemed politically unjustifiable is
achieved only with the greatest discipline. This discipline is inter
nalized as a result of deliberately fostered social practices and forms
one aspect of moral personality.
Liberal political thought is not committed to maximizing personal
freedom at the expense of every other consideration. At the extreme,
neutrality would mean treating repressive practices as irrepressible
and dismantling public institutions and practices that promote certain
virtues or moral attitudes (all practices, in practice). Instead, as Amy
Gutmann suggests, liberal theorists try to identify a bundle of virtues
compatible with a certain range of competing conceptions of human
flourishing.
Amy Gutmann and William Galston explore the limits of neutrality
as it applies to education. They agree that civic education is necessary
and possible, rejecting the stereotype of liberal education as the pre
sentation of neutral facts and tools for choice. They recognize that
inculcating certain virtues and habits will certainly come up against
the conflicting moral views of some parents and should triumph over
them. Where the authors differ is on what conception of a good liberal
society provides the pattern and justification for civic education. In
"Undemocratic Education, " Gutmann presents an ideal of democratic

Introduction

17

deliberation and a corresponding theory of education aimed at ena

bling citizens to participate in decisions and democratic society to
reproduce itself. She would build in protections against discrimination
and repression, but where disagreements persist about the relative
value of freedom and cultivated virtue, democracy decides. This idea
of civic education explains why children of religious fundamentalist
parents should not be exempted from readings in secular texts their
parents disapprove: neutrality in the service of personal freedom is
not the sole imperative, Gutmann argues; it does not extend this far.
William Galston gives less weight to participation and democratic
deliberation in his essay, "Civic Education in the Liberal State. " Rep
resentative democracy is the basic feature of liberal society, he argues,
so pedagogy aims at a somewhat different set of virtues, among them
the ability to recognize and appreciate the place of specific excellences
and kinds of expertise in public life. He too thinks that liberal de
mocracy requires tolerance and civic deliberation, but denies that
either one depends on educating children to evaluate ways of life
different from their parents' . Tolerance and deliberation are compat
ible with unshakable personal commitment to a way of life, so long
as it accepts certain minimal civic commitments. For Galston, liberty
entails the right to live unexamined as well as examined lives.
The chapters in this volume share several notable features. The
authors are less concerned to marshal authoritative arguments from
classic texts than to create arguments that address contemporary con
cerns; they use historical examples mainly to correct current errors
(such as the conflation of liberalism and modernity). A second com
mon feature is the considerable amount of attention paid to concrete
institutions, social conditions, and actual practices. The authors dem
onstrate the tendency of contemporary political theory to open out
to the findings of social science, to ethnography and psychology. But
the most important common ground is a commitment to ackno
edge and address the full range of positions on moral life that 1
within and at the margins of liberalism. As a result, this book
i
bodies at least one aspect of the moral life ofliberalism: the imperati
to argue and persuade that follows from pluralism and respect for
differences.

. I .
Varieties of Liberalism Today

0 N E

The Liberalism of Fear

JU D I T H N . S H K L A R

Before we can begin to analyze any specific form of liberalism we

must surely state as clearly as possible what the word means. For in
the course of so many years of ideological conflict it seems to have
lost its identity completely. Overuse and overextension have rendered
it so amorphous that it can now serve as an all-purpose word, whether
of abuse or praise. To bring a modest degree of order into this state
of confusion we might begin by insisting that liberalism refers to a
political doctrine, not a philosophy of life such as has traditionally
been provided by various forms of revealed religion and other com
prehensive Weltanschauungen . Liberalism has only one overriding aim:
to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise
of personal freedom.
Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions
without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is
compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is
the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism. It is a political
notion, because the fear and favor that have always inhibited freedom
are overwhelmingly generated by governments, both formal and in
formal. And while the sources of social oppression are indeed nu
merous, none has the deadly effect of those who, as the agents of the
modern state, have unique resources of physical might and persuasion
at their disposal.
Apart from prohibiting interference with the freedom of others,
liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how
people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to
make. It is not, as so many of its critics claim, synonymous with
modernity. Not that the latter is a crystal clear historical concept.
Generally it does not refer to simply everything that has happened

Varieties of Liberalism Today

22

since the Renaissance, but to a mixture of natural science, technology,

industrialization, skepticism, loss of religious orthodoxy, disenchant
ment, nihilism, and atomistic individualism. This is far from being
a complete list, but it covers the main characteristics of modernity as
it is perceived by those who believe that the word stands for centuries
of despair and that liberalism is its most characteristic political man
ifestation.
It is by no means necessary to engage in disputes about the quality
of the historiography or factual validity of this sort of discourse in
general, but for the student of political theory at least one point must
be noted. That is that liberalism has been very rare both in theory
and in practice in the last two hundred odd years, especially when
we recall that the European world is not the only inhabited part of
the globe. No one could ever have described the governments of
eastern Europe as liberal at any time, though a few briefly made a
feeble effort in that direction after the First World War. In central
Europe it has been instituted only after the Second World War, and
then it was imposed by the victors in a war that we forget at our
peril. Anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead
and gone ought to think again. In France liberalism under the three
Republics flickered on and off and is only now reasonably secure,
though it is still seriously challenged. In Britain it has enj oyed its
longest political success, but not in the vast areas, including Ireland,
that England ruled until recently. Finally, let us not forget that the
United States was not a liberal state until after the Civil War, and
even then often in name only. In short, to speak of a liberal era is
not to refer to anything that actually happened, except possibly by
comparison to what came after 1914.
The state of political thought was no more liberal than that of the
reigning governments, especially in the years after the French Rev
olution. And we should not forget the deeply illiberal prerevolution
ary republican tradition of which John Pocock has reminded us so
forcefully. It is in any case difficult to find a vast flow of liberal
ideology in the midst of the Catholic authoritarianism, romantic cor
poratist nostalgia, nationalism, racism, proslavery, social Darwinism,
imperialism, militarism, fascism, and most types of socialism which
dominated the battle of political ideas in the last century. There was
a current of liberal thought throughout the period, but it was hardly
the dominant intellectual voice. In the world beyond Europe it was
not heard at all. It was powerful in the United States only if black
people are not counted as members of its society .

The Liberalism of Fea r

23

Why then, given the actual complexity of the intellectual history

of the past centuries, is there so much easy generalizing about mod
ernity and its alleged liberalism? The reason is simple enough: lib
eralism is a latecomer, since it has its origins in post-Reformation
Europe. Its origins are in the terrible tension within Christianity
between the demands of creedal orthodoxy and those of charity,
between faith and morality. The cruelties of the religious wars had
the effect of turning many Christians away from the public policies
of the churches to a morality that saw toleration as an expression of
Christian charity. One thinks of Sebastien Castellion among Calvin
ists, for example. 1 Others, torn by conflicting spiritual impulses, be
came skeptics who put cruelty and fanaticism at the very head of the
human vices; Montaigne is the most notable among them. In either
case the individual, whether the bearer of a sacred conscience or the
potential victim of cruelty, is to be protected against the incursions
of public oppression.
Later, when the bond between conscience and God is severed, the
inviolability of personal decisions in matters of faith, knowledge, and
morality is still defended on the original grounds that we owe it to
each other as a matter of mutual respect, that a forced belief is in
itself false and that the threats and bribes used to enforce conformity
are inherently demeaning . To insist that individuals must make their
own choices about the most important matter in their lives-their
religious beliefs-without interference from public authority, is to
go very far indeed toward liberalism. It is, I think, the core of its
historical development, but it would be wrong to think of principled
toleration as equivalent to political liberalism. Limited and responsible
government may be implicit in the claim for personal autonomy, but
without an explicit political commitment to such institutions, liber
alism is still doctrinally incomplete. Montaigne was surely tolerant
and humanitarian but he was no liberal. The distance between him
and Locke is correspondingly great. Nevertheless, liberalism's deepest
grounding is in place from the first, in the conviction of the earliest
defenders of toleration, born in horror, that cruelty is an absolute
evil, an offense against God or humanity. It is out of that tradition
that the political liberalism of fear arose and continues amid the terror
of our time to have relevance. 2
There are of course many types ofliberalism that remain committed
to the primacy of conscience, whether in its Protestant or Kantian
versions . There is Jeffersonian liberalism of rights, which has other
foundations; and the Emersonian quest for self-development has its

Varieties of Liberalism Today

24

own liberal political expression . Liberalism does not in principle have

to depend on specific religious or philosophical systems of thought.
It does not have to choose among them as long as they do not rej ect
toleration, which is why Hobbes is not the father of liberalism. No
theory that gives public authorities the unconditional right to impose
beliefs and even a vocabulary as they may see fit upon the citizenry
can be described as even remotely liberal. Of all the cases made against
liberalism, the most bizarre is that liberals are really indifferent, if not
openly hostile, to personal freedom. This may follow from the pe
culiar identification of Leviathan as the very archetype of liberal phi
losophy, but it is a truly gross misrepresentation which simply assures
that any social contract theory, however authoritarian its intentions,
and any anti-Catholic polemic add up to liberalism. 3
The convoluted genealogy of liberalism that insists on seeing its
origins in a theory of absolutism is not in itself interesting. More
common is a sort of free association of ideas that perceives a danger
to traditional revealed religion in toleration and hence assumes that
liberalis m is of necessity atheistic, agnostic, relativistic, and nihilistic.
This catalogue of accusations is worth mentioning, because it is com
monplace and because it is easily and usefully refuted. The original
mistake is the failure to distinguish psychological affinities from log
ical consequences. As a result, these critics cannot grasp that the
liberalism of fear as a strictly political theory is not necessarily linked
to any one religious or scientific doctrine, though it is psychologically
more compatible with some rather than with others. It must rej ect
only those political doctrines that do not recognize any difference
between the spheres of the personal and the public. Because of the
primacy of toleration as the irreducible limit on public agents, liberals
must always draw such a line. This is not historically a permanent
or unalterable boundary, but it does require that every public policy
be considered with this separation in mind and be consciously de
fended as meeting its most severe current standard.
The important point for liberalism is not so much where the line
is drawn, as that it be drawn, and that it must under no circumstances
be ignored or forgotten. The limits of coercion begin, though they
do not end, with a prohibition upon invading the private realm, which
originally was a matter of religious faith, but which has changed and
will go on changing as objects of belief and the sense of privacy alter
in response to the technological and military character of governments
and the productive relationships that prevail. It is a shifting line, but

The Liberalism of Fear

25

not an erasable one, and it leaves liberals free to espouse a very large
range of philosophical and religious beliefs.
The liberalism offear is thus not necessarily tied to either skepticism
or to the pursuit of the natural sciences. There is, however, a real
psychological connection between them. Skepticism is inclined to
ward toleration, since in its doubts it cannot choose among the com
peting beliefs that swirl around it, so often in murderous rage.
Whether the skeptic seeks personal tranquility in retreat or tries to
calm the warring factions around her, she must prefer a government
that does nothing to increase the prevailing levels of fanaticism and
dogmatism. To that extent there is a natural affinity between the
liberal and the skeptic. Madison's discussion in the Federalist of how
to end sectarian and similar factional conflicts through freedom is the
perfect example of the fit between skepticism and liberal politics . 4
Nevertheless, a society of believers who choose never to resort to the
use of the agencies of government to further their particular faith is
imaginable, though not usual.
The intellectual flexibility of skepticism is psychologically more
adapted to liberalism, but it is not a necessary element of its politics.
A society governed by extremely oppressive skeptics can be easily
imagined if, for example, they were to follow Nietzsche's political
notions energetically. That is also true of the natural sciences. These
tend to flourish most in freedom, quite unlike the fine arts and
literature in this respect, but it is not impossible to imagine a science
friendly dictatorship . The publicity and the high standards of evi
dence, as well as the critical cast of mind which the natural sciences
ideally require, again may suggest a psychological bond between the
inner life of science and liberal politics. That is, however, far from
being necessarily or even normally the case. There are many thor
oughly illiberal scientists, in fact. The alliance between science and
liberalism was one of convenience at first, as both had much to fear
from the onslaughts of religion. With this shared enemy of censorship
and persecution in abeyance, the identity of attitudes tended to fade.
Science and liberalism were not born together; the former is far older.
Nothing, however, can erase the chief difference between the two.
The natural sciences live to change, while liberalism does not have
to take any particular view of tradition.
To the extent that the European past was utterly hostile to freedom
and that the most ancient of Inda-European traditions is the caste
society, liberals must rej ect particular traditions. No society that still

Va rieties of Libera lism Today

26

has traces o f the old tripartite division of humanity into those who
pray, those w ho fight, and those who la bor c an be liberal. 5 To turn
one' s back on some or even most traditions does not, however, mean
tha t one must forego all tradition as a matter of intell ectual honesty.
Liberalism need not decide a mong traditions that are not hostile to
its aspirations, nor does it have to regard the claims of any traditions
inherently false, simply because it does not meet scientific standards
of rational proof It all depends on the content and tendencies of the
tradition . Clearly representative government is impregnated with tra
ditions in Britain and in the United States. The habits of voluntarism
depend on a variety of traditions. These are surely more than merely
compatible with liberalism.
Intellectual modesty does not imply that the liberalism of fear has
no content, only that it is entirely nonutopian. In that respect it may
well be what Emerson called a party of memory rather than a party
of hope. 6 And indeed there are other types of liberalism that differ
from it sharply in this respect. First of all there is the liberalism of
natural rights which looks to the constant fulfillment of an ideal
preestablished normative order, be it nature's or God's, whose prin
ciples have to be realized in the lives of individual citizens through
public guarantees. It is God's will that we preserve ourselves, and it
is our own and society's duty to see that we are protected in our lives,
liberties, and property and all that pertains to them. To that end we
have a duty to establish protective public agencies and the right to
demand that they provide us with opportunities to make claims
against each and all .
If we take rights seriously we must see to it that principles such as
those of The Declaration of Independence be made effective in every
aspect of our public life. If the agencies of government have a single
primary function it is to see to it that the rights of individuals be
realized, because our integrity as God's or nature's creations requires
it. Conceivably one might argue that a perfect or optimal society
would be composed solely of rights claiming citizens. In all cases,
therefore, the liberalism of natural rights regards politics as a matter
of citizens who actively pursue their own legally secured ends in
accordance with a higher law. The paradigm of politics is the tribunal
in which fair rules and decisions are made to satisfy the greatest
possible number of demands made by individual citizens against one
another individually, and against the government and other socially
powerful institutions. The liberalism of natural rights envisages a j ust

The Liberalism of Fea r

27

society composed of politically sturdy citizens, each able and willing

to stand up for himself and others .
Equally given to hope is the liberalism of personal development.
Freedom, it argues, is necessary for personal as well as social progress.
We cannot make the best of our potentialities unless we are free to
do so. And morality is impossible unless we have an opportunity to
choose our courses of action. Nor can we benefit from education
unless our minds are free to accept and reject what we are told and
to read and hear the greatest variety of opposing opinions . Morality
and knowledge can develop only in a free and open society. There is
even reason to hope that institutions ofleaming will eventually replace
politics and government. It would not be unfair to say that these two
forms of liberalism have their spokesmen in Locke and John Stuart
Mill respectively, and they are of course perfectly genuine expressions
of liberal doctrine. It must be said, however, that neither one of these
two patron saints of liberalism had a strongly developed historical
memory, and it is on this faculty of the human mind that the liberalism
of fear draws most heavily .
The most immediate memory is at present the history of the world
since 1 9 1 4. In Europe and North America torture had gradually been
eliminated from the practices of government, and there was hope that
it might eventually disappear everywhere. With the intelligence and
loyalty requirements of the national warfare states that quickly de
veloped with the outbreak of hostilities , torture returned and has
flourished on a colossal scale ever since. 7 We say "never again, " but
somewhere someone is being tortured right now, and acute fear has
again become the most common form of social control. To this the
horror of modem warfare must be added as a reminder. The liberalism
of fear is a response to these undeniable actualities, and it therefore
concentrates on damage control.
Given the inevitability of that inequality of military, police, and
persuasive power which is called government, there is evidently al
ways much to be afraid of. And one may, thus, be less inclined to
celebrate the blessings of liberty than to consider the dangers of tyr
anny and war that threaten it. For this liberalism the basic units of
political life are not discursive and reflecting persons, nor friends and
enemies, nor patriotic soldier-citizens, nor energetic litigants, but the
weak and the powerful. And the freedom it wishes to secure is free
dom from the abuse of power and intimidation of the defenseless that
this difference invites. This apprehension should not be mistaken for

Varieties of Liberalism Today

28

the obsessive ideologies which concentrate solely on the notion of

totalitarianism. This is a shorthand for only the extremity of insti
tutionalized violence and almost implies that anything less radically
destructive need not concern us at all.
The liberalism of fear, on the contrary, regards abuses of public
powers in all regimes with equal trepidation. It worries about the
excesses of official agents at every level of government, and it assumes
that these are apt to burden the poor and weak most heavily. The
history of the poor compared to that of the various elites makes that
obvious enough. The assumption, amply justified by every page of
political history, is that some agents of government will behave law
lessly and brutally in small or big ways most of the time unless they
are prevented from doing so.
The liberalism inspired by these considerations does resemble Isaiah
Berlin's negative liberty, but it is not exactly the same. Berlin's neg
ative liberty of "not being forced" and its later version of "open
doors" is kept conceptually pure and separate from "the conditions
of liberty, " that is, the social and political institutions that make
personal freedom possible. That is entirely necessary if negative lib
erty is to be fully distinguished from what Berlin calls "positive
liberty, " which is the freedom of one's higher from one's lower self
It cannot be denied, moreover, that this very clear demarcation of
negative liberty is the best means of avoiding the slippery slope that
can lead us to its threatening opposite.
Nevertheless, there is much to be said for not separating negative
liberty from the conditions that are at least necessary to make it
possible at all. Limited government and the control of unequally
divided political power constitute the minimal condition without
which freedom is unimaginable in any politically organized society.
It is not a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary prerequisite. No
door is open in a political order in which public and private intimi
dation prevail, and it requires a complex system of institutions to
avoid that. If negative freedom is to have any political significance at
all, it must specify at least some of the institutional characteristics of
a relatively free regime. Socially that also means a dispersion of power
among a plurality of politically empowered groups, pluralism, in
short, as well as the elimination of such forms and degrees of social
inequality as expose people to oppressive practices. Otherwise the
"open doors" are a metaphor-and not, politically, a very illumi
nating one at that.
Moreover, there is no particular reason to accept the moral theory

The Liberalism of Fea r

29

on which Berlin's negative freedom rests. This is the belief that there
are several inherently incompatible moralities among which we must
choose, but which cannot be reconciled by reference to a common
criterion-paganism and Christianity being the two most obvious
examples. 8 Whatever the truth of this meta political assumption may
be, liberalism can do without it. The liberalism of fear in fact does
not rest on a theory of moral pluralism. It does not, to be sure, offer
a summum bonum toward which all political agents should strive, but
it certainly does begin with a summum malum, which all of us know
and would avoid if only we could. That evil is cruelty and the fear
it inspires, and the very fear of fear itself. To that extent the liberalism
of fear makes a universal and especially a cosmopolitan claim, as it
historically always has done.
What is meant by cruelty here? It is the deliberate infliction of
physical, and secondarily emotional, pain upon a weaker person or
group by stronger ones in order to achieve some end, tangible or
intangible, of the latter. It is not sadism, though sadistic individuals
may flock to occupy positions of power that permit them to indulge
their urges. But public cruelty is not an occasional personal inclina
tion . It is made possible by differences in public power, and it is
almost always built into the system of coercion upon which all gov
ernments have to rely to fulfill their essential functions. A minimal
level of fear is implied in any system of law, and the liberalism of
fear does not dream of an end of public, coercive government. The
fear it does want to prevent is that which is created by arbitrary,
unexpected, unnecessary, and unlicensed acts of force and by habitual
and pervasive acts of cruelty and torture performed by military,
paramilitary, and police agents in any regime.
Of fear it can be said without qualification that it is universal as it
is physiological. It is a mental as well as a physical reaction, and it is
common to animals as well as to human beings. To be alive is to be
afraid, and much to our advantage in many cases, since alarm often
preserves us from danger. The fear we fear is of pain inflicted by
others to kill and maim us, not the natural and healthy fear that merely
warns us of avoidable pain. And, when we think politically, we are
afraid not only for ourselves but for our fellow citizens as well. We
fear a society of fearful people.
Systematic fear is the condition that makes freedom impossible,
and it is aroused by the expectation of institutionalized cruelty as by
nothing else. However, it is fair to say that what I have called "putting
cruelty first" is not a sufficient basis for political liberalism. It is simply

Varieties of Liberalism Today

30

a first principle, an act of moral intuition based on ample observation,

on which liberalism can be built, especially at present. Because the
fear of systematic cruelty is so universal, moral claims based on its
prohibition have an immediate appeal and can gain recognition with
out much argument. But one cannot rest on this or any other na
turalistic fallacy. Liberals can begin with cruelty as the primary evil
only if they go beyond their well -grounded assumption that almost
all people fear it and would evade it if they could. If the prohibition
of cruelty can be universalized and recognized as a necessary condition
of the dignity of persons, then it can become a principle of political
morality. This could also be achieved by asking whether the prohi
bition would benefit the vast majority of human beings in meeting
their known needs and wants . Kantians and a utilitarian could accept
one of these tests, and liberalism need not choose between them.
What liberalism requires is the possibility of making the evil of
cruelty and fear the basic norm of its political practices and prescrip
tions. The only exception to the rule of avoidance is the prevention
of greater cruelties. That is why any government must use the threat
of punishment, though liberalism looks upon this as an unavoidable
evil, to be controlled in its scope and modified by legally enforced
rules of fairness, so that arbitrariness not be added to the minimum
of fear required for law enforcement. That this formulation owes
something to Kant's philosophy of law is evident, but the liberalism
of fear does not rest on his or any other moral philosophy in its
entirety. 9 It must in fact remain eclectic.
What the liberalism of fear owes to Locke is also obvious: that. the
governments of this world with their overwhelming power to kill,
maim, indoctrinate, and make war are not to be trusted uncondi
tionally ("lions"), and that any confidence that we might develop in
their agents must rest firmly on deep suspicion. Locke was not, and
neither should his heirs be, in favor of weak governments that cannot
frame or carry out public policies and decisions made in conformity
to requirements of publicity, deliberation, and fair procedures . What
is to be feared is every extralegal, secret, and unauthorized act by
public agents or their deputies . And to prevent such conduct requires
a constant division and subdivision of political power. The importance
of voluntary associations from this perspective is not the satisfaction
that their members may derive from j oining in cooperative endeavors,
but their ability to become significant units of social power and in
fluence that can check, or at least alter, the assertions of other orga
nized agents, both voluntary and governmental .

The Liberalism of Fear

31

The separation of the public from the private is evidently far from
stable here, as I already noted, especially if one does not ignore, as
the liberalism of fear certainly does not, the power of such basically
public organizations as corporate business enterprises. These of course
owe their entire character and power to the laws, and they are not
public in name only. To consider them in the same terms as the local
mom and pop store is unworthy of serious social discourse. Never
theless , it should be remembered that the reasons we speak of property
as private in many cases is that it is meant to be left to the discretion
of individual owners as a matter of public policy and law, precisely
because this is an indispensable and excellent way of limiting the long
arm of government and of dividing social power, as well as of securing
the independence ofindividuals. Nothing gives a person greater social
resources than legally guaranteed proprietorship. It cannot be unlim
ited, because it is the creature of the law in the first place, and also
because it serves a public purpose-the dispersion of power.
Where the instruments of coercion are at hand, whether it be
through the use of economic power, chiefly to hire, pay, fire, and
determine prices, or military might in its various manifestations, it
is the task of a liberal citizenry to see that not one official or unofficial
agent can intimidate anyone, except through the use of well-under
stood and accepted legal procedures. And that even then the agents
of coercion should always be on the defensive and limited to pro
portionate and necessary actions that can be excused only as a response
to threats of more severe cruelty and fear from private criminals.
It might well seem that the liberalism of fear is radically conse
quentialist in its concentration on the avoidance of foreseeable evils .
As a guide to political practices that is the case, but it must avoid any
tendency to offer ethical instructions in general . No form ofliberalism
has any business telling the citizenry to pursue happiness or even to
define that wholly elusive condition . It is for each one of us to seek
it or rej ect it in favor of duty or salvation or passivity, for example.
Liberalism must restrict itself to politics and to proposals to restrain
potential abusers of power in order to lift the burden of fear and favor
from the shoulders of adult women and men, who can then conduct
their lives in accordance with their own beliefs and preferences, as
long as they do not prevent others from doing so as well.
There are several well-known obj ections to the liberalism of fear. It
will be called "reductionist, " because it is first and foremost based
on the physical suffering and fears of ordinary human beings, rather

Varieties of Liberalism Today

32

than on moral or ideological aspirations. Liberalism does not collapse

politics into administration, economics, or psychology, so it is not
reductive in this sense. But as it is based on common and immediate
experiences, it offends those who identify politics with mankind' s
most noble aspirations. What i s t o be regarded as noble i s , t o b e sure,
highly contestable.
To call the liberalism of fear a lowering of one's sights implies that
emotions are inferior to ideas and especially to political causes. It may
be noble to pursue ideological ambitions or risk one's life for a
"cause, " but it is not at all noble to kill another human being in
pursuit of one's own " causes . " "Causes , " however spiritual they may
be, are not self-j ustifying, and they are not all equally edifying. And
even the most appealing are nothing but instruments of torture or
craven excuses for it, when they are forced upon others by threats
and bribes. We would do far less harm if we learned to accept each
other as sentient beings, whatever else we may be, and to understand
that physical well-being and toleration are not simply inferior to the
other aims that each one of us may choose to pursue.
There is absolutely nothing elevated in death and dying. Even if
that were the case, it is not the task of public authority to encourage,
promote, and enforce them, as they still do. Self-sacrifice may stir
our admiration, but it is not, by definition, a political duty, but an
act of supererogation which falls outside the realm of politics. There
is nothing " reductive" about building a political order on the avoid
ance offear and cruelty unless one begins with a contempt for physical
experience. The consequences of political spirituality are, moreover,
far less elevating than it might seem. Politically it has usually served
as an excuse for orgies of destruction. Need one remind anyone of
that truly ennobling cry: "Viva la muerte!"-and the regime it ush
ered in?
A related objection to the liberalism offear is that it replaces genuine
human reason with "instrumental rationality. " 1 0 The meaning of the
former is usually left unclear, but as a rule it is not a version of Platonic
idealism. " Instrumental rationality" refers to political practices that
pursue only efficiency or means-ends calculations, without any ques
tioning of the rationality or other possible worth of their aims or
outcomes . Since the liberalism of fear has very clear aims-the re
duction of fear and cruelty-that sort of argument appears to be quite
irrelevant.
More telling is the notion that "instrumental reasoning" places all
its confidence in procedures, without adequate attention to the ra-

The Liberalism of Fear

33

tionality of the conduct and discourse of those who p articipate in and

follow them. It trusts the mechanisms for creating con sent and en
suring fairness , without any attention to the character of the individual
citizens or to that of the society as a whole. Even if a pluralistic political
system under the rule oflaw were to yield a free and relatively peaceful
society, it would not be genuinely rational, and not at all ethical,
unless it also educated its citizens to a genuine level of political un
derstanding and with it the capacity to be masters of their collective
life. This is supposed to be "substantially" rational in a way that the
liberalism of fear, with its attention to procedures and outcomes, is
not. But in fact the argument is not about rationality at all, but about
expectations of radical social change and of utopian aspirations. The
accusation of "instrumentality, " if it means anything at all, amounts
to a disdain for those who do not want to pay the price of utopian
ventures, least of all those invented by other people. It refuses to
take risks at the expense of others in pursuit of any ideal, however
rational.
It cannot be denied that the experience of politics according to fair
procedures and the rule of law do indirectly educate the citizens, even
though that is not their overt purpose, which is purely political. The
habits of patience, self-restraint, respect for the claims of others, and
caution constitute forms of social discipline that are not only wholly
compatible with personal freedom, but encourage socially and per
sonally valuable characteristics. 1 1 This, it should be emphasized, does
not imply that the liberal s tate can ever have an educative government
that aims at creating specific kinds of character and enforces its own
beliefs . It can never be didactic in intent in that exclusive and inher
ently authoritarian way. Liberalism, as we saw, began precisely in
order to oppose the educative state. However, no s ystem of govern
ment, no system of legal procedures, and no system of public edu
cation is without psychological effect, and liberalism has no reason
at all to apologize for the inclinations and habits that procedural fair
ness and responsible government are likely to encourage.
If citizens are to act individually and in associations, especially in
a democracy, to protest and block any sign of governmental illegality
and abuse, they must have a fair share of moral courage, self-reliance,
and stubbornness to assert themselves effectively. To foster well
informed and self-directed adults must be the aim of every effort to
educate the citizens of a liberal society. There is a very clear account
of what a perfect liberal would look like more or less. It is to be
found in Kant's Doctrine of Virtue, which gives us a very detailed

Varieties of Liberalism Today

34

account of the disposition of a person who respects other people

without condescension, arrogance, humility, or fear. He or she does
not insult others with lies or cruelty, both of which mar one's own
character no less than they injure one's victims . Liberal politics depend
for their success on the efforts of such people, but it is not the task
ofliberal politics to foster them simply as models of human perfection.
All it can claim is that if we want to promote political freedom, then
this is appropriate behavior.
This liberal prescription for citizenship, it is now often argued, is
both a very unhistorical and an ethnocentric view that makes quite
unwarranted claims for universality. That it arose at a given time and
place is, after all, inevitable, but the relativist now argues that the
liberalism of fear would not be welcomed by most of those who live
under their traditional customs, even if these are as cruel and op
pressive as the Indian caste system . 1 2 To judge inherited habits by
standards that purport to be general, even though they are alien to a
people, is said to be an arrogant imposition of false as well as partial
principles . For there are no generally valid social prohibitions or rules,
and the task of the social critic is at most to articulate socially im
manent values. All this is not nearly as self-evident as the relativistic
defenders of local customs would have us believe.
Unless and until we can offer the inj ured and insulted victims of
most of the world's traditional as well as revolutionary governments
a genuine and practicable alternative to their present condition, we
have no way of knowing whether they really enj oy their chains. There
is very little evidence that they do. The Chinese did not really like
Mao' s reign any more than we would, in spite of their political and
cultural distance from us. The absolute relativism, not merely cultural
but psychological, that rejects the liberalism offear as both too " West
ern" and too abstract is too complacent and too ready to forget the
horrors of our world to be credible. It is deeply illiberal, not only in
its submission to tradition as an ideal, but in its dogmatic identification
of every local practice with deeply shared local human aspirations .
To step outside these customs is not, as the relativist claims, partic
ularly insolent and intrusive. Only the challenge from nowhere and
the claims of universal humanity and rational argument cast in gen
eral terms can be put to the test of general scrutiny and public criti
cism. 13
The unspoken and sanctified practices that prevail within every
tribal border can never be openly analyzed or appraised, for they are
by definition already permanently settled within the communal con-

The Liberalism of Fea r

35

sciousness . Unless there is an open and public review of all the prac
tical alternatives, especially of the new and alien, there can be no
responsible choices and no way of controlling the authorities that
claim to be the voice of the people and its spirit. The arrogance of
the prophet and the bard who pronounce the embedded norms is far
greater than that of any deontologist. For they profess not only to
reveal a hidden popular soul, but to do so in a manner that is not
subj ect to extratribal review. That orgies of xenophobia just might
lie in the wake of these claims of hermeneutical primacy is also not
without historical example. The history of nationalism is not en
couraging . But even at its best, ethnic relativism can say little about
fear and cruelty, except that they are commonplace everywhere. 1 4
War also, though not perhaps in its present nuclear possibilities, has
always existed. Are we to defend it on that ground? Actually, the
most reliable test for what cruelties are to be endured at any place
and any time is to ask the likeliest victims, the least powerful persons,
at any given moment and under controlled conditions. Until that is
done there is no reason not to assume that the liberalism of fear has
much to offer to the victims of political tyranny.
These considerations should be recalled especially now, as the lib
eralism of fear is liable also to being charged with lacking an adequate
theory of "the self. " The probability of widely divergent selves is
obviously one of the basic assumptions of any liberal doctrine. For
political purposes liberalism does not have to assume anything about
human nature except that people, apart from similar physical and
psychological structures, differ in their personalities to a very marked
degree. At a superficial level we must assume that some people will
be encumbered with group traditions that they cherish, while others
may only want to escape from their social origins and ascriptive
bonds . These socially very important aspects of human experience
are, like most acquired characteristics, extremely diverse and subject
to change. Social learning is a great part of our character, though the
sum of all our roles may not add up to a complete "self. " For political
purposes it is not this irreducible "self" or the peculiar character that
we acquire in the course of our education that matter, but only the
fact that many different "selves" should be free to interact politi
cally.
To those A merican political theorists who long for either more
communal or more expansively individualistic personalities, I now
offer a reminder that these are the concerns of an exceptionally priv
ileged liberal society, and that until the institutions of primary free-

Varieties of Liberalism Today

36

dom are in place these .longings cannot even arise. Indeed the extent
to which both the communitarian and the romantic take free public
institutions for granted is a tribute to the United States, but not to
their sense of history. 15 Too great a part of past and present political
experience is neglected when we ignore the annual reports of Amnesty
International and of contemporary warfare. It used to be the mark of
liberalism that it was cosmopolitan and that an insult to the life and
liberty of a member of any race or group in any part of the world
was of genuine concern. It may be a revolting paradox that the very
success of liberalism in some countries has atrophied the political
empathies of their citizens . That appears to be one cost of taking
freedom for granted, but it may not be the only one.
Liberalism does not have to enter into speculations about what the
potentialities of this or that " self" may be, but it does have to take
into account the actual political conditions under which people live,
in order to act here and now to prevent known and real dangers . A
concern for human freedom cannot stop with the satisfactions of one's
own society or clan. We must therefore be suspicious of ideologies
of solidarity, precisely because they are so attractive to those who
find liberalism emotionally unsatisfying, and who have gone on in
our century to create oppressive and cruel regimes of unparalleled
horror. The assumption that these offer something wholesome to the
atomized citizen may or may not be true, but the political conse
quences are not, on the historical record, open to much doubt. To
seek emotional and personal development in the bosom of a com
munity or in romantic self-expression is a choice open to citizens in
liberal societies . Both, however, are apolitical impulses and wholly
self-oriented, which at best distract us from the main task of politics
when they are presented as political doctrines, and at worst can, under
unfortunate circumstances, seriously damage liberal practices. For
although both appear only to be redrawing the boundaries between
the personal and the public, which is a perfectly normal political
practice, it cannot be said that either one has a serious sense of the
im plications of the proposed shifts in either direction. 16
It might well seem that the liberalism of fear is very close to an
archism. That is not true, because liberals have always been aware of
the degree of informal coercion and educative social pressures that
even the most ardent anarchist theorists have suggested as acceptable
substitutes for law. 17 Moreover, even if the theories of anarchism
were less flawed, the actualities of countries in which law and gov
ernment have broken down is not encouraging. Does anyone want

The Liberalism of Fea r

37

to live in Beirut? The original first principle of liberalism, the rule of

law, remains perfectly intact, and it is not an anarchistic doctrine.
There is no reason at all to abandon it. It is the prime instrument to
restrain governments. The potentialities of persecution have kept pace
with technological advances; we have as much to fear from the in
struments of torture and persecution as ever. One half of the Bill of
Rights is about fair trials and the protection of the accused in criminal
trials. For it is in court that the citizen meets the might of the state,
and it is not an equal contest. Without well-defined procedures, honest
judges, opportunities for counsel and for appeals, no one has a chance.
Nor should we allow more acts to be criminalized than is necessary
for our mutual safety. Finally, nothing speaks better for a liberal state
than legal efforts to compensate the victims of crime rather than
merely to punish the criminal for having violated the law. For he did
inj ure, terrify, and abuse a human being first and foremost.
It is at this point that the liberalism of fear adopts a strong defense
of equal rights and their legal protection. It cannot base itself upon
the notion of rights as fundamental and given, but it does see them
as j ust those licenses and empowerments that citizens must have in
order to preserve their freedom and to protect themselves against
abuse. The institutions of a pluralist order with multiple centers of
power and institutionalized rights is merely a description of a liberal
political society . It is also of necessity a democratic one, because
without enough equality of power to protect and assert one's rights,
freedom is but a hope. Without the institutions of representative
democracy and an accessible, fair, and independent judiciary open to
appeals, and in the absence of a multiplicity of politically active
groups , liberalism is in j eopardy . It is the entire purpose of the lib
eralism of fear to prevent that outcome. It is therefore fair to say that
liberalism is monogamously, faithfully, and permanently married to
democracy-but it is a marriage of convenience.
To account for the necessity of freedom in general, references to
particular institutions and ideologies are not enough. One must put
cruelty first and understand the fear of fear and recognize them every
where. Unrestrained "punishing" and denials of the most basic means
of survival by governments, near and far from us , should incline us
to look with critical attention to the practices of all agents of all
governments and to the threats of war here and everywhere.
If I sound like Caesare Beccaria, or some other refugee from the
eighteenth century, it may well be that I have read the sort of reports
they read about the ways of governments. The foreign news in the

Varieties of Libe ralism Today

38

York Times suffice, as do its accounts of the prevalence of racism,

xenophobia, and systematic governmental brutality here and every
where. I cannot see how any political theorist or politically alert citizen
can possibly ignore them and fail to protest against them. Once we
do that, we have moved toward the liberalism of fear, and away from
the more exhilarating but less urgent forms of liberal thought.

New

T W 0

Humanist Liberalism
SUSAN MOLLER OKIN

Compared with some other academic disciplines, contemporary po

litical theory is in one significant respect in the Dark Ages . Literary
theory and, to a lesser extent, history have both risen to the challenge
and incorporated many of the insights of more than a decade of
feminist scholarship . But most political theorists have yet to take
gender-by which I mean the social institutionalization of sexual
difference-seriously . This challenge will have to be taken up and
responded to before any political theory can be rightly regarded as
"humanist. "
Liberalism has been constructed around distinctions between the
public realm, which includes politics, and the private, which includes
personal and domestic life. The world of wage-work and the mar
ketplace is sometimes included in the public sphere (and contrasted
with the domestic) , but sometimes it is placed in the private (and
contrasted with the state or governmental) . The main purpose of
these distinctions, since their seventeenth-century origins, has been
to promote individual security and freedom and to restrain the arm
of governments. However, as feminist scholars have by now amply
demonstrated, in traditional liberal thought the distinction between
the public and the domestic realms rests on the assumption that men
inhabit both, easily moving from one to the other, but that women
inhabit only the realm of family life, where they are properly sub
ordinate to their husbands. Thus, women were long denied most of
the crucial political and legal rights defended by liberals. 1 The "au
tonomous individuals " of whom liberal theorists wrote before the
twentieth century-with the notable exception ofJohn Stuart Mill-

Varieties of Liberalism Today

40

were male heads of households. Liberalism's past is deeply and, for

the most part unambiguously, patriarchal.
Contemporary liberal theorists often write with far greater ambi
guity. Often, though by no means always, they employ gender
neutral language, such as "men and women, " "he or she, " "persons, "
or "the self. " More often than not, however, this usage is highly
misleading, since its supposed gender neutrality is false. At worst, it
is ludicrous . It serves only to disguise the fact that contemporary
liberalism has not yet taken up the challenge of converting a theory
that was built on both the separation of public from private and the
confinement of women to family life into a theory that can be about
ali of us as participants in public as well as private life. 2 In conj unction
with their false gender neutrality, contemporary liberal theorists typ
ically ignore the family. They fail to analyze its politics or to consider
the justice or injustice of its structure and its practices . At the same
time, however, they assume its existence somewhere outside of the
scope of their theories . With gender and the family ignored but as
sumed, most liberalism is still clearly patriarchal. The question is
whether and how we can replace this patriarchal liberalism with a
political theory of humanist liberalism.
But why liberalism? Some feminists have concluded that any rec
onciliation of liberalism with feminism is impossible, that the de
mands of feminism expose unresolvable contradictions in liberalism. 3
I endorse fundamental principles of liberalism, despite its difficulties,
for reasons shared by some of the other contributors to this book.
Not the least of these is that we live in an age of a great plurality of
beliefs, preferred ways of life, conceptions of the good. Liberalism
in many ways takes this fact of modern life seriously. 4 It values the
individuality that is promoted and preserved by the respect for per
sonal preferences and fo r the need for privacy; it promotes the op
portunity of persons to live their own lives and to seek out their own
conceptions of the good; and it is well aware of the dangers that can
result from the imposition of supposed "community values . " I also
believe-and here I break ranks with some of the other contributors
to this volume-that these aims of liberalism are much more likely
to be achieved in a society considerably more egalitarian than the
oligarchical-democratic hybrid that the United States is today. A
liberalism that is founded on the plurality of beliefs, modes of life,
and attachments, and that aims to maximize persons' opportunities
to live a good life as they wish is not only compatible with a significant

Humanist Liberalism

41

degree of socialization of the means of production and redistribution

of wealth-indeed it requires it. 5
In certain respects the challenges of feminists who endorse the
fundamental aims of liberalism are parallel to some of the challenges
that liberals with leftist sympathies present to more traditional ver
sions of liberalism. Just as the left disputes the liberal definition of
politics that has drawn a firm line between state and society and claims
that "the economic is political, " so feminists challenge the traditional
liberal dichotomy between public and private that divides the personal
and domestic from the rest of life. As I shall argue here, if liberalism
is to include all of us, women and men, it must address the challenge
presented by the claim that "the personal is political. "

Challenges of Feminist Theory

Feminist theorists have made a number of arguments that bear on
current disputes in mainstream political thought. They argue that
claims that the subj ects of classic liberal theory are autonomous, ba
sically equal, unattached rational individuals-in Hobbes's words
" men as if but even now sprung out of the earth . . . like
mushrooms"6-rest on the often unstated assumption of women's un
paid reproductive and domestic work, their dependence and subor
dination within the family, nd their exclusion from most spheres of
life. With women's status left ambiguous and the family assumed but
not discussed, contemporary liberal theory has yet to take account of
the fact that men are not mushrooms. It pays remarkably little at
tention to how we become the adults who form the subj ect matter of
political theories. This deficit is of particular importance when we
concern ourselves with issues of gender. For feminist scholars have
shown how the characteristics required of men and women in societies
structured by gender are reproduced, not only through the more
obvious devices of sex-role socialization, but largely through the
maintenance of female parenting. The characteristics that we develop
as we become women or men, Nancy Chodorow has argued, are
largely a result of the fact that children of both sexes are raised pri
marily by women. 7 Liberal theorists who take such arguments seri
ously cannot continue to regard the structure and practices of family
life as separate from and irrelevant to "the political. "
Feminists have challenged the liberal distinction between the public
realm and the private life of the family in several other ways. The

Varieties of Liberalism Today

42

aim of the theoretical dichotomy has been, allegedly, to sustain the

protection of private life from intervention by the state. By its non
intervention, the state is supposed to maintain its neutrality with
regard to what goes on within the private sphere. Feminism challenges
this claim . First, the liberal state has regulated and controlled the
family, in innumerable ways , and in such ways as to reinforce pa
triarchy. For hundreds of years in Britain and the United S tates, the
Common Law notion of coverture deprived women of legal person
hood upon marriage. The state enforced the rights of husbands to
their wives' property and persons and made it virtually impossible
for women to divorce or even to live separately from their husbands.
U n til very recently it reinforced the patriarchal structure of marriage
by denying women rights routinely exercised by men in the spheres
of work, marketplace, and politics , on the grounds that the exercise
of such rights would interfere with women's performance of their
domestic responsibilities . 8 This history ofinequality between the sexes
is of continued significance. We cannot fully comprehend, much less
change, the gender structure of our present society without constant
reference to the practices and traditions of its past. 9
Even since the major aspects of legal coverture and most obvious
instances of legal sex discrimination have been abolished, however,
the state cannot be perceived as neutral in relation to family life. It
still regulates such crucial family issues as marriage, divorce, and child
custody. As feminist scholarship has made clear, the current divorce
laws and practices of American courts place women and children at
a considerable social and economic disadvantage, and I have argued
elsewhere that this fact affects the conditions of ongoing family life,
reinforcing male dominance. 10 Women, whether or not they also
work for pay, continue to perform far more of the unpaid labor of
families than men. 1 1 It is equally clear that this has a considerable
effect on their success and security in the world of wage-work, on
their capacity to be economically self-supporting, and thence on their
bargaining power within the family.
Thus, the still heavily gendered structure of family life affects the
relative positions of men and women in the "public" world outside,
which in turn reverberate within the family. "Public" and "private"
life are inextricably intertwined, not only for women as individuals,
but for women as an entire "sex-class. " This fact was graphically
illustrated by two articles that appeared recently on subsequent days
on the front page of the New York Times . 12 One was about a tiny and
highly paid elite among women-those who work as lawyers for the

Humanist Liberalism

43

top law firms in the United States . If these women become mothers
and spend any time at all with their children, they find themselves
off the partnership track and instead, with no prospects of advance
ment in the profession, on the "mommy track. " " Nine to five" is
decidedly "part-time work , " in the ethos of these firms . One mother
reports that, in spite of her twelve-hour workdays and frequent work
ing weekends, she has no chance of making partner. The article ig
nores the fact that these women's children also have fathers, or that
most of the men working for the top firms also have children, except
to report that male lawyers who take parental leave are seen as "wimp
like. " The division of labor within the family, even in these cases,
where the women are extremely well qualified, successful, and po
tentially influential, seems to be taken for granted.
The next day's Times reports on a case of major significance for
abortion rights, decided by a Federal Appeals Court in Minnesota.
The all-male panel of j udges ruled seven to three that the state may
require women under eighteen years who wish to obtain an abortion
to notify both parents (even in cases of divorce, separation, or deser
tion) or get special approval from a state j udge. The significance of
the second article is amplified when it is read in j uxtaposition
with the other. For the first shows us how those who rise to the top
in the highly politically influential profession of law are among those
in our society who have had the least experience of all of raising
children. 13 They would therefore seem to be those least well-informed
to make any decisions about abortion, and especially such decisions
involving relations between teenage girls and their parents. Here we
find a systematically built-in absence of mothers (and, presumably,
of "wimp-like" participating fathers too) from high-level political
decisions concerning some of the most vulnerable persons in our
society-women who become pregnant while still in their teens, and
their children. It is not hard to discern the interconnections of the
supposedly separate public and private domains here.
Public life is far less distinct from personal and domestic life for
women than for men. Their experience in each radically affects their
possibilities in the other. The claim that the two spheres are separate
is premised upon, but does not recognize, both a material and a
psychological division of labor between the sexes . Since wage and
salaried work, as well as other social institutions such as schools, are
still structured as if the worker has a wife at home to take care of the
children and perform other domestic responsibilities, it is not sur
prising that mothers, and especially single mothers, h ave a difficult

Va rieties of Liberalism Today

44

time when they try to manage both. Institutions such as workplaces

and schools, courts and legislatures, are still to a large extent built on
the old assumption that "someone" is home to take care of children,
the sick, the disabled, and anyone else who might need to be taken
care of. Now that many workers are also that someone, either as a
joint, a sole, or a primary parent, they (mostly women) are finding
it much less easy to move from one sphere to the other and back in
the way that the "liberal individual" is supposed to be able to do. It
is neither by chance nor because of some innate defectiveness that
full-time working women earn (after some recent improvement) 70
p ercent of the wages of full-time working men, or that women are
still virtually absent from positions of great political power. Nor is
it puzzling that, of married couples with children, only 27 percent of
the women, compared with 77 percent of the men, have full-time
year-round j obs. 1 4 Compounding the situation of women's economic
dependence on men, half of all women who work full-time earn less
than $20, 000 per year. Underlying all these public inequalities is the
continuing unequal division of the unpaid labor of the family, es
pecially its childcare and other nurturing responsibilities. In turn, the
inequalities between the sexes in the public sphere, by limiting wom
en's influence and underrepresenting their perspectives, serve in a
multitude of ways to allow public policy and the economy to reinforce
the inequalities of the private sphere.
As well as these serious practical difficulties, the division of labor
within most families raises psychological barriers against women in
all other spheres. In liberal democratic politics, as well as in many
workplace situations, speech and argument are often recognized as
crucial components of full participation. Michael Walzer, for
example, writes : "Democracy is th e political way of allocating
power . . . What counts is argument among the citizens. Democracy
puts a premium on speech, persuasive argument, rhetorical skill. Ide
ally, the citizen who makes the most persuasive argument . . . gets
his way . " 15 Yet women are often handicapped, deprived of any au
thority in their speech. Kathleen Jones's recent Foucaultian analysis
diagnoses the problem as not "that women have not learned how to
be in authority, " but rather "that authority currently is conceptualized
so that female voices are excluded from it. " 1 6 Women's private
and public personae are inextricably linked in the minds of many
men, a problem exacerbated by the fact that we are so often repre
sented in token numbers . Sometimes women in the public sphere are
j ust ignored, not seen or heard. Sometimes we are seen and heard
-

Humanist Liberalism

45

only insofar as we make ourselves seem as much as possible like men.

Sometimes we are sexually harassed and demeaned at work, as many
women are at home. And sometimes what we say is silenced or
distorted because we get proj ected onto us the personae of particular
imp ortant females in the intrapsychic lives of men. 17 All these hand
icaps , the baggage that women carry with them from the sexual
division of labor at home into all the other spheres of life, certainly
do not make it easy for us to make the transition back and forth.
Thus, because of the past and present division of labor at home, for
women the public and the private are in many ways not separate,
distinct realms at all.
Finally, feminists have pointed out that, in many respects, the liberal
ideal of nonintervention of the state into the realm of family life serves
to reinforce actual inequalities within that realm. In earlier versions
of liberalism it was quite clear that privacy rights of families meant
the rights of male heads of households to regulate their families as
they thought fit. Thus , for example, Locke, who drew a clear dis
tinction between paternal and political power, gives, as an example
of the things that no one would consider interfering with, a man's
right to marry off his daughter. He does not consider whether a
daughter might herself have an interest, and therefore a right of pri
vacy to choose her own husband. 1 8
Until very recently, Supreme Court decisions resting on a pre
sumed constitutional right of family privacy roughly followed this
model, and many still do; they asserted the rights of families to make
decisions regulating their members . But in recent years, and partic
ularly since the feminist and children's rights movements emerged in
the 1 960s, the courts have begun to recognize that in the domain of
family life, as they had already recognized in the realm of work,
nonintervention by the state in effect affirms the power of the phys
ically or economically stronger. Thus they have recently also defended
new, sometimes conflicting, claims to privacy, which are perhaps
better labeled individual privacy within the family than family pri
vacy. They have sometimes argued that the Constitution protects the
rights of individual family members, even against the wishes of more
powerful members or the collective decision of the family as a whole.
Thus, for example, the rights of married women or of minors to seek
abortions, though initially derived from the precedent of the right of
family privacy, may be more reasonably viewed as individual rights,
and sometimes constitute rights against families . These ongoing and
still much disputed changes in perceptions of rights to privacy have

Varieties of Liberalism Today

48

even less attention to the issues of family j ustice than Rawls's include
Bruce Ackerman's Social justice in the Liberal State, Ronald Dworkin 's
Taking Rights Seriously, William Galston's justice and the Human Good,
and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia . 23 Michael Walzer's
theory of j ustice is exceptional in this regard but, as I have argued
elsewhere, the conclusion that emanates from his discussion of the
family-that its gender structure is unj ust-does not sit easily with
his emphasis on shared meanings as the foundations for j ustice. 24
Though the feminist arguments already discussed have demonstrated
the interconnections between the gender structure inside and outside
the family, and have shown how crucial the assignment of primary
parenting to women is both in making men and women what they
are and in determining their respective opportunities in life, the impact
of these arguments has yet to be felt in mainstream liberal theory.
Indeed, as I shall argue later, one of the recent defenses that liberals
have proposed against communitarian critique involves a reemphasis
on and a rereification of the public-private distinction.
The communitarian critics of liberalism have by and large com
pounded liberal theory's blindness to the facts of gender and neglect
of the family as a politically relevant institution. The more conserv
ative, nostalgic communitarians have, either implicitly or explicitly,
fallen back on an ahistorical idealization of the traditional family. In
Alasdair Maclntyre' s nostalgic communitarianism, the idealization of
traditional family forms and the acceptance of gender are largely
implicit. In After Virtue his turning back to the Aristotelian tradition
of the virtues without regard for Aristotle's exclusion of women from
not only politics but the entire " good life" provides a clue to his
neglect of the political significance of gender. So does his reading of
Jane Austen as a celebrant rather than an ironic critic of late-eight
eenth-century domestic life. At another point Macintyre gives, with
no apparent consciousness of its sexism, a list of the characters "we"
need as the models around which to shape our lives as narratives.
The only female characters in the list are a wicked stepmother and a
suckling wolf. 25
Maclntyre's reliance on the rationality of traditions of the virtues
that have assumed and extolled variants of gender structure highly
oppressive of women is continued into his most recent book. Though
he briefly addresses feminist criticism of Aristotle, his response is
quite inadequate. For he refers us to Plato, without mentioning the
fact that Plato' s integration of the guardian women into public life
depends upon the abolition of the family, which hardly seems a sat-

Humanist Liberalism

49

isfactory solution for one who identifies himself at the beginning of

the book as an Augustinian Christian and at the end as a Thomist. 26
In attempting to develop a theory ofjustice founded upon adjudicating
among the rationality of certain traditions-"that which runs from
Homer to Aristotle and later passes through Arab and Jewish writers
to Albertus Magnus and Aquinas; that which is transmitted from the
Bible through Augustine to Aquinas; and that which carries the Scot
tish moral tradition from Calvinist A ristotelianism to its encounter
with Hume"-Maclntyre continues to ignore the fact that all these
traditions assumed and j ustified the subordination and dependence of
women in the family and their exclusion from full participation in
nondomestic life. 27 Traditions such as these have been major ideo
logical tools in sustaining the continued inequality of the !\exes . But
Macintyre is still largely ignoring feminist political theory and its
critiques of the traditions on which he relies for historically grounded
rationality in political and moral thinking.
In the case of Michael S andel's nostalgic communitarianism, most
attention has been paid to his critique of the Rawlsian self as disem
bodied and unencumbered, and his insistence that the self be under
stood as constituted at least in part by its attachments, convictions,
and conceptions of the good. It is remarkable that in making this case
he pays no attention to the earliest and most fundamental respect in
which our "selves" are constituted, in the gender-structured families
of a gender-structured society . 28 Despite his rej ection of the "disem
bodied self, " he fails to notice that embodied selves have different
kinds of bodies, and that in all societies up to and including the present
the sexual differences between them have been imbued with enormous
social significance.
Far less noticed than his concept of the self has been Sandel' s un
reflective idealization of the family and denial of any meaningful dis
tinction between p ublic and personal life. Early in his critique, Sandel
attacks Rawls's claim that j ustice is the first virtue of social institu
tions. This claim depends on Rawls's assertion that "a human society
is characterized by the circumstances ofjustice, " by which he means
conditions of moderate scarcity and different conceptions of the good
(together leading to conflicting claims about the resources available) ,
and human imperfection in powers of reasoning and j udgment. 29 The
primacy of j ustice, Sandel acknowledges, is a "deep and power
ful . . . claim, " which, taken together with some related assertions,
"if they can be defended, provides an impressive foundation, at once
moral and epistemological, for certain liberal doctrines . "30 He sets

Varieties of Liberalism Today

46

brou ght into the light of day a fundamental problem that must be
solv ed in the transition from patriarchal to humanist liberalism. 1 9
These are some of the central feminist critiques of liberalism and
its theory. Most mainstream political theory, however, proceeds re
gardless of these arguments and discoveries.

Gender and the Fam ily in the Liberal-Communitarian Debate

The central debate in Anglo-American political theory during the
1 980s has been between defenders ofliberalism and its communitarian
critics. There is a ghostly element to this debate, since communitarians
ha v e so far failed to come up with even the outlines of a theory of
their own . Nevertheless, their criticisms of liberalism have attracted
much attention and have put liberal theorists on the defensive. By
examining some of the assumptions, arguments, and conclusions set
forth by those on both sides of this debate, I shall point out some
problems that result from the continuing neglect of feminist theory,
and particularly of its critiques of the public-domestic dichotomy.
Whether they rely on it heavily, argue as if it is of little significance
at all, or at times seem aware and at other times equally unaware of
the political nature and relevance of so-called "private" institutions,
none of them seems either to give it much thought, or to be aware of
the significant obj ections to the liberal version of the dichotomy that
have been expressd by feminist theorists .
John Rawls's A Theory ofjustice, published before much of the new
scholarship on gender had appeared, continues the ambiguities and
omissions of modern liberalism about both gender and the distinction
between public and domestic life. Rawls states clearly at the outset
that his theory ofjustice is to apply to "the basic structure of society, "
by which he means "the political constitution and the principal eco
nomic and social arrangements . " These are basic because "taken to
gether as one scheme, [they] define men's rights and duties and
influence their life prospects, what they can expect to be and how
well they can hope to do. The basic structure is the primary subj ect
of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the
start. " 20
Rawls 's conception of the basic structure clearly transcends the
state-society version of the public-private distinction, since it includes
markets and property arrangements as well as the distribution of
political rights and legally protected liberties. Thus, the theory is not
confined to political j ustice, narrowly understood. It is equally clear,

Humanist Liberalism

47

in its initial formulation, that the basic structure transcends the public
domestic version of the distinction. For Rawls includes " the monog
amous family " as a basic institution to which the principles of social
j ustice must apply. While perhaps surprising in the light of the history
of liberal thought, this seems unavoidable, given his own criteria for
inclusion in the basic structure. It would be difficult to deny that
different family structures and distributions of rights and duties within
families affect men's "life prospects, what they can expect to be and
how well they can hope to do" -and even more difficult of course
to deny their effects on the life prospects of women .
Despite this promising beginning, Rawls's theory as a whole does
not depart from the liberal tradition's failure to perceive the family
as a political institution, to which principles of j ustice should apply.
The family is to a large extent ignored, though assumed, in the rest
of the theory. It is addressed specifically only in three contexts: as a
barrier to equal opportunity; as the mechanism to resolve issues of
j ustice between generations; and as the initial setting in which indi
viduals begin to develop a sense of justice. 21 Rawls is unique among
contemporary theorists ofj ustice in his attention to the family as the
first school of moral development. In this context, he assumes that
the family "in some form" is a j ust institution. 22 However, in contrast
to his discussions of the other institutions that form the basic structure,
he does not examine alternative forms of family life in the light of
his principles ofj ustice. Indeed, the assumption that the parties in the
original position who arrive at the principles of justice are "heads of
families" makes it impossible for the theory to include consideration
of j ustice within the family. In spite of its enormous effect on the
differentials in political power, economic position, and life oppor
tunities between men and women, the division of labor within the
family is never mentioned.
Thus, while in his initial definition of the basic structure Rawls
appears to contest both versions of the public-private distinction, and
also needs a j ust family to make his theory of moral development
convincing, he does not depart from the traditional liberal stance on
the public-domestic dichotomy. He assumes domestic or family life,
but pays no attention to its prevalent gendered division of labor, nor
to distributions of power, responsibilities, privileges, and so on within
it. Moreover, this stance is typical of contemporary theorists of jus
tice. They persist, despite the wealth of feminist challenges, in their
refusal to discuss the family, much less to recognize it as a political
institution of primary importance. Recent theories ofj ustice that pay

Varieties of Liberalism Today

50

out to show that they cannot be defended, since Rawls's claim that
human society is characterized by the circumstances of justice is un
founded.
Sandel argues that the case for the primacy ofjustice is undermined
by the existence of numerous social groupings, best exemplified by
the family, in which the circumstances ofjustice do not predominate.
He argues that in such "intimate or solidaristic associations . . . the
values and aims of the participants coincide closely enough that the
circumstances of j ustice prevail to a relatively small degree. " 3 1 This
claim depends heavily upon acceptance of Hume's idealized picture
of family life, and in particular on his depiction of marriage as an
institution in which "the cement of friendship is so strong as to abolish
all divisions of possessions . "32 Sandel plucks this vision out of context
to employ it in a modem argument, without any apparent concern
that "the family" might not be the same now as in the eighteenth
century. He seems quite unaware of the mythical nature or of the
ideological purposes of such appeals to the "enlarged affections" and
unity of the family, which were employed in Hume's day and later
to justify the common law doctrine of coverture. This is a clear case
of reification of " the family" and failure to pay attention to the his
torical and ideological dimensions of assertions about it. Sandel's
blurring of distinctions between relations among citizens and relations
among intimates seems to depend upon an idealization of both. But
if we are realistic about the family and see it as a basic social institution
that should at least meet, even though it may often surpass , the
standards ofjustice, Sandel's case against the primacy ofjustice crum
bles.
In Charles Larmore's recent defense of Rawlsian liberalism he is
skeptical of Sandel's complete fusion of personal with political life,
which he sees as a somewhat naive romanticism. 3 3 However, he falls
into the opposite error, in his own reliance on simple, clear-cut, and
ahistorical distinctions between the political and the personal, the
public and the p rivate. This occurs in the course of his defense of
liberalism against S andel's rejection of the " disembodied self. "
In my view, there are other, quite plausible counterarguments .
One is that " what is central to the liberal view is not that we can
perceive a self prior to its ends, but that we understand ourselves to
be prior to our ends, in the sense that no end or goal is exempt from
possible re-examination . "34 We do not, after all, except in a metaphorical
sense, think of someone who has converted to Catholicism, or who
has left the Communist Party, despite the depth of such commit-

Humanist Liberalism

51

ments, as having a different self. An alternative rebuttal might stress

that there is nothing obj ectionable about conceiving of a person as
able and willing to abstract from his or her characteristics, circum
stances, and conception of the good for the purposes of formulating
principles ofjustice, while being to a greater or less extent identified
with them in day to day life. But Larmore does not consider such
counterarguments . Instead he endorses Sandel's view that "we should
not let ourselves be bullied by Kantians into thinking that our deepest
self-understandings must lie prior to any vision of the good life, which
may be embodied in a form of life shared with others . "35
In order to defend liberalism against Sandel's refutation of the Kant
ian ideal of the person, Larmore turns to what he terms modus
vivendi liberalism, which he finds first in Locke's and Bayle's argu
ments for toleration, then in Hume's theory ofj ustice. In this version
ofliberalism, the ideal of the neutrality of the state is seen as a response
to the generally accepted fact of modern times, that reasonable people
have competing conceptions of the good life. 3 6 As I stated earlier, I
have no disagreement with the importance of this fact for liberal
theory . However, Larmore argues that this approach, which he finds
side by side with the Kantian approach in A Theory ofJustice and of
central importance in Rawls's recent writings, is crucially dependent
on the "significant and liberating separation" of the public and po
litical from the p rivate. According to this approach, the liberal claim
of neutrality, or the priority of the right over the good, is a political
and not a personal ideal. 37 With this part of the argument I do disagree,
on the grounds that it rests on a misleadingly clear and unrealistic
dichotomy.
Larmore asserts that in claiming that neutrality among competing
and controversial conceptions of the good is an essential political
stance in a liberal state, one is not committed, as communitarians
have claimed, to a personal stance of detachment from or neutrality
toward competing conceptions of the good. He, like others, regards
marriage and the fa mily as exemplifying the nonpolitical, the personal
and private. He says that, within the liberal ideal of political neutrality :
"Marriage, for example, will . . . be, fo r legal purposes, a contractual
relation between persons of utterly separate identities, who may thus
also divorce; obviously the lived reality of a marriage can be a more
mutually entwining bond than this. Such constitutive ties are not for a
liberal, however, politically or legally relevant. "38 Significantly, Rawls
too indicates directly in a recent article that families belong with
private associations like churches, universities , clubs, and relations

Varieties of Liberalism Today

52

between individuals that are outside of the realm of the political,

where the principles ofj ustice are to apply and the "political virtues"
are appropriate. 39 This stance is in keeping with the neglect of familial
j ustice in A Theory ofjustice, but, as I have suggested, it is inconsistent
both with Rawls' s own explanation of why the basic structure is basic,
and with the demands of his theory of moral development.
As feminist challenges to the political-personal dichotomy make
clear, there are serious problems with the vision of the "lived reality"
of marriage as politically or legally irrelevant and, by extension, with
this renewed heavy reliance on the dichotomy as a whole. Both those
who struggled to change all the laws that kept women oppressed in
marriage and those who fought to retain them were intensely aware
of the political and legal relevance of the terms and conditions of
marriage. 4-0 Moreover, we are still left with a gendered family and
social structure in which full and equal political and economic par
ticipation is incompatible with the family responsibilities that are still
very largely borne by women. Within such a social structure it is by
no means easy to see how, or indeed whether, the state can maintain
neutrality on the subj ect of gender in policies having to do with family
life, especially divorce. 4 1
This is so because marriage is not only normally "a more mutually
entwining bond" than is suggested by its legal structure; it is also
likely, in a gender-structured society, to involve relations of depen
dence and power. Typically, given the division of labor between the
sexes, the once " utterly separate identity " of a woman is more se
riously affected by being a wife and particularly by motherhood than
is the separate identity of a man by being a husband and father. The
law must take some stance in regard to this fact. Either, recognizing
the inequalities liable to be created or at least exacerbated by marriage,
the law will try to prevent them and, where they occur, take account
of them (as divorce law used to, at least in principle) ; or else the law
will ignore them , both refusing to intervene in domestic disputes and
regarding divorcing parties, even after long traditional marriages, as
equal individuals. There is good reason for us to think that the second
approach, though it may seem more neutral, is far less neutral in the
context of a gendered society than the first. The lived reality of mar
riage is, clearly, more than its legal structure. But because this reality
is so deeply affected by its legal structure, as well as by many other
facets of " the political, " it is no easy task for a liberal state to remain
neutral in the face of deep disagreements about gender, and therefore
about what constitutes "the good" in marital relations. The demands
of neutrality in this case, unlike the case of friendship, cannot be met

Humanist Liberalism

53

by simple nonintervention. As feminists have argued, though "the

personal" is not identical with "the political, " many aspects of the
personal are undeniably political.

Conclusion
Can there be a humanist liberalism? The theoretical underpinnings of
such a liberalism must focus heavily on private as well as public life.
We can have a liberalism that fully includes women only if we can
devise a theoretical basis for public policies that, recognizing the fam
ily as a fundamental political institution, extends standards /ofjustice
to life within it. There are undoubtedly many public policies that
could considerably help people to share parenting responsibilities, and
in many cases improve the current situation of children, without even
raising issues of privacy. The provision of subsidized, first-rate, small
scale day care is one. Making parental leave and flexible wage-work
ing hours mandatory for employers are others. 42 The practical, po
litical problem here is whether such things can be achieved as long
as those in power are overwhelmingly men who continue to benefit
from the division oflabor in the family that, in many cases, has helped
them to achieve the power they have. Can we hope to change the
world outside the household without changing its division of labor
first? And, if not, how is this to be achieved?
Any solution that is to be consistent with the basic principles of
liberalism must respect the fact that, in our society at present, gender
is a hotly disputed issue. Since the liberal state must, in Larmore's
words, "remain neutral toward disputed and controversial ideals of
the good life, " it cannot simply dictate and enforce the abolition of
gender. But neither may it favor gender, or even allow gendered
practices that make women and children vulnerable. If it is to be
neutral on this crucial issue, family law must clearly provide for
alternative conceptions of marriage. By doing so, it can ensure that
citizens live their domestic lives in conditions of equality-that they
either share the unpaid and the paid work, and the concomitant time,
leisure, and opportunities or enter into enforceable contracts ensuring
that any division of labor between the sexes that is agreed to does
not involve economic dependence or the j eopardizing of the long
term chances of either partner to participate fully in life in the realm
of work or politics. Because of the inextricable connections between
the family and its political and legal context, a liberalism that aspires
to be humanist must apply its standards ofj ustice to the most private
of our attachments .

 T H R E E

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

B E NJ A M I N R . B A R B E R

In its erratic, often glorious, political history since 1688, liberalism

has forged many alliances: with rationalism and with empiricism,
withution and with bureaucracy, with enlightenment and with
romanticism, and with laissez-faire economics and with nationalism.
But no alliance has served it better than the one it established with
democracy. For, by itself, liberalism was a struggle for emancipation
from religious and political absolutism tha_t costs liberal prin
ciples coul not coEte!J.d with..Jn _e_:;tbli h.ig the solitary individual
as the model citizen, 1ibe-ralism shortchanged ideas of citizenship--and
cottifoutiity, and-contrived a frtf10JQ- -5cl[; unencumbered -by sff
uation and context as to be useful only in challenging the very idea
of the political. 1 In emphasizing freedom as the absence of all gov
ernmental restraints, it impeded the march of popular sovereignty.
In combating higher ecclesiastic and secular authority, it attenuated
the capacity of religion and tradition to sustain and integrate.
As Tocqueville noticed, societies organized around the anarchic
blessings of freedom are more rather than less in need of the unifying
blessings of religion. 2 Yet liberalism's virtues-the wall between
church and state, the toleration of conflicting confessions, the ac
knowledgement of uncertainty, even skepticism, in public thinking
could only further undermine the religious principles whose conso
lation it needed. Liberalism created a safe haven for individuals and
their property, b'Ut a poor environment for collective self-govern
ment. As liberals were quick to remon_strate, i ftraditional authori
tarian governments endangered the rights and freedoms of
individuals, the tyranny of "legitimate" maj orities founded on pop-

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

55

ular sovereignty could be still more OEr_ou. Equality obviously

might be an entailment of the idea of the common liberty of indi
viduals, but in its po1itical form (re_ctificati9_g, redistribution, gov
ernment intervention, social justice) it endgered liberty understood
as being left alone. Even friends of democracy such as William Con
nolly worry that democracy "contains danger" and that it is a danger
that "resides within the ideal itself. " 3
The pure liberal state was in fact an oxymoronic conundrum. An
archy-the absence of all government-was liberalism's purest
expression, to be found in principles like the ones inhering in Robert
Nozick's minimalist Protective Association, or in the Watchdog State
(the state as arbitrator, umpire, regulator or free market rule-keeper) . 4
In this pure sense Hobbes-who is sometimes construed as a liberal
by virtue of the instrumentalism with which he makes absolute au
thority prudentially serve absolute liberty-is no liberal at all. 5
Of course there has never been an actual state constituted by pure
liberal principles . From the start, liberalism forged (at times, was
thrown into) a working relationship with democracy, which seemed
to share so many of its goals (the welfare and freedom, differently
understood, of the individual) , even as it created problems for their
realization.
Western liberal states are in fact all liberal democracies, combining
principles of individual liberty with principles of collective self-gov
ernment and egalitarianism. And, as a matter of practice, such states
have done comparatively well, both by liberty, property, and indi
vidualism, on the one hand, and by equality, justice, and self,:g_ov
ernment, on the other. Many observers would attribute their success
precisely to their hybrid form.
Yet in England and North America, the mix has been less than
judicious, the balance less then dialectical. Although liberalism has
benefited from democracy, it has rarely acknowledged the benefits
and has generally treated democratic practices (if not also democratic
ideas) as perilous. Rather then permitting democracy to complement
liberty, liberty has been given lexical priority over all other principles.
Even the manner in which the central problem of politics in the West
is formulated is liberal (this is Rousseau's version of that formulation) :
how to find a form of association that defends and protects the person
and goods of each individual, by means of which each one, uniting
with all, nonetheless obeys himself alone and remains as free as be
fore. 6 This assumes the priority of the individual and his freedom

Varieties of Liberalism Today

56

over the community and its rights, and makes the accommodation
of the individual, regarded as an a priori, the task of the community,
regarded as an artificial contrivance. 7
The priority of the "liberal" in liberal democracy has rendered it
vulnerable to modernity's most devastating political pathology: de
racination. The impact of the Enlightenment on religion and the
impact of epistemological skepticism and post-Enlightenment science
on nature and natural law have left modern women and men to live
in an era after virture, after God, after nature, an era offering neither
comfort nor certainty. Freedom has been won by a ruthless severing
of ties ("all that is solid melts into air, " wrote Marx) and an uprooting
of human nature from its foundations in the natural, the historical,
and the divine. 8
.
The specific pathologies that have been occasioned by deracination
need little comment, for they are by now a very old story. Yet they
still are frequently overlooked by those who champion liberalism's
defensive p roperties as a protector of individuals against communities
gone awry and states run amok. 9 Indeed, it is arguable that the forces
that created the greatest pressures on the liberty of individuals in the
twentieth century are, at least in part, the consequences of deraci
nation, social anarchy, and rampant individualism-the consequence
not . of too much democracy and too little liberalism but of too little
democracy and too much liberalism . Fascism in Germany was pre
ceded by the Weimar Republic' s wan liberalism; and the authoritarian
personality would seem to be at least in part the product of deraci
nation. 1 0
I believe that liberal democracy has been given an insufficiently
dialectical reading in modern political theory, as a result in large part
of the theorists' reliance on the notion of consent as the crucial bridge
between the individual and the community (between liberty and jus
tice and between right and utility) . The doctrine of consent was
originally intended to give obedience a justification rooted in the
interests of individuals rather than in the authority of states (in the
rights of the ruled rather than the rights of rulers) and did not nec
essarily entail democratic arrangements. But it also created principled
grounds for democracy by making all political legitimacy a function
of popular will. The consent device skewed the relationship toward
liberal individualism from the outset, however. It deprived liberals
of the comforts of democracy as they tried to accommodate the com
munities produced by individuals (whom they recognized as such)

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

57

with the individuals produced by communities (which they refused

to recognize) .
Unlike pure liberalism of the Nozickean variety, in which the in
dividual s tands as the sole measure of right, liberal democracy claims
both to unite individuals with the community and to preserve indi
vidual liberty in the face of community-leaving men "as free as they
were before" (Rousseau's formulation) . In Sandel's language, it as
pires to mediate the extremes of the "radically situated self" (pre
sumably the collectivist conception) and the "radically disembodied
subj ect" (the libertarian conception) . 1 1 Moreover, it seeks a bridg e
that does not depend on some foundationalist conception either of
right or the good. Liberal democrats are not unmitigated voluntarists,
but per force they eschew traditional foundationalism of the kind that
makes politics depend entirely upon ideas derived from grounds in
dependent of and anterior to the political. The liberal democrat prizes
j ustice but believes j ustice without consent is a form of heteronomy
incompatible with the moral responsibility of the individual Cons.ent
becomes the crucial link: for Locke, for example, what men will
consent to in the state of nature binds them henceforward; for Rawls,
what men will consent to in a hypothetical original position, before
they know the actual identities they will assume in society, binds
them to the rules they will live by in society. 12
By consenting to the substantive rules to which he will subordinate
his will, the liberal individual obeys without compromising his free
dom. The conception of democracy that emerges from contract
that is to say, from consent theory-does provide some security for
liberty and rights, by rooting them in a voluntarism that is immune
from the immediacy of popular will. The arbitrary whimsy (the sub
j ectivism) of pure voluntarism is avoided without embracing dis
credited forms of metaphysical foundationalism.
Consent plays a central role in all liberal theory, but it is differently
construed in Hobbes, in Locke, in Nozick, and in Rawls . As consent
changes the forms it takes, liberal democracy changes its colors . Yet
in every form it permits liberal ideas to take precedence over dem
ocratic ideas. Moving from the weakest to the strongest, three pri
mary forms of consent can be discerned: we may understand them
as original consent, periodic consent, and perpetual consent. The first,
in which individuals offer consent once in the form of a covenant
that obliges them henceforward to obey whatever rules the civil soci
ety they have thus created may promulgate, is original consent or the

Varieties of Liberalism Today

58

doctrine of the social contract. Original consent embraces both the

form where individuals agree to procedures by which rules are made
(social contract constitutionalism) , without consenting to the actual
rules, as well as the form where individuals agree in advance to the
actual rules, as with Rawls . The second major form taken by consent
theory, calling for a kind of ongoing commitment to the contract,
engages individuals in periodic rehearsals of consent, most often
through the election of representatives . This form is periodic consent
or the doctrine of representative government. It employs elections
not merely to assure the accountability of representative governors
but also to elicit periodic fidelity from citizens whose commitments
might otherwise weaken. The .Ed. and strongest, form requires
consent to each and every collective act (each law, contract, bargain,
encroachment, and so on) . It approaches the spirit of pure liberalism,
where government exists and acts exclusively at the pleasure of each
individual with whom it interacts. This is perpetual consent, or the
market doctrine of libertarianism (a stone's throw from what I earlier
called " pure liberalism") . 13
In terms of the hypothetical politics they produce, the three regimes
that emerge from these three forms of consent look very different.
Social-contract theorists may be satisfied with highly authoritarian
and illiberal regimes that are still legitimate by liberal standards be
cause are authorized by an oi;iginaJ contra.ct t<:,> li_ich a.JI subjects
initially give their consent (if only tacitly) . One thinks of Hobbes or
Hamilton. Advocat_e_s of_rep resentative goyen1ment, such as Lo_cke,
_
require that citizes reaffirm their government an d thus their civic
commitment from time to time by periodi cally reauthorizing the
governors (who are only trustees of their electors) . Libertarians are
fierce and constant consenters who demand perpetual vigilance by
individuals for whom every new social act is a potential encroach
ment.
Social-contract theorists take a tacit and relatively passive view of
the role of consent-once suffices for all time-raising issues of com
pliance (covenants without the sword, free riders, and so on) ; ad
vocates of representation take the middle ground, enhancing the
autonomous activity of citizens as individuals while limiting their
common power to the act of selecting rulers, but otherwise discour
aging ongoing self-rule; and libertarians make consent a cudgel with
which they beat the very idea of collective governmental activity into
senselessness.
However different they are in theory, all three versions of consent
_ _

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

59

theory merge in the practice of Western governments, almost all of

which are " mixed" regimes with respect to original, periodic, and
perpetual consent. Indeed the pluralism of such governments arises
in part out of jurisdictional quarrels between these conflicting forms
of consent-as when the Supreme Court intervenes in the name of
original consent (the integrity of the Constitution, representing the
original voice of the people) to overrule elected officials operating in
the name of periodic consent (they represent the citizens who have
elected them to office) in order to uphold the complaint of a private
citizen who has challenged the government in the name of his own
liberty (embodying the principle of perpetual consent) . These mixed
liberal democratic regimes share certain fundamental weaknesses that
take us to the heart of the problem-with consent as the liberal linch
pm.
Perhaps most disconcerting among the defects of liberalism that
arise out of its dependence on consent is the reactivity-and thus the
negativity-consent imparts to liberal politics. Politics become purely
defensive; the model political act is resistance to encroachment on a
private sphere defined by the autonomous and solitary person. And
while the radically isolated ind(vidual may originate a purely logical
priority, the ideal individual's sphere of activity in the real world
seems always to be expanding, as the domain of the person is enlarged
by outward pushing liberties and rights, and then enlarged still more
by that extension of the person and its liberties liberals call property
ownership of things as an entailment of self-ownership . 14 The ultimate
battle cry of the liberal is "Don't cross this line! " The political slogan
always reads "Don't walk on my turf! " Liberalism is a politics of
negativity, which enthrones not simply the individual but the indi
vidual defined by his perimeters, his parapets, and his entrenched
solitude. Politics is at best a matter of "Let's make a deal, " where the
stakes are exclusively private ("What will it take to get you to honor
my liberty?") .
Politics understood as reactive negativity and the denial of every
commonality other than that of aggregated individuality reduces the
role of will to one of obstinate resistance. Hence it obstructs common
willing-what Rousseau called general willing-where communities
essay to disclose common purposes or discover common ground
through the political interaction of active wills. The very idea of
sovereignty, construed as the paramountcy of a common will, cannot
exist in a setting defined by the primacy of the right of the individual
to unlimited resistance (that resistance being seen as a property of

Varieties of Liberalism Today

60

essential-and hence rightfulhuman nature) . Politics becomes a

matter of "not doing" rather than of "doing, " and the individual
becomes sovereign, always trumping the community .
Historically the focus on resistance had powerful political uses in
emancipating individuals from feudal authority. The priority of the
individual was an artificial device, which (although everywhere con
tradicted by the real life dependency of individuals on hierarchical
social structures) helped to free men from bondage. The fiction pre
ceded the reality: in fact, the fiction created the reality, for it was
meant not as a defense of preexisting individuals against encroaching
authority, but a j ustification for the forging of individuals from so
cially constructed subj ects. The point was not to legitimize natural
individuals, but to legitimize individuation in the face of "natural"
(historical and traditional) collectivism. The "natural" man was
merely a hypothetical contrivance whose wholly rhetorical signifi
cance was not to be mistaken for the kind of anthropological con
jectures that would in time be favored by the romantics (noble savages
and all that) . 1 5
The useful fiction of the independent person soon hardened into a
supposed reality of naturally autonomous men, and this new and
contrived "reality" became the basis for denying both the historical
legitimacy of unfree commonality (feudalism, ancient slavery, tra
ditional tyranny) and thus the future possibility of a free commonality.
Abstract personhood, so fruitful as an emancipatory hypothesis, sub
verted ideas of democratic community and democratic cooperation
in its inevitable reification. We have traditionally worried about the
consequences of the reification of the collectivity or the state. I am
suggesting that we might also have some reason to worry about the
political consequences of the reification of the individual-an idealized
abstraction given a concrete incarnation if ever there was one. Indi
viduals, merely separate in the hypothesis, became competitive and
adversarial in the anthropologized version where they were con
founded with bargainers in the new capitalist economy and predators
in the dawning age of imperialism . And where every individual faces
every other individual not merely as distinct but as an adversary,
where possessiveness and aggressiveness are primary and highly
prized social traits, where the Other is seen first as an antagonist and
last (if at all) as a neighbor, where suspicion of encroachment is the
chief political motive, there can be no politics of cooperation. Nor is
a viable conception of a public sector or a common good likely to
emerge. Crippled from the outset by the very framework that made

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

61

it liberating, liberalism needed democracy. It had to have a politics

to complement its antipolitics . Yet it was averse to the democratic
ideas that provided it with that politics .
The tensions have persisted. Anxious witnesses to our century' s
statist and collectivist depredations may understandably perceive in
he resisting negativity of pure liberalism our best defense against
every form of unfreedom. Judith Shklar reminds us how often some
noble common purpose has been employed to hurt vulnerable bodies,
as if their animal fragility made them ignoble. 16 But it is also true
that twentieth-century collectivism is in part a consequence of the
failure of liberalism to offer a healthy politics of community. There
is a deep yearning, well known to liberals, for a more supple and
intersubj ective identity than that offered by the hollow shell of legal
personhood; when it is not satisfied by some safe, democratic form
of mutualism, the door is wide open to unsafe, totalitarian forms of
mutualism. By construing politics exclusively in terms of reaction,
liberals limit it to resisting Others (or the political incarnation of
Others, the state)-an antipolitical act at best-or to acquiescing to
them-politics understood as compliance, agreeing to but not doing.
Even Robert Nozick' s self-interested anarchist busybodies, perpetu
ally examining potential bilateral exchanges with others for signs of
encroachment, are limited to a political vocabulary of "OK, I'll buy
it" or "No deal! " In these one-shot yea/nay situations, the role of
common deliberation, general willing, and public judgment is neg
ligible. There is little room for anything resembling public space
except for those who seize it for their own private purposes .
Indeed, for liberals, public space has an exclusively prudential feel
(that space ceded to government which permits government to en
force the integrity of private boundaries) and is not intended to convey
a rich sense of publicness or commonwe-alth or res publica . Contrary
to historical reality, where public space was the condition of the
emergence of individuals, it exists in liberal theory only as a conces
sion reluctantly p roffered by individuals pursuing self-preservation
or self-aggrandizement. It is at best the domain of prudence where
individuals strike public bargains (like the Social Contract) in the
pursuit of private interests. Even in Hobbes's authoritarian version,
every act of the omnipotent, irresistible sovereign finds its ultimate
justification in the original authority of those self-interested authors
of the contract who are struggling to avoid lives which, in the state
of nature where liberty is theoretically uncompromised, are solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short. 17 American pluralist theory does not

Varieties of Liberalism Today

62

advance much beyond Hobbes in this regard, since the Madisonian

formula is distrustful of democracy and places its faith in dividing
power (and interest) against itself so as to safeguard liberty from its
putative governmental protectors. Madison emulates Locke in wor
rying more about the peril to liberty presented by the sovereign Lion
than about the small mischiefs polecats and foxes might do to their
common liberties. In general, liberals deploy a political language
drawn from the menagerie, reenforcing with metaphor their essen
tially adversarial (what could later be called Darwinian) conception
of the social relations of their fictive "persons . "
To be sure the language of consent is in principle an attempt at
bridging the liberty of liberalism and the demos of democracy, but
the foregoing survey of what consent actually entails suggests that it
does little to bring individual and commons into equilibrium. Its final
result is the dogmatic justification of the priority of liberty (liberty
understood as the absence of all external-read public-constraint) , 1 8
and thus the priority-even in Rawls-of right over utility, of the
liberty of the abstract individual over the needs of community-created
citizens. 19
For some time critics of the skewed liberal version of liberal de
mocracy have been urging an alternative formulation, one centering
on participation rather than consent. My own elaboration of the the
ory and practice of "strong democracy" is intended to help concep
tualize this alternative view. 20 Participation turns out to provide a
much more dialectical account of the relation between individuals and
the community than consent can possibly hope to. It offers a frame
work for institutions that safeguards the liberty ofindividuals without
alienating them from public space-since their liberty is constructed
in and with respect to that public space.
Taking participation seriously does not reverse the priority of in
dividual and community (which would produce some form of totalist
collectivism) but strikes a genuine balance between the two. 21 To do
so acknowledges the interdependence of individuals on one another
and on the communities from which they derived sustenance for their
identities and their (socially constructed) rights, and thus makes of
morally autonomous citizens the aim rather than the premise ofliberal
democratic politics.
Participation is less a way of linking previously or "naturally"
autonomous persons to an artificial and sovereign collectivity than it
is of characterizing and legitimizing the provisional autonomy that
real men and women living under conditions of actual dependency

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

63

can elicit from the social milieus in which they are embedded. Par
ticipation is a form of belonging in which active agency is transferred
from the whole to the parts, which, however, possess a capacity for
effective action by virtue of their membership in the whole.
The hypothetical act by which the community based on the consent
of "naturally free" individuals is formed must be: "Let's make a state
we all obey, in return for which it will protect us from each other
[Hobbes] and from itself [the prudent Locke] . " The hypothetical act
by which the community based on participation is formed is "Let's
take this collectivity into which we were all born and to which, willy
nilly, we all are bound and legitimize it by subjecting it to our
common will. " Where with consent, the archetypical political act is
resistance against or acquiescence to encroachment, with participation, the
archetypical political act is disclosing and legitimizing common ground, or
willing common action in the absence of common ground. In a word, it is
collaboration rather than antagonism, learning to live with conflict
rather than constructing a geometry and vector physics of conflict. 22
Underlying the model of participation is a conception of the person
radically distinctive from the one underlying the model of consent. 23
The liberal person is a fixed being with an identity arising out of
theoretically constructed interests made legitimate by the heightened
language of rights. Liberal rights are in fact individual interests postur
ing as moral claims. (This is an oddity, in that moral claims presup
pose a moral-social environment in which claims have meaning-the
point T. H. Green makes in his work. )24 The force of this conception
lies precisely in the fixity and immutability of interests , which define
the natural and unchanging social monads who constitute liberal
persons .
The participating citizen, however, is a being with a mutable na
ture, whose evolution is in part a function of its social habitat. It is
this very talent fo r self-transformation that enables the citizen thus
conceived to engage in the process of individuation: not merely to
ngage in bargaining and exchange over fixed and permanent interests
but to modify the notion of what those interests actually are. Partic
ipation entails change-a faculty for self-transformation-for the
community as well as for the participating member. The bachelor
who becomes a spouse is not a bachelor who has made a bargain,
but someone who has given up the identity and interests appropriate
to bachelorhood and assumed the identity and interests of someone
participating in a life partnership . Spousehood supplants bachelor
hood as a point of view, so that the spouse ceases to think or act like

Varieties of Liberalism Today

64

a bachelor. A spouse who in turn becomes a parent is not a spouse

who has cut a deal with pushy and self-preoccupied (that is, infantile!)
newcomers who were not parties to the original marital contract. He
is someone who has given up the identity of spouse in favor of an
identity that includes the interests and concerns of children. In moving
from bachelor to parent, the man and the woman are transformed
by the relations they enter into, even as, by virtue of their partici
pation, they transform the character of the community they belong
to. The compass of their sympathies enlarge; their capacity to identify
the concerns of a growing "neighborhood" as their concerns alters
their own sense of identity.
Participatory citizenship is an extension of the same principles to
strangers . The moves from parent to neighbor, from neighbor to
townsperson, from townsperson to citizen of the United States, all
have the same potential of self-transformation, when the link to the
community is participatory and not merely consensual. As the sphere
of identification grows, identity undergoes a change. The office of
citizen is not just a role assumed momentarily by the individual; it is
a mantle that settles over the shoulders and in time becomes an organic
epidermis of the skin on which it rests. The state is a neighborhood
of strangers . It cannot deal with its constituents through the intimate
roles of friendship or kinship because they are strangers; yet it need
not treat them as adversaries, one to the other, because they are also
neighbors.
If the individuals who participate are changelings whose conscious
ness grows (or can potentially grow) as the sphere of their activity
enlarges, then their activity when they participate is far more de
manding-more engaging, more enthralling, more disquieting
than their activity when they merely consent, when they act exclu
sively to resist or to acquiesce. Participation entails constant activity,
ceaseless willing, and endless interaction with other participants in
quest of common grounds for common living. The one-time contract
offends the idea of participation, which demands with Jefferson that
principles be constantly remembered, deliberated, reembraced, even
reinvented, if they are to earn their legitimacy among the living. 25
Nor is the sometime contract called representation an adequate sur
rogate for civic participation. For while the election of representatives
requires some periodic activity from citizens, it is a political act whose
purpose is to terminate political action for all but the elected delegates.
It achieves accountability by alienating responsibility, and leaves
elected politicians as the only real citizens of the state. 26

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

65

The perp!ual consent demanded by libertarians would on first

inspection seem better to approximate the vigorous civic activity
associated with participation, and the libertarian is certainly a busy
fellow as he rushes to and fro, defending his perimeters against the
endless encroachments of his hungry neighbors. But not only is his
activity limited to fight/flight reactions (yea/nay judgments on po
tential encroachments) , whatever he does lacks public import of any
kind. Public relations become private relations, and commonality is
reduced to a series of trustless bilateral exchanges .
This liberal vision calls to mind a kind of Brownian motion by
agitated human molecules that results in random movement with no
consistent or patterned (that is, public) character. On the other hand,
participation is b y its very nature public activity whose aim is to
produce publicity or public-mindedness. Participation is participating
in public discourse (finding discourse that is public) and participating
in public action (actio11; possible only when actors act together) in the
name of creating public things ( res publica) . The language of consent
is me language: "I agree" or "I disagree. " The language of partici
pation is we language: "Can we?" or "Is that good for us?"
The libertarian damns the contractarian for being satisfied with a
single act of willed compliance and then sitting in torpor for eternity.
How can a man speak but once and then remain forever mute? The
libertarian knows he must sing on, and so, on and on he sings (on
and on and on and on) . But chirping away from his solitary branch
against the' din of rival birds he produces only cacophony .
Noise is of course a concomitant of democratic politics, and the
citizen has nothing to fear from a little high decibel cacophony. But
the aim is harmony: the discovery of a common voice. Not unity,
not voices disciplined into unison, but musical harmony in its tech
nical meaning. Liberals grow particularly anxious at what they believe
is a democratic penchant for consensus and unity. William Connolly,
for example, insists that democracy must be limited by ambiguity
and open to discord. 27 He might recall, however, that in music, har
mony is not a matter of a single voice but of several voices, of distinct
notes, which complement and support one another, creating not the
ennui of unison but a pleasing plurality. Harmony is not monism,
and the consensus reached by democratic deliberation and action has
nothing in common with the unity imposed by the collectivist dem
agogue armed with a plebiscite.
Democratic politics need not be limited by ambiguity because it
embraces and teaches us how to live with ambiguity. It is precisely

Varieties of Liberalism Today

66

about common decisionmaking in the face of ambiguity and uncer

tainty . (Certain knowledge would transform politics into an exercise
in expertise and promote a Platonic government of the most knowl
edgeable . ) It is p_r ecisely where we ca11.11pt ki:iow for sure that we must
act democratica!Iy-Iri the best of circumstai-1.ces- wemay- achie
harmony-withirf our civic communities that preserves our hard-won
individuality but permits us to support and complement the individ
uality of other participants. In those rare moments where inevitable
cacophony is transformed briefly into harmony (but not totalitarian
unity) , participation achieves its greatest civic victory, realizing an
egalitarian community that accommodates individuals without de
stroying their individuality-an achievement which, though perhaps
beyond the liberal imagination, is deeply satisfying to the liberal spirit.
These images , I know, are redolent of a kind of democratic idealism
that is worrisome to liberals, whose chief political concern remains
the abuse of individual bodies (and spirits, but bodies first of all) by
illegitimate power. But the possibility of harmony is a byproduct of
participatory politics : a remarkable achievement when accomplished,
but not essential to the argument on behalf of participation. For, as
I have suggested, participatory politics is in the first instance simply
a more realistic way of understanding the actual relationship that
obtains between individual and community, as well as a more dia
lectical way of envisioning how that relationship (which by nature is
one of dependency) can be made legitimate (just) . In fact, it is the
most prudent defense liberty can deploy in an era uprooted from
foundations in religion, history, or tradition.
In a world after virtue, where the foundational certainties of God
and Nature have gone the way of metaphysics, and where men and
women are compelled to live together and find both mediators for
their conflicts and a forge for their commonality, liberal democracy
in the participatory mode may be humankind's safest form of politics .
The individual is a paltry vessel when torn apart from within by doubt
and vacillation. Liberty rings hollow to women and men whose lives
lack purpose and meaning: it is then only the right to do everything
in a world where one has no idea of what to do. In emancipating us
from authority, liberalism separated us from one another. Resistance
was a powerful instrument in taking on popes and kings and their ex
cathedra arguments, but when the very idea of God withers and when,
freed from arbitrary authority, women and men grow desperate for
almost any authority at all, resistance ceases to be a useful political
tool. To the creature trapped within the fortress, the impregnable

Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

67

redoubt may come to feel like a prison. Liberals, ever wary, still
preach " Defend yourselves ! The enemy is everywhere!" And, to be
sure, wherever there are policies, policemen, and power, there lurk
potential enemies of liberty. Yet the price we pay for this vigilance
is also to see enemies where there are only neighbors, antagonism
where there may be cooperation . In safeguarding our separate bodies,
we neglect the body politic; in expressing our dignity as individuals,
we fail to dignify our sociability and give it a safe form of expression.
The alternative to legitimate community is not natural liberty but
illegitimate community. The alternative to democratic politics is not
the absence of all politics but undemocratic politics . An unhealthy
polity is not an occasion for a righteous return to prepolitical indi
viduality: it is the occasion for the destruction of individuality tout
court.
Our human Streng lies in our capacity for community. Aban
doned by God a'nd
we must depend on each other; yet we
are saddled with a residual politics of emancipation that forbids us
mutual consolation or cooperation. In the long freedom wars liber
'
alism wo ii and important battles, securing first the individual
and his rights , and then the rights of others long excluded from
liberty' s fruits . But the costs of victory are now being paid: the price
of liberal relian ce on contract and consent has been the impoverish
ment of its politics. The argument for participation is thus not ideal
istic but brutally realistic. It is how liberals can safely pay the piper
who, one way or the other, will be paid.
A more dialectically balanced liberal democracy employing the lan
guage and institutions of participation can respond to modernity 's
losses by reenforcing the individual from within and by offering
artificial membership in new contrived communities of common will
from without. Participation subj ects standards, whose roots in natural
or metaphysical foundations have withered, to the voluntary and
common conventions of a democratic polity, permitting artifice to
achieve what nature no longer can. And if artifice is to be safe, it is
clear, it must be democratic: the subject of common deliberation and
decision. Participation greets the loss of certainty with neither cyni
cism nor despair but with a novel epistemology of political j udgment:
concrete processes by which our convictions can be measured by
something firmer than private prejudice in a world where cognitive
certainty is no longer vouchsafed us. 28
If we are to learn to live with what Clifford Geertz has called the
vertigo of relativism, participatory democracy can be an instructive

Varieties of Liberalism Today

68

teacher. It offers hope without making foolish promises. It proffers

not a civic religion but a civic life that binds without enslaving, that
ties together the frayed pieces left behind by the unraveling of religion.
It instructs us to look to common invention for the social sustenance
we once derived from tradition.
Participatory democracy cannot replace the loss of foundations that
is modernity ' s legacy, but it promises a certain prudence in place of
mores, tradition, and history. It is a politics of modest hope in a
world of despair. And, liberal skepticism notwithstanding, liberty
remains today what it has always been: the hope we fling into the
teeth of sovereign necessity to make a small space for human will
and for the virtue will enj oins .

II

Educatio n and the Moral

Life

F O U R

Undemocratic Education
AMY GUTMANN

In the seventeenth century, when Locke wrote Some Thoughts Con

cerning Education, the English word "to educate" was a synonym for
"to govern. " The identification has ceased to be apparent not only
in our language but also in our political theory. I have made a modest
effort to revive the identification in political theory, which began
with Plato's Republic, a treatise on undemocratic education, the ed
ucation necessary not for democratic citizens but for members of a
family state, a state that aims to establish a constitutive relation be
tween individual and social good based on knowledge. 1
The identification of education and governance is total in The Re
public. Governance is education in Plato's family state. A few philos
ophers educate and rule not j ust children but other adults . The few
rule by virtue of knowledge, not by virtue of having first been ruled.
And they rule not so the many might rule in turn, but so everyone
can live the good life, as authoritatively understood and instituted by
philosophers . 2
We can appreciate Plato's harmonizing of private and public good
without accepting it as a legitimate political project. In The Republic
Socrates tells Glaucon that "it's better for all to be ruled by what is
divine and p rudent, especially when one has it as his own within
himself; but, if not, set over one from outside, so that insofar as possible
all will be alike and friends, piloted by the same thing. " 3 Children
must not be set free until the right regime-the "divine and prudent"
one-is established within their souls . But who holds the key to the
right regime? Not the Socrates who boasts of being the only Athenian
wise enough to know his own ignorance.
But Plato's Socrates imagines that there may be someone wiser

Education and the Moral Life

72

even than he, someone who has left the cave and seen the light,
someone who therefore knows the right regime for all souls. To create
a family state the philosopher must return to the cave, become "king, "
and wipe the social slate clean by exiling "all those in the city who
happen to be older than ten; and taking over their children . . . rear
them-far away from those dispositions they now have from their
parents . "4 Socrates himself recoils from the idea on behalf of his
imaginary philosopher-king, suggesting that he "won't be willing to
mind the political things . . . unless some divine chance coinciden
tally comes to pass . " 5
Those of us who do not imagine our souls in such good order also
recoil on behalf of those disorderly souls whom Socrates ' philosopher
king would order. Our recoil is not self-serving. Even if there were
someone wiser than Socrates in our midst, she still could not claim
the right to order the souls of all citizens . Just as an unexamined life
is not worth living, so too a good life must be one that a person
recognizes as such, lived from the inside, according to one's own best
lights . The neo-Platonic quest for "the one best system"6 denies this
insight ofindividualism. Even if Plato were right about the objectively
good life, political philosophy would still have to look past The Re
public for a politically legitimate way of associating private and public
good, through governing.
We need not look far past Plato's family state to find a political
alternative. One suggested in the Crito and resurrected by Rousseau
in the Government of Poland is a non-Platonic family state. When the
laws and the constitution of Athens speak to Socrates of his duty to
obey, they claim not that they are right, but that they have a right
to rule him j ust as parents have a right to rule a child. ("Did we not
give you life in the first place? Was it not through us that your father
married your mother and begot you? Since you have been born and
brought up and educated, can you deny, in the first place, that you
were our child and servant, both you and your ancestors ?")7 This
argument proves insufficient for Socrates . It would also obligate him
to a highly repressive regime, one lacking those freedoms that he
subsequently cites as reason to obey the Athenian jury's verdict. Be
cause citizens are not children, the force of a state's claim to sover
eignty over citizens is more suspect than parental claims to
sovereignty over their children .
Parental claims to sovereignty are suspect enough . Children are
not, as Charles Fried suggests, merely extensions of their parents'
personalities anymore than they are creatures constituted by a state. 8

Undemocratic Education

73

It is one thing to recognize the authority of parents to educate their

children as members of a family, and quite another to claim that
parental authority may serve as a shield against exposing children to
ways of life or thinking that offend their parents. The state of fam
ilies-a state that cedes parents sovereignty over the education of
their children-mistakenly conflates the welfare of children with the
freedom of parents when it assumes that the former is best defined
or secured by the latter . Just as a substantial realm of parental authority
is essential to both the freedom of adults and the welfare of children
as members of fa milies, so too is a substantial realm of political au
thority essential to both the future freedom of children and their
welfare as citizens . Because children are members of both families
and states, the educational authority of parents and polities has to be
partial to be justified. The reconciliation of public and private good
suggested by the state of families is no more acceptable than that of
the family state. Whereas the family state reconciles private and public
good by denying the p rivate realm any independent moral status , the
state of families denies the public realm any moral independence and
any hold on our identities.
The appeal of the state of individuals, the liberal state as it is loosely
called, may stem from the fact that it recognizes claims of both realms,
without attempting to subsume or constitute one by the other. 9 Its
reconciliation of public and private good may therefore seem more
reasonable. The state of individuals enforces only those laws, subsi
dizes only those goods, and professes only those doctrines that are
neutral among conceptions of the good life. The state's principled
neutrality aims to maximize the freedom of individuals to pursue
their diverse conceptions of the private good. The state of individuals
does not claim to rest upon a neutral doctrine, as some of its critics
suppose. It aspires to neutrality among conceptions of the private
good. And precisely for this reason, it champions a conception of the
public good: the public good consists of maximizing the freedom of
citizens to pursue their diverse conceptions of the private good. An
advocate of the state of individuals might paraphase John Stuart Mill:
all attempts by the state to bias the conclusions ofits citizens, including
its children, on disputed subj ects are evil, as are all unnecessary re
strictions on their choices. 1 0 This is a credo of neutrality for the sake
of opportunity and choice.
Of course all educators must limit children' s choices, but only for
the sake of developing their capacity for rational choice or for the
sake of cultural coherence. American schoolchildren are taught En-

Education and the Moral Life

74

glish not by choice but by cultural determination. This cultural de

termination legitimately limits the range of their future choices, even
if it does not uniquely determine whom they become. The limitations
on learning language and literature are legitimated by the need for
"cultural coherence. " But this need does not justify "adult pretensions
to moral superiority. " 1 1
The horticultural imagery s o prevalent in Plato-pruning and
weeding children' s desires, carefully shaping their character-has no
place in this liberal theory of education . "We have no right to look
upon future citizens as if we were master gardeners who can tell the
difference between a pernicious weed and a beautiful flower. " 1 2 But
we do have a right, even a duty, to shape the character and bias the
choices of children for the sake of cultural coherence. Education in
the state ofindividuals builds on our cultural but not our moral biases.
We educate children to be Americans who are free to choose, but we
do not bias their choices (or shape their character) for the sake of
moral goodness . We educate rational shoppers but not good people
or virtuous citizens.
Why say that parents and teachers should be free to guide children's
choices for the sake of cultural coherence but not for the sake of
cultivating good character or choosing a morally good life? Because
no one has a right to act according to the belief that his or her con
ception of the good life is better than anyone else's. 1 3 This premise,
which grounds the state of individuals , is as shaky as the premise
underlying the family state, that the objectively correct conception
of the good ought to govern everyone's life. After all, sometimes the
claim on the part of parents and teachers that they know the difference
between morally good and bad, or better and worse, is not a preten
sion to moral superiority, but a reflection of their greater moral un
derstanding. Honesty is better than deceitfulness, industriousness
better than sloth, insight better than insensitivity, kindness better than
cruelty-and not j ust because honest, industrious, insightful, and kind
people have more freedom of choice. They may have less, precisely
because they are constrained by these virtues. We nonetheless value
these virtues because there is more to a good life and to a good society
than freedom.
The resistance to recognizing the legitimacy of education for civic
virtue stems, I suspect, from formulating our educational options as
a dichotomy. Either we must educate children so that they are free
to choose among the widest range of lives because freedom of choice
is the paramount good, or we must educate children so that they will

Undemocratic Education

75

choose the life that is best because a rightly ordered soul is the par
amount good . Let children define their own identity or define it for
them. Give children liberty or give them virtue. This is a morally
false choice. Cultivating character and intellect through education
constrains children's future choices, but it does not uniquely deter
mine them . There need be nothing illegitimate about such constraints,
although some surely are illegitimate.
The question is not whether to maximize freedom or to inculcate
virtue, but how to combine freedom with virtue. Which freedoms
and what virtues? We must focus not j ust on the future freedom of
children but also on the present freedom of parents , not just on the
virtues necessary for a good life but also on those necessary for a j ust
society . Alternatively, we may integrate the virtues necessary to con
stitute a good society into those necessary for a good life. The result
of one important integration is a bundle of virtues tied together by
a Lockean notion of " rational liberty. " 1 4 Rationality informs liberty
of what is necessary to live well in a morally good society; it does
not simply serve as a means of satisfying individual desires. A nec
essary (but of course not sufficient) condition ofliving well in a society
where people differ in their moral convictions is effective teaching of
the liberal virtue of toleration. A more distinctively democratic virtue
that a good society must also teach effectively is mutual respect for
reasonable differences of moral opinion. Mutual respect demands
more than the attitude of live and let live; it requires willingness and
ability to accord due intellectual and moral regard to reasonable points
of view that we cannot ourselves accept as correct. In the political
realm, toleration is a precondition for peaceful competition and prag
matic compromise; mutual respect is a precondition for democratic
deliberation and moral compromise. Education in both virtues sup
ports rational liberty in a liberal democracy.
Yet another liberal way of appreciating the need to combine free
dom with virtue is to question whether the many virtues valued by
a liberal society can be ordered by one and only one overarching
conception of individual flourishing. William Galston's account of
competing conceptions of individual flourishing suggests that there
is no singularly correct conception . There seems instead to be a plu
rality of reasonable conceptions of the good life, which converge in
defending a group of individual virtues. Galston concludes that the
best liberal polity is "a community that encourages all of these over
lapping but distinct conceptions of individual excellence and that pro
vides an arena within which each may be realized, in part through

Education and the Moral Life

76

struggle against the others . " 1 5 Two of the most appropriate arenas
for the struggle are democratic politics and education. The liberty
polity at its best must be substantially democratic.
This democratic understanding of liberalism does not resolve but
at least it comprehends the problem of associating individual freedom
and civic virtue in the United States today. Citizens of a religiously
and ethnically diverse society disagree on the relative value of freedom
and virtue; we disagree on the nature of a good life and good character.
And no political philosophy can authoritatively resolve all our dis
agreements-not only because no one is smart enough to comprehend
a comprehensive good, but because no mortal, no matter how wise,
can legitimately impose the good life on people who cannot live that
life from the inside. Nor can anyone legitimately impose liberal neu
trality on people who value virtue as well as freedom. We stand at a
philosophical and political impasse unless we can defend another al
ternative.
The most defensible alternative is democratic in a frankly liberal
or Deweyan sense. First, it does not tyrannize over common sense,
either by subsuming individual freedom into social (or familial) good
or by reducing social justice or civic virtue to individual freedom. 1 6
Second, it provides principled criticism of any educational authority
that tries to tyrannize over children, whether by depriving them of
an education adequate to citizenship or by repressing reasonable chal
lenges to popular ideas . Third, it supports educational institutions
that are conducive to democratic deliberation, institutions that make
a democratic virtue out of our inevitable disagreements over educa
tional problems. The virtue, too simply stated, is that we can publicly
debate educational problems in a way much more likely to increase
our understanding of education and each other than if we were to
leave the management of schools, as Kant suggested, "to depend
entirely upon the judgment of the most enlightened experts. "17 The
policies that result from our democratic deliberations will not always
be the right ones, but they will be more enlightened-by the values
and concerns of the many communities that constitute a democracy
than those that would have been made by unaccountable experts .
But this alternative understanding is incomplete. The threat of
repression and discrimination remains . Democratic processes can be
used to destroy democratic education. They can be used to undermine
the intellectual foundations of future democratic deliberations by re
pressing unpopular ways of thinking or excluding some future citizens
from an education adequate for participating in democratic politics .

Undemocratic Education

77

A democratic society must not be constrained to legislate what the

wisest parent or philosopher wants for a child, but it must be con
strained not to legislate policies that render democrat:y repressive or
discriminatory. A democratic theory of education recognizes the im
portance of empowering citizens to make educational policy and also
of constraining their choices to those policies that are nonrepressive
and nondiscriminatory, so as to preserve the intellectual and social
foundations of democracy . Democracy must be understood not
merely (or primarily) as a process of majority rule, but rather as an
ideal of a society whose adult members are, and continue to be,
equipped by their education and authorized by political structure to
share in ruling. A democratic society should educate all educable
children to be capable of participating in collectively shaping their
society .
Democracy makes no claim to being a noncontroversial standard.
Not all societies or all citizens in our society-let alone all philoso
phers-are committed to democracy. Those that are not are stuck at
the impasse I characterized earlier. They assert their commitment to
civic virtue or to individual freedom at the expense of denying the
legitimacy of the other value. The practical consequence of this think
ing is that basic freedoms are sacrificed to communal virtue or free
dom is expanded so far as to forego the virtues essential to a just
society.
The legitimating claim of democracy is not that it will be accepted
by all citizens-no political philosophy can sensibly claim such a
Panglossian future. Its legitimating claim is one of political morality:
a state of democratic education is minimally obj ectionable insofar as
it leaves maximum room for citizens deliberately to shape their so
ciety, not in their own image but in an image that they can legitimately
identify with their informed, moral choices. "Conscious social re
production" is the ideal of democratic education. Democratic citizens
support a set of educational and political practices of which the fol
lowing can be said: These are the practices and authorities to which
we, acting collectively as a society, have consciously agreed.
For a society to reproduce itself consciously, it must be nonre
pressive. It must not restrict rational consideration of different ways
of life. Instead it must cultivate the kind of character and the kind of
intellect that enables people to choose rationally (some would say
"autonomously") among different ways oflife. The democratic prin
ciple of nonrepression prevents the state, and any group within it, from
using education unnecessarily to restrict rational deliberation of dif-

Education and the Moral Life

78

fering conceptions of good lives and societies . It also requires the state
to cultivate the capacity for rational deliberation . Nonrepression is
not a principle of purely negative freedom. It secures freedom from
interference only to the extent that it forbids using education to restrict
rational deliberation or consideration of different ways of life. Non
repression is therefore compatible with-indeed it requires-the use
of education to inculcate those character traits, such as honesty, re
ligious toleration, and mutual respect for persons , that serve as foun
dations for rational deliberation of differing ways of life.
Nonrepression is not neutral among all ways of life. It is justified
as a means by which to guide the cultivation of rational deliberation
among citizens . Although nonrepression often sets practical limits on
democratic authority, its defense derives from the primary value of
democratic education. Because conscious social reproduction is the
ideal of democratic education-and democracy-communities must
be prevented from using education to stifle rational deliberation of
competing conceptions of good lives and good societies.
For a society, rather than some segment of it, to reproduce itself,
it must be nondiscriminatory. Everyone must be educated. Nondis
crimination extends the logic of nonrepression, since states and fam
ilies can be selectively repressive by excluding entire groups of
children from schooling or by denying them an education conducive
to rational deliberation. Repression has commonly taken the more
passive form of discrimination in education against racial minorities,
girls, and other disfavored groups of children. Its effect often is to
repress, at least temporarily, the capacity and even the desire of these
groups to participate in politics or to assert their own preferences in
private life. Nondiscrimination is the distributional complement to
nonrepress1on.
In its most general application to education, the principle of non
discrimination prevents the state, and all groups within it, from de
nying anyone an educational good on grounds irrevelant to the
legitimate social purpose of that good. Applied to the education
needed to prepare children for future citizenship , the nondiscrimi
nation principle becomes a principle of nonexclusion . No educable
child may be excluded from an education adequate to participate in
democratic politics .
For a society to be reproductive, it must institute practices of dem
ocratic deliberation and decisionmaking for its adult citizens (and for
children to the extent necessary for cultivating the capacities of dem
ocratic deliberation) . To shape their society, citizens and their rep-

Undemocratic Education

79

resentatives engage in collective deliberations and decisionmaking at

different levels of government. They need not replicate their current
practices, and they must not do so in the many instances where those
practices are repressive or discriminatory. Reproduction never re
quires replication . Nonrepression and nondiscrimination often do not
permit it.
Like the family state, a democratic state tries to teach virtue-what
might best be called liberal democratic virtues, the virtues that are
necessary for a flourishing liberal democracy. These virtues include
veracity, nonviolence, religious toleration, mutual respect for rea
sonable differences of opinion, the ability to deliberate and therefore
to participate in conscious social reproduction.
Like the state of families, a democratic state secures a degree of
parental authority over education, resisting the strong communitarian
view that children are creatures of the state. Within the family, parents
are free to foster in children deep convictions to particular ways of
life. But by educating children also as future citizens, the democratic
state resists the view that parents are the ultimate authorities of their
children's education, that they may invoke their parental rights-or
their right to religious freedom-to prevent schools from exposing
their children to ways of life or thinking that challenge their personal
commitments.
Like the state of individuals, a democratic state defends a degree
of professional authority over education-for the sake not of neu
trality but of rational deliberation among differing ways of life. The
democratic commitment to teaching rational deliberation rests on a
rejection of the view, embraced by the state of individuals, that no
way of life is better than any other. One purpose of teaching rational
deliberation-as opposed to skepticism toward any ultimate values,
or deference to authority-is to foster in future citizens the ability to
defend their personal and political commitments, and revise those
that are indefensible. Although a democratic state permits adults to
live unexamined lives as well as examined one, it does not support
education that is neutral between these two options nor does it claim
that the two ways of life are equally good. Democratic education
cannot be neutral between these two options and still educate citizens
(or public officials) who are capable of exercising good political judg
ment.
If this understanding of democratic education is correct, then the
ideal of democratic education lies at the core of a commitment to
democracy. The ideal of democracy is often said to be collective self-

Education and the Moral Life

80

determination . But there is no "collecfr1e self" to be determined.

There are just so many individual selves that must find a fair way of
sharing the goods of a society together. It would be dangerous, as
critics often charge, to assume that the democratic state constitutes
the collective self of a society and that its policies define the best
interests of its individual members.
We do not need this metaphysical assumption, however, to defend
an ideal closely related to that of collective self-determination-an
ideal of citizens sharing in deliberate determination of the future shape
of their society. If democratic society is the "self" that citizens de1termine, it is a self that does not define their best interests. There
remain independent standards for defining the best interests of indi
viduals and reasons for thinking that individuals , rather then collec
tivities, are generally the best judges of their own interests . To avoid
the misleading metaphysical connotations of the concept of collective
self-determination, we might better understand the democratic ideal
as that of conscious social reproduction, the same ideal that guides
democratic education.
The convergence of democratic ideals is not coincidental. Demo
cratic education supplies the foundations upon which a democratic
society can secure the civil and political freedoms of its adult citizens
without placing their welfare or its very survival at great risk. In the
absence of democratic education, risks-perhaps even great risks
will still be worth taking for the sake of respecting the actual pref
erences of citizens, but democracy depends on democratic education
for its full moral and political strength.
The dependency is reciprocal. Without democratic government the
best education to which a society could aspire might be similar to
that practiced for thirteen centuries in Imperial China, where a cen
tralized state supported schools and designed a thorough system of
examinations that determined access on highly meritocratic grounds
to all state offices. When working at its best, the Chinese educational
system stimulated considerable social mobility and supported a wide
spread belief in what one scholar describes as an "academic Horatio
Alger myth. " 1 8 Although highly meritocratic, such a nondemocratic
state usurps control of what rightly belongs to citizens: decisions
concerning how the character and consciousness of future citizens
take shape outside the home. In usurping democratic authority, the
state also eliminates the strongest political rationale for democratic
education: teaching the virtues of democratic deliberation for the sake

Undemocratic Education

81

o f future citizenship. Democratic education follows a t the same time

as it reinforces our commitment to democracy .
"You cannot be a ruler unless you have first been ruled. You must
become a ruler after you have been ruled. " These twin maxims, not
Platonic but Aristotelian in origin, are at the root of a democratic
understanding of both politics and education. Better still, the sev
enteenth-century English locution : " You cannot govern unless you
have first been governed. You must govern after you have been
governed. " This is a democratic understanding of politics and edu
cation: being governed and governing in turn, where governing in
cludes the nurturing of children by parents, their formal instruction
by professionals, the structuring of public instruction by public of
ficials accountable to citizens, and the shaping of culture by both
private and public authorities.
There are many ways that this democratic understanding, more
fully elaborated, could make a difference in the way Americans think
about and practice education. I would like to consider two examples
one in the realm of lower education and the other in the realm of
high culture-of how the ideal of democratic education offers an
alternative to practices of undemocratic education.
In October 1 986 a federal district court ruled that the public schools
of Hawkins County, Tennessee, must exempt the children of a group
of fundamentalist Christian parents from basic reading classes . Those
classes assigned Holt, Rinehart & Winston texts, texts that had been
unanimously approved by the Hawkins County Board of Education
on recommendation of their textbook selection committee. The con
tent of the series offended the religious views of these parents, who
had joined together as Citizens Organized for Better Schools (COBS)
and unsuccessfully petitioned the School Board to have their children
taught from unoffensive texts . The parents obj ected to, among other
things: a story depicting a young boy "having fun" while cooking,
on grounds that it " denigrates the differences between the sexes" that
the Bible endorses ; a s tory entitled "A Visit to Mars , " on grounds
that it encourages children to use their imaginations in ways imcom
patible with fundamentalist faith; a story entitled "Hunchback Ma
donna, " which describes the religious and social practices of an Indian
settlement in New Mexico, on grounds that it teaches Catholicism;
and an excerpt from Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, on grounds
that it suggests that nonorthodox belief in God is better than no belief
at all . The principal and school board refused to exempt the children

Education and the Moral Life

82

from using the Holt, Rinehart readers. The parents took the school
district to court.
District Court Judge Thomas Hull found nothing wrong with the
textbooks and said so. Yet he concluded that the children must be
exempted from reading the series, and from their reading classes,
because, in his words, "Plaintiffs [the parents] sincerely believe that
the affirmation of these philosophical viewpoints is repulsive to their
Christian faith, so repulsive that they must not allow their children
to be exposed to the Holt series. This is their religious belief. They
have drawn a line, 'and it is not for us to say that the line they drew
was an unreasonable one. ' " 1 9
Why is it not for us to say?
-Not because the parents of those children should have ultimate
authority over their education. If that were the case, it would not be
for us (or Judge Hull) to say that they must be educated at all. Yet
Judge Hull ruled that the children take standardized tests in reading
rather than read standardized texts . If standardized tests are j ustified,
then there must be something that all children should learn inde
pendently of what their parents want them to learn.
-Not because democratic education is compatible with the Christian
fundamentalist view that forbids exposure to knowledge about reli
gions, cultures, and convictions that differ from their own, on
grounds that such knowledge corrupts the soul . The parents claimed
that their children would be corrupted by exposure to beliefs and
values that contradict their own religious views without a statement
that the other views are incorrect and that their views are the correct
ones . Democratic education is surely incompatible with this funda
mentalist view of knowledge and morality.
-Not because democratic education rests on a conception of the
good society that threatens the fundamentalist view of a good life
and must defer to fundamentalism for the sake of neutrality. Any
defensible political understanding of education depends on some con
ception of a good society, and every conception worth defending
threatens some conception (or conceptions) of a good life. It is a sad
fact of democracy in the United States that some citizens still hold
religious beliefs that rej ect teaching children the democratic values of
mutual respect (for reasonable differences of opinion) and rational
deliberation (among differing ways of life) . But their rej ection of
democratic values does not constitute a criticism of democracy any
more than the rej ection by a committed misogynist of the rights of
women constitutes a critique of feminism. Both the parents and the

Undemocratic Education

83

misogynist of course have a right to voice their opinions. But the

crucial questions to be addressed by a political theory in each con
troversy is which set of values (or virtues) must a democratic state
defend and which should it criticize?
Another argument sometimes offered in defense of the claims of
fundamentalist parents is that democratic education consists solely of
teaching certain facts, not certain values or virtues, to future citizens.
This position is superficially similar to John Stuart Mill's conclusion
that the state should limit its educational authority to public exami
nations "confined to facts and positive science exclusively. " 20 But if
this is what we should say about public education, it cannot be because
knowing facts is more crucial to a good life or good citizenship than
being virtuous. Nor can it be because facts are neutral, while values
are not. Might it be because citizens can more easily agree on a body
of facts than on a set of values or virtues to be taught to all children?
Perhaps the argument was soundly prudential when Mill made it,
but its premise is very shaky today. The political controversies that
have raged in recent years over the biases of testing and the claims
of creationism against evolution reveal how controversial the teaching
and testing of fa cts can be. But it is no more nor less controversial
than the teaching (or not teaching) of civic virtue. If we wish political
authorities to avoid political controversy above all else, our only
alternative is to advocate repression, in its most thoroughgoing and
insidious form.
There is no defensible political understanding of education that is
not tied to some conception of a good society, and there is no con
ception that is not controversial. So which one should we defend?
Judge Hull hinted at a conception of liberal neutrality: Secular texts
must not be imposed on fundamentalist children because they are not
neutral among all competing conceptions of the good life. The Holt
readers surely are not neutral between fundamentalist Christianity
and democratic humanism. Nor, as Judge Hull recognized, could any
readers be neutral between deference to God's will as literally revealed
in the Bible or authoritatively interpreted by a fundamentalist church
and rational inquiry or mutual respect among persons. Liberals think
of themselves as committed only to the latter set of virtues-rational
inquiry and mutual respect-but the logic of liberal neutrality does
not support their commitment in politics. The content of public
schooling cannot be neutral among competing conceptions of the
good life. And if it could, we would not and should not care to
support it.

Education and the Moral Life

84

It is not for democrats to deny fundamentalist parents the right to

draw the wrong line for their children in their homes and churches .
Parental freedom entails this (limited) right. 21 But it is for democrats
to say that parents do not have a right to veto a line drawn by public
schools unless that line is repressive or discriminatory. If parents,
judges, or philosopher-kings are allowed to veto lines drawn by public
schools when those lines are neither repressive nor discriminatory,
then democratic institutions are denied their legitimate role in shaping
the character of citizens.
But is democracy not repressive if it denies the teaching of Christian
fundamentalist convictions within public school, or, what amounts
to the same thing, if it requires the teaching of views inimical to
fundamentalist convictions? This challenge to democratic education
rests on a serious misunderstanding: that a policy is repressive simply
because it prevents parents from teaching their sincerely held beliefs
or requires the teaching of views inimical to, or undermining of,
those beliefs within publicly funded or subsidized schools . Non
repression requires the prevention of repressive practices, that is, prac
tices that stifle rational understanding and inquiry. It is a reductio ad
absurdum to claim that p reventing such prevention itself constitutes
repression.
Some critics sidestep this claim by doubting that any educational
practice is more or less repressive than any other. Education neces
sarily focuses on some subset of reasonable worlds, a subset often
chosen (again necessarily) for particularistic rather than universalistic
reasons. (How would a school decide on universalistic grounds which
among all possible histories and languages to teach and how much
time to devote to each?) It does not follow that all education is equally
repressive by virtue of excluding consideration of some reasonable
worlds and p rivileging others with greater attention. This conclusion
is plausible, if at all, only in abstraction. It is absurd to claim that the
Holt, Rinehart texts are as repressive as a set of readers that do not
"expose children to other forms of religion and to the feelings, at
titudes and values of other students that contradict the [parents' ] re
ligious views without a statement that the other views are incorrect
and that the [parents' ] views are the correct ones . " 22 If there is no
such thing as a completely nonrepressive education, then there are
surely kinds of repression. Unlike the education defended by the
Hawkins County Board of Education, the education demanded by
the plaintiff parents in the Mozert case-which does not permit chil
dren to reason about the merits of religions and values different from

Undemocratic Education

85

those of their parents (or offers only reasons that favor the parents'
point of view)-is incompatible with teaching rational inquiry and
mutual understanding in a religiously pluralistic society.
Upholding the right of schools to teach what might be called dem
ocratic humanism is consistent with criticizing schools that fall short
of the democratic ideal in ways rarely considered by courts . It is by
now a commonplace that many American schools, especially those
in urban areas, are overly centralized and bureaucratized. Such schools
are unconducive to the exercise of democratic deliberation by citizens
and democratic professionalism by teachers. Democratic profession
alism authorizes teachers, at the same time as it obligates them, to
cultivate in future citizens the capacity for critical reflection on their
culture. The professional responsibility of teachers, too simply sum
marized, is to uphold the principle of nonrepression by fostering the
knowledge, skills, and habits of democratic deliberation. The ideal
of democratic education also constrains citizens and public officials
to create working conditions that support the democratic role of
teachers.
The democratic principles of nondiscrimination and nonrepression
serve not only as constraints on authority but also as sources of au
thorization for more democratic action. This is perhaps most striking
in the realm of culture, where public support can serve as a means
of preventing the rich (or any other self-appointed group, including
artists themselves) from monopolizing influence over and access to
high culture. By increasing direct subsidies without increasing control
over the arts, a democratic government can decrease the dependence
of art institutions on private patrons. The less a museum or an opera
house must depend on a few wealthy patrons for its financial well
being, the less pressure it will feel to accept aid tied to demands that
violate its own artistic standards.
By itself, increasing direct public aid to the arts is unlikely to avoid
all repressive practices. As long as there are relatively few wealthy
citizens willing to donate millions to the arts, substantial pressure will
still be brought to bear on art institutions to accept improperly tied
aid. Other forms of democratic action can further decrease the at
tractiveness of such private repression. Legislatures can, for example,
expose private patronage to closer public scrutiny by placing greater
disclosure requirements on tax-deductible donations, thereby increas
ing the likelihood that improperly tied aid will attract adverse pub
licity. From a democratic perspective this is a desirable policy for
several reasons . First, citizens are entitled to "a clear picture of what

Education and the Moral Life

86

is done with money that otherwise would be collected as taxes. "23

Second, a clear public picture would pressure private patrons to live
up to the principle of nonrepression. (In most cases, the credible threat
of adverse publicity is sufficient to prevent repression. ) Third, better
disclosure requirements would make it more difficult for patrons to
use the indirect subsidy system to defraud the government by over
pricing their donations and entering into illegal deals with art insti
tutions, practices that are now almost impossible to uncover unless
the Internal Revenue Service decides to conduct an audit. 24
Public repression is also possible. But the historical record of public
support for the arts even in imperfectly democratic countries , in
cluding the United States, should allay the common concern that
governmental subsidy entails governmental control. 25 The evidence
does not even suggest that public support has lowered the quality of
high culture in this country. The less common concern may be more
warranted: that a high culture will deteriorate in democratic societies
unless governments take a substantial interest in supporting expensive
forms of art and making them part of a common culture. Although
the creation of a more democratic culture is certainly not a sufficient
condition for maintaining an artistically high culture, it is probably
a necessary condition in the United States today.
Democratic societies as a whole may still be less conducive to high
culture than undemocratic societies that concentrate power, wealth,
and prestige among the few. Both conservative and liberal critics
express this reasonable reservation about democracy. Democratic
principles are incompatible with the perfectionist view that because
high culture is intrinsically good, it should be supported even at the
expense of democracy. So conceived, perfectionism cedes political
priority to philosophy over democracy. The deliberation necessary
and sufficient to support high culture can be conducted exclusively
by philosophers; the best philosophical argument should then win
out politically.
Democratic perfectionism also accepts the intrinsic value of high
culture, but by contrast it denies that this value is sufficient to override
duly constituted democratic authority. It is no less obj ectionable for
philosophers than for parents to usurp democratic authority. Dem
ocratic perfectionism sanctions state subsidy of high culture, if, but
only if, it is publicly approved (and satisfies the standards of non
repression and nondiscrimination) . There is, as T. M. Scanlon points
out, "nothing obj ectionable about an argument among equal citizens
about what is to be recognized as good . "26 From a democratic per-

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87

spec tive, there is something valuable about such public delib eration
and decisionmaking.
The democratic case for subsidizing high culture goes beyond the
traditional philosophical understanding of perfectionism in yet an
other way. High culture helps make a society worthy of the collective
pride of citizens. If the citizens of Geneva would support the theater,
D 'Alembert argued in the article of the Encyclopedie that prompted
Rousseau's critical letter, "Geneva would j oin to the prudence of
Lacedaemon the urbanity of Athens . . . This city , which many
Frenchmen consider dull because they are deprived of the theatre,
would then become the seat of decent pleasures, j ust as it is now the
seat of philosophy and liberty. "27 Becoming the seat of decent plea
sures, or of high culture, is not essential to the creation of a just
society, any more than enj oying the higher pleasures is essential to
becoming a j ust person. But, like individuals, societies that enjoy
decent pleasures and appreciate high culture may be more desirable
than those that do not. Although democratic perfectionism does not
promise that democracies will support high culture, it gives them
good reasons to do so, and encourages those citizens who most ap
preciate the rarest treasures of human culture to rave about them in
public rather than rant in private against the philistinism of the
public. 28
The defense of democracy in recent years has taken the form of a
priority principle: democracy has priority over philosophy, that is,
what citizens decide is right takes precedence over what philosophers
demonstrate to be right. 29 The case for democratic education and
democracy more generally does not entail giving priority to democ
racy over philosophy. The priority principle misleads us about both
philosophy and democracy. If the wisest philosophers, like Socrates,
are distinguished not j ust by knowing what they do not know but
also by publicly admitting the limits of their knowledge, then, far
from subordinating itself to democracy, philosophy is the source of
democracy's strongest moral defense. Philosophy defends democracy
when it discovered that the best life and the best society to which we
can aspire must be among those that we recognize and claim as our
own. Philosophers cannot simply give citizens a good society, any
more than parents can give their children a good life. One reason for
this inherent limit on the power of philosophers, and parents, is that
a good life must be one that people live from the inside, by accepting
and identifying it as their own. Another reason is that any credible

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88

standard for a good life will leave room for discretionary choices on
the part of the people who are living those lives. Philosophers and
parents who would tell people precisely how to live their lives are
morally pretentious . Democratic education embraces this liberal in
sight, but it rejects the view that individual freedom is the only le
gitimate end of education.
Two of the most distinctive features of democratic education are
its simultaneous refusal to dissolve the tensions between individual
freedom and civic virtue in a potent philosophical solution, and its
insistence on finding a principled rather than simply pragmatic way
of living with the tensions . Living with tensions is not easy, nor is
it without sacrifices in freedom and virtue. But the alternatives to
democratic education that promise an escape from these tensions and
sacrifices are far worse.

F I V E

Civic Education in the Liberal State

WILLIAM GALSTON

In most times and places the necessity and appropriateness of civic

education has been accepted without question. It has been taken for
granted that young human beings must be shaped into citizens and
that public institutions have both the right and the responsibility to
take the lead. In the United States today, however, civic education
has become intensely controversial. Some skeptics believe that our
political and social arrangements can function perfectly well without
publicly defined (or directed) civic education. Others doubt that any
one specification of civic education can be devised for a liberal polity
in which individuals, families, and communities embrace fundamen
tally differing conceptions of choiceworthy lives. Still others argue
that any unitary civic education violates the autonomy and conscience
of many individuals and groups in a diverse society.
These obj ections are mistaken. It is both necessary and possible to
carry out civic education in the liberal state. To do so properly,
however, the partial truth of the critics' contentions must be recog
nized in the content and the conduct of that education.

Philosophic Education Versus Civic Education

Let me begin with a distinction between two very different kinds of
education. Philosophic education has as its basic objectives, first, the
disposition to seek truth, and, second, the capacity to conduct rational
inquiry. Training scientists, for example, requires the inculcation both
of an ethic of inquiry-do not fabricate or distort results, take care
to prevent your hypotheses (or desires) from affecting your obser
vations-and the techniques of inquiry appropriate to the discipline.

Education and the Moral Life

90

There are of course many different forms of philosophic education,

corresponding to the numerous ways in which truth may be pursued.
Nevertheless, these forms of education share two key features. First,
they are not decisively shaped by the specific social or political cir
cumstances in which they are conducted, or, to put it the other way
around, they are perverted when such circumstances come to have a
substantive effect. There is no valid distinction between "Jewish" and
"Aryan" physics, or between "bourgeois" and "socialist" biology;
truth is one and universal. Second, and relatedly, philosophic edu
cation can have corrosive consequences for political communities in
which it is allowed to take place. The pursuit of truth-scientific,
historical, moral, or whatever-can undermine structures of unex
amined but socially central belief.
Civic education differs from philosophic education in all these re
spects. Its purpose is not the pursuit and acquisition of truth, but
rather the formation of individuals who can effectively conduct their
lives within, and support, their political community . It is unlikely,
to say the least, that the truth will be fully consistent with this purpose.
Nor is civic education homogeneous and universal. It is by definition
education within, and on behalf of, a particular political order. The
conduct and content of civic education within a liberal democracy
will therefore differ significantly from civic education within other
kinds of polities . Nor, finally, does civic education stand in opposition
to its political community . On the contrary, it fails-fundamentally
if it does not support and strengthen that community .
It might be argued that this alleged opposition between civic and
philosophic education is far too sweeping. While some societies are
dependent on myths and lies, others are far more open to truth. Liberal
democracies, in particular, are founded on principles that can survive
rational inspection, and their functioning is facilitated (or at least not
crucially impaired) by unimpeded inquiry in every domain.
This argument does contain an important element of truth . The
understanding of liberal society as an "open" society has important
historical roots in early modern struggles against repressive tradition
and superstition. It found classic formulation in John Stuart Mill's
invocation of Socrates as liberal hero . In principle and in practice,
liberal democracy does exhibit a degree of openness to philosophic
education, and to its social consequences, that is probably without
precedent in human history. This fact constitutes one of the most
important arguments in favor of liberal democracy.
But it would be rash to conclude that the clash between rational

Civic Education in the Liberal State

91

inquiry and civic education in liberal societies has ceased to exist. On

the level of theory, liberalism takes sides in a series of disputes about
the meaning of equality, freedom, and the human good-disputes
that cannot be regarded as definitively settled from a philosophic point
of view. On the practical level, very few individuals will come to
embrace the core commitments of liberal society through a process
of rational inquiry. If children are to be brought to accept these com
mitments as valid and binding, it can only be through a pedagogy
that is far more rhetorical than rational . For example, rigorous his
torical research will almost certainly vindicate complex " revisionist"
accounts of key figures in American history. Civic education, how
ever, requires a more noble, moralizing history: a pantheon of heroes
who confer legitimacy on central institutions and constitute worthy
obj ects of emulation. 1 It is unrealistic to believe that more than a few
adult citizens of liberal societies will ever move beyond the kind of
civic commitment engendered by such a pedagogy.

The Need for Liberal Democratic Civic Education

There is a tradition of Mandevillean argument that liberal polities do
not need-indeed, are distinctive in not needing-civic education
directed to the formation of liberal citizens because social processes
and political institutions can be arranged so as to render desired col
lective outcomes independent of individual character and belief. Al
bert Hirschman has traced the emergence in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century social thought of the thesis that republican gov
ernment could best be secured not through civic virtue but through
the liberation of the commercial-acquisitive "interests" of the middle
class in opposition to the politically destructive "passions" of the
aristocracy. 2 The most famous of the Federalist Papers (10 and 5 1 )
contain memorable formulations o f the need to counteract interest
with interest and passion with passion. Immanuel Kant, who was at
once the most profound moral philosopher and the most devoted
liberal theorist of his age, argued vigorously for the disjunction be
tween individual virtue and republican government. A liberal gov
ernment that fully protects individual rights "is only a question of a
good organization of the state, whereby the powers of each selfish
inclination are so arranged in opposition that one moderates or de
stroys the ruinous effect of the other. The consequence . . . is the
same as if none of them existed, and man is forced to be a good
citizen even if not a morally good person . " 3

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The proposition that liberal societies are uniquely able to do without

the fruits of civic education has been sharply challenged, however.
Recent interpretations of the liberal theoretical tradition have em
phasized the copresence of institutional and character-based argu
ments, as have rereadings of the Federalist.4 Recent explorations of
public policy problems-crime, drugs, dependency-have focused
on the formation of character and belief as well as on the manipulation
of incentives . 5 Historical inquiries into American public education
have documented the driving role played by the perceived need for
a civic pedagogy that could turn immigrants into citizens. 6 Groups
across the political spectrum have reemphasized their belief that a
refurbished civic education is an urgent necessity: "Democracy's sur
vival depends upon our transmitting to each new generation the po
litical vision of liberty and e quality that unites us as Americans . . .
Such values are neither revealed truths nor natural habits. There is
no evidence that we are born with them. Devotion to human dignity
and freedom, to equal rights, to social and economic j ustice, to the
rule of law, to civility and truth, to tolerance of diversity, to mutual
assistance, to personal and civic responsibility, to self-restraint and
self-respect-all these must be taught and learned. "7
Common experience buttresses what history and argument sug
gest: that the operation of liberal institutions and the functioning of
liberal society are affected in important ways by the character and
belief of individuals (and leaders) within the liberal polity. At some
point the attenuation of civic spirit and competence will create pa
thologies with which liberal institutions, however perfect their tech
nical design, simply cannot cope. To an extent difficult to measure
but impossible to ignore, the viability of liberal society depends on
its ability effectively to conduct civic education.

The Possibility of Liberal Democratic Civic Education

Liberal democratic civic education may be necessary, but is it possible?
In the same way that the religious diversity of liberal society makes
it impossible to reach a religious consensus suitable for public en
dorsement, so too the moral and political diversity of the liberal polity
might seem to undermine the possibility of a unitary civic pedagogy
acceptable to, and binding on, all groups. Indeed, the movement from
the religious neutrality of the liberal state to a wider moral and political
neutrality is one of the defining characteristics of liberal theory in

Civic Education in the Liberal State

93

our tim e, a development with roots in the opinions of urban-ba sed

soci al elite s.
This genera lization of liberal neutrality is neither necessary nor
wise. To the extent that we accept a shared citizenship, we have
something i mportant in common-a set of political institutions and
of principles that underlie them. What we share, beyond all our dif
ferences, provides the basis for a civic education valid across the
bo undaries of our differences .
Some of the virtues needed t o sustain the liberal state are requisites
of every political community: the willingness to fight on behalf of
one's country; the settled disposition to obey the law; and loyalty
the developed capacity to understand, to accept, and to act on the
core principles of one' s society. Some of the individual traits are
specific to liberal society-independence, tolerance, and respect for
individual excellences and accomplishments, for example. Still others
are entailed by the key features of liberal democratic politics. For
citizens, the disposition to respect the rights of others, the capacity
to evaluate the talents, character, and performance of public officials,
and the ability to moderate public desires in the face of public limits
are essential. For leaders, the patience to work within social diversity
and the ability to narrow the gap between wise policy and popular
consent are fundamental. And the developed capacity to engage in
public discourse and to test public policies against our deeper con
victions is highly desirable for all members of the liberal community,
whatever political station they may occupy. 8
A leading contemporary theorist of civic education, Amy Gut
mann, has reached conclusions parallel to but divergent from the
theses just sketched . Her point of departure is democracy, and her
argument is that our civic pedagogy should be oriented toward dem
ocratic virtue: "the ability to deliberate, and hence to participate in
conscious social reproduction. "9 In my view, this is a piece-but only
a piece-of the civic education appropriate to our situation, and it
becomes a distortion when it is mistaken for the whole.
Let me begin with a methodological point. The adequacy of a
conception of civic education cannot be determined in the abstract,
but only through its congruence with the basic features of the society
it is intended to sustain . To depart significantly from those features
is to recommend a conception of civic education suitable for some
society other than the one at hand. Differently put, it is to endorse
a politics of transformation based on a general conception of the
political good external to the concrete polity in question. I do not

Education and the Moral Life

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wish to deny the possibility or appropriateness of such theoretical

practices. But I do not want to distinguish between them and the
task of fitting pedagogical practices to existing communities .
It is at best a partial truth to characterize the United States as a
democracy in Gutmann's sense. To begin with the obvious : in a liberal
democracy the concern for individual rights and for what is sometimes
called the private sphere entails limits on the legitimate power of
maj orities, and it suggests that cultivating the disposition to respect
rights and privacies is one of the essential goals of liberal democratic
civic education. In Gutmann's account, the power of the maj ority is
limited by the requirement of "nonrepression" and "nondiscrimi
nation, " but these limits are themselves derived from the conception
of a democratic society all of whose members are equipped and au
thorized to share in ruling. 1 0 These considerations are not robust
enough to generate anything like a liberal account of protections for
individuals and groups against the possibility of maj ority usurpation.
A second liberal reservation against Gutmann's democracy is the
distinction between momentary public whim and the settled will
that is, the considered j udgment-of the community. This distinction
is what underlies the liberal effort to construct a framework of rel
atively stable institutions partially insulated from shifting majorities.
It is, in short, one of the motives for constitutions as distinct from
acts of legislation as well as for processes that complicate the task of
forging legislative majorities, at least for certain purposes. A form of
pedagogy more fully appropriate than Gutmann's to a liberal dem
ocratic constitutional order would incorporate an understanding of
these limitations on " conscious social reproduction. "
Third, in liberal democracies representative institutions replace di
rect self-government for many purposes. A civic education congruent
with such institutions will emphasize, as I have suggested, the virtues
and competences needed to select representatives wisely, to relate to
them appropriately, and to evalute their performance in office soberly.
These characteristics are related to, but in some respects quite distinct
from, the traits needed for direct participation in political affairs .
Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the balance between participation
and representation is not a settled question, in either theory or prac
tice. A civic pedagogy for us may rightly incorporate participatory
virtues. It may even accommodate a politics more hospitable to par
ticipation than are our current practices . But it is not free to give
participatory virtues pride of place or to remain silent about the virtues
that correspond to representative institutions .

Civic Education in the Liberal State

95

Finally, in liberal democracies certain kinds of excellences are ac

knowledged, at least for certain purposes, to constitute legitimate
claims to public authority. That is, in filling offices and settling policy,
equalities of will and interest are counterbalanced by inequalities of
training and accomplishment. Examples include the technical exper
tise of the public health official, the interpretive skill of the judge,
and even the governance capabilities of political leaders . As paradox
ical as it may appear, a tradition of political theory extending back
to Aristotle has understood the selection of public officials through
popular elections as significantly aristocratic in its effect. In American
thought, some of our greatest democrats have embraced this view.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote John Adams : "there is a natural aris
tocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents . . .
May we not even say, that that form of government is best, which
provides the most effectively for a pure selection of these natural
aristoi into the offices of government? . . . I think the best [way of
doing this] is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave
to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the

pseudo-aristoi . ' ' 1 1

To put this point more broadly: the problem that liberal democracy
sets itself is to achieve the greatest possible conj unction between good
j udgment and virtue, on the one hand, and participation and consent
on the other. Democratic processes, suitably refined, may hold out
the best prospects for accomplishing this goal. But they are not ends
in themselves; they are to be j udged by their fruits . Liberal democratic
civic education must therefore aim to engender, not only the full
range of public excellences, but also the widest possible acceptance
of the need for such excellences in the conduct of our public life.
Populist rancor against the claims of liberal democratic excellence is
understandable, and even at times a useful counterweight to arrogance
and usurpation. But it cannot be allowed to obliterate the legitimacy
of such claims .

Civic Education Versus Liberal Privacy

Civic education poses a special difficulty for liberal democracy. Most
forms of government, classical and contemporary, have tacitly em
braced the Aristotelian understanding of politics as the architectonic
human association to which all others-family, tribe, economic
groupings, even religion-are rightly subordinated. For all such po
litical communities the government's authority to conduct civic ed-

Education and the Moral Life

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ucation is unquestioned, because conflicts between political and

subpolitical commitments are resolved by the belief that the political
enj oys a principled primacy. In liberal societies, by contrast, the res
olution of such conflicts is far less clear-cut. Reservations against
public authority in the name of individual autonomy, parental rights,
and religious conscience are both frequent and respectable. The liberal
tradition is animated by the effort to carve out spheres that are sub
stantially impervious to government-an effort set in motion by the
historical lesson that the attempt to impose religious uniformity
through public fiat undermines civil order as well as individual con
science. Thus, even if liberal theories, or public authorities moved
by such theories, succeed in specifying a core of habits and beliefs
supportive of the liberal polity, individuals and groups may none
theless obj ect to civic education that tries to foster these habits and
beliefs universally.
Yet while the liberal tradition is sensitive to the claims of individual
conscience, early liberal theorists were equally mindful of the dangers
and limits of those claims. John Locke, for example, refused to expand
his doctrine of religious toleration into an inviolable private sphere
of conscience. On the contrary, he insisted that in cases of conflict,
civil authority takes precedence over conscience or faith, however
deeply held. The key criterion is the maintenance of civil order. Opin
ions that threaten the peace of society may be legitimately opposed
or even suppressed: "No opinion contrary to human society, or to
those moral Rules which are necessary to the preservation of Civil
Society, are to be tolerated by the Magistrate. " Nor did toleration
preclude affirmative public discourse on behalf of those necessary
rules. Locke distinguished between coercion and persuasion. The fact
that the sovereign cannot legitimately command adherence to a spec
ific belief does not mean that civil authority cannot offer systematic
arguments for, or instruction in, that belief. 1 2 Thus , although Locke
thought that in practice civic education would occur in families rather
than through state mechanisms, his theory leads directly to the legit
imation of the conduct of such education through public means, in
dividual conscience to the contrary notwithstanding.
Two other lines of argument bolster this conclusion. In practice,
the private sphere within which conscience is exercised can only be
defended within civil society. In the classic American formulation,
government is instituted "to secure these rights. " It follows that in
dividuals must be willing to surrender whatever portion of these
rights must be sacrificed to the requirements of public order and

Civic Education in the Liberal Sta te

97

institutional perpetuation. Individuals who seek to exercise, without

compromise, the totality of their presocial rights will quickly find
that conflict with other rights-bearers impedes the attainment of their
ends and the security of their liberty. Even if we begin with a robust
conception of individual rights defined theoretically rather than his
torically or politically, we are forced to conclude that public authority
may legitimately restrict those rights in the name of maximizing their
effective exercise. In particular, government may properly teach those
beliefs and habits needed to bolster the institutions that secure liberal
rights, and citizens of liberal polities who resist this civic education
would be irrationally contradicting their own self-interest, rightly
understood.
The second argument follows hard on the heels of the first. If
citizenship means anything , it means a package of benefits and bur
dens shared, and accepted, by all. To be a citizen of a liberal polity
is to be required to surrender so much of your own private conscience
as is necessary for the secure enj oyment of what remains. To refuse
this surrender is in effect to breach the agreement under which you
are entitled to full membership in your community.
Now, it is perfectly possible to petition your community for special
relief from the burdens accepted by your fellow citizens : "My con
science makes it impossible for me to fight in battle I pledge allegiance
to the flag I or whatever. " Public authority may then make a pru
dential determination as to whether granting your request will or
won't impose unacceptable costs on public aims and institutions. If
you are part of a small minority, and if the grounds on which you
seek exemption from shared burdens are so narrow and idiosyncratic
as to suggest that others are unlikely to follow suit, then it may be
possible to grant the exemption. But if the facts suggest that acceding
to you will open the floodgate for many others, then it would be
rational for public authorities to rej ect your plea. The issue, to repeat,
is one of concrete practice rather than general principle.
A variant of this problem arises when individuals or groups are
willing to take the next step, abj uring the benefits of citizenship in
order to gain release from its burdens. This is in effect to request a
kind of resident alien status within one's community: you remain
subj ect to basic laws of civil order, but you are no longer expected
to attain the character, beliefs, and competences needed for effective
p olitical membership. Your real desire is simply to withdraw, to be
left alone. Here again, as before, the issue is practical. If there is reason
to believe that granting this request will generate significant ripple

Education and the Moral Life

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effects, there is a rational basis for public authority to resist it. Al

ternatively, it might be argued that withdrawal is an untenable half
way house between citizenship and actual physical exit. As long as
your group remains located within the domain of wider community,
it necessarily interacts with, and affects, that community in many
ways . While some free-rider problems could be addressed through
taxation, other difficulties would prove far less tractable. It is not
clear that the political community could afford to remain indifferent
to the example you might set for other potential withdrawers . (This
is not intended as an argument against the right of physical exit,
which rests on quite different foundations and raises different issues .
The Soviets have improperly used arguments parallel to those in this
paragraph to thwart the emigration of disaffected groups . )
Perhaps the most poignant problem raised by liberal civic education
is the clash between the content of that education and the desire of
parents to pass their way of life on to their children. Few parents, I
suspect, are unaware of or immune to the force of this desire. What
could be more natural? If you believe that you are fit to be a parent,
you must also believe that at least some of the choices you have made
are worthy of emulation by your children, and the freedom to pass
on the fruits of those choices must be highly valued. Conversely,
who can contemplate without horror totalitarian societies in which
families are compelled to yield all moral authority to the state?
Still, your child is at once a future adult and a future citizen. Your
authority as a parent is limited by both these facts . For example, you
are not free to treat your child in a manner that impedes normal
development. You may not legitimately starve or beat your child or
thwart the acquisition of basic linguistic and social skills . The sys
tematic violation of these and related norms suffices to warrant state
intervention. Similarly, you are not free to impede the child's ac
quisition of a basic civic education-the beliefs and habits that support
the polity and enable individuals to function competently in public
affairs . In particular, you are not free to act in ways that will lead
your child to impose significant and avoidable burdens on the com
munity . For example, the liberal state has a right to teach all children
respect for the law, and you have no opposing right as a parent to
undermine that respect. Similarly, the liberal state has a right to in
culcate the expectation that all normal children will become adults
capable of caring for themselves and their families .
Thus far the argument is reasonably strong and uncontroversial.
But how much further may the liberal state go? Amy Gutmann argues

Civic Education in the Liberal State

99

that children must be taught both " mutual respect among persons"
and " rational deliberation among ways of life, " and that parents are
unlikely to do this on their own . It is precisely because communities
such as the Old Order Amish are morally committed to shielding
their children from influences that might weaken their faith that the
state is compelled to step in: "The same principle that requires a state
to grant adults personal and political freedom also commits it to
assuring children an education that makes those freedoms both pos
sible and meaningful in the future. A state makes choice possible by
teaching its future citizens respect for opposing points of view and
ways of life . It makes choice meaningful by equipping children with
the intellectual skills necessary to evaluate ways of life different from
that of their parents. " 1 3
I d o n o t believe that this argument can b e sustained. In a liberal
democratic polity, to be sure, the fact of social diversity means that
the willingness to coexist peacefully with ways of life very different
from one's own is essential. Further, the need for public evaluation of
leaders and policies means that the state has an interest in developing
citizens with at least the minimal conditions of reasonable public
judgment. But neither of these civic requirements entails a need for
public authority to take an interest in how children think about dif
ferent ways of life . Civic tolerance of deep differences is perfectly
compatible with unswerving belief in the correctness of one's own
way of life. It rests on the conviction that the pursuit of the better
course should be (and in many cases can only be) the result of per
suasion rather than coercion-a classic Lockean premise that the lib
eral state does have an interest in articulating. Civic deliberation is also
compatible with unshakable personal commitments . It requires only
that each citizen accept the minimal civic commitments, already out
lined, without which the liberal polity cannot long endure. In short,
the civic standpoint does not warrant the conclusion that the state
must (or may) structure public education to foster in children skeptical
reflection on ways oflife inherited from parents or local communities .
It is hardly accidental that Gutmann takes the argument in this
direction . At the heart of much modern liberal democratic thought
is a (sometimes tacit) commitment to the Socratic proposition that
the unexamined life is an unworthy life, that individual freedom is
incompatible with ways of life guided by unquestioned authority or
unswerving faith . As philosophic conclusions these commitments
have much to recommend them. The question, though, is whether
the liberal state is j ustified in building them into its system of public

Education and the Moral Life

100

education. The answer is that it cannot do so without throwing its

weight behind a conception of the human good unrelated to the
functional needs of its sociopolitical institutions and at odds with the
deep beliefs of many of its loyal citizens . As a political matter liberal
freedom entails the right to live unexamined as well as examined
lives-a right whose effective exercise may require parental bulwarks
against the corrosive influence of modernist skepticism. I might add
that, in practice, there is today a widespread perception that our
system of public education already embodies a bias against authority
and faith. This perception, in large measure, is what underlies the
controversy over "secular humanism" that is so incomprehensible to
liberal elites.
It is not difficult to anticipate the obj ections that will be raised
against the argument I have just advanced. There are, after all, three
parties to the educational transaction: children, their parents , and the
state. Perhaps the state has no direct right to shape public education
in accordance with the norms of Socratic self-examination. But
doesn't liberal freedom mean that children have the right to be ex
posed to a range of possible ways of life? If parents thwart this right
by attempting, as we would say, to "brainwash" their children,
doesn't the state have a right-indeed, a duty-to step in?
The answer is no on both counts . Children do have a wide range
of rights that parents are bound to respect and that government is
bound to enforce against parental violation. As I argued earlier, par
ents may not rightly impede the normal physical, intellectual, and
emotional development of their children. Nor may they impede the
acquisiton of civic competence and loyalty. The state may act in loco
parentis to overcome family-based obstacles to normal develop ment.
And it may use public instrumentalities, including the system of ed
ucation, to p romote the attainment by all children of the basic req
uisites of citizenship. These are legitimate intrusive state powers . But
they are limited by their own inner logic. In a liberal state interven
tions that cannot be j ustified on this basis cannot be j ustified at all.
That is how liberal democracies must draw the line between parental
and public authority over the education of children, or, to put it less
confrontationally, that is the principle on the basis of which such
authority must be shared. 14
But doesn't this position evade the emotional force of the obj ection?
Does it legitimate parental brainwashing of children, which is a ter
rible thing? Again, the answer is no, for two reasons. First, the simple
fact that authority is divided means that, from an early age, every

Civic Education in the Liberal Sta te

1 01

child will see that he or she is answerable to institutions other than

the family-institutions whose substantive requirements may well
cut across the grain of parental wishes and beliefs. Some measure of
reflection-or at least critical distance-is the likely result. Second,
the basic features of liberal society make it virtually impossible for
parents to seal their children off from knowledge of other ways of
life. And, as every parent knows, possibilities that are known but
forbidden take on an allure out of all proportion to their intrinsic
merits .
To these points I would add a basic fact of liberal sociology: the
greatest threat to children in modern liberal societies is not that they
will believe in something too deeply, but that they will believe in
nothing very deeply at all. Even to achieve the kind of free self
reflection that many liberals prize, it is better to begin by believing
something. Rational deliberation among ways of life is far more
meaningful (I am tempted to say that it can only be meaningful) if
the stakes are meaningful-that is, if the deliberator has strong con
victions against which competing claims can be weighed. The role
of parents in fostering such convictions should be welcomed, not
feared.
Despite the pluralism of liberal societies, it is perfectly possible to
identify a core of civic commitments and competences whose broad
acceptance undergirds a well-ordered liberal polity. The state has a
right to ensure that this core is generally and effectively disseminated,
either directly, through public civic education, or indirectly, through
the regulation of private education. In cases of conflict this civic core
takes priority over individual or group commitments (even the de
mands of conscience) , and the state may legitimately use coercive
mechanisms to enforce it.
But the liberal state must not venture beyond this point. It must
not throw its weight behind ideals of personal excellence outside the
shared understanding of civic excellence, and it must not give pride
of place to understandings of personal freedom outside the shared
understanding of civic freedom. For if it does so, the liberal state
prescribes, as valid for and binding on all, a single debatable concep
tion of how human beings should lead their lives . In the name of
liberalism, it becomes totalitarian. It betrays its own deepest-and
most defensible-principles.

III

Mo ral Co nflict

S I X

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism

in ]. S . Mill's Thoug ht
RICHARD ASHCRAFT

Within the tradition of liberalism as a political theory, class conflict

as a social problem, if recognized at all, has occupied a place of
marginal importance. This is hardly surprising, since liberalism not
only see k s to institutionalize a moral life without class conflict, it also
presupp oses an analysis of social relations in terms of the pluralistic
associations of individuals, a theoretical framework within which the
notion of class conflict can claim no conceptual legitimacy.
I propose to consider an exceptional case to my descriptive char
acterization of liberalism. Class conflict in capitalist society is a prob
lem of central importance to the political theory ofJohn S tuart Mill.
An examination of Mill's effort to think through the various impli
cations of this problem will not only assist us in understanding his
political theory, but will also enable us to appreciate some of the
difficulties that a recognition of class conflict poses for any liberal
democratic perspective.

The Social Foundations of Political Theory

It would be claiming too much to say that Mill could not have rec
ognized the importance of class conflict had he not experienced the
"crisis" in his mental history described in his Autobiography . But what
is true is that Mill's redefinition of "political theory " in the wake of
that crisis supplied the necessary intellectual framework for perceiving
the problem of class conflict if it should arise in his society-as indeed
it did. For reasons which I hope will become clearer as the argument
proceeds, it is not a digression, in the case of Mill, to begin with a
consideration of certain methodological and conceptual issues which,

Moral Conflict

1 06

in Mill's view, were inextricably linked with one's definition of po

litical theory. By 1 829 Macaulay's critique of James Mill's Essa y on
Government and his reading of the writings of the St. Simonians
had convinced Mill that " the theory of government laid down in
Bentham's and my father's writing" omitted "many things " which
their political theory "ought to have made room for, and did not. " 1
That Bentham's political theory was too narrowly constructed i s a
criticism that for more than forty years Mill repeatedly directed
against that thinker. 2 The essential break with traditional liberal the
ory, according to him, was exemplified in the writings of nineteenth
century French thinkers . The St. Simonians had developed "a new
mode of political thinking, " and Tocqueville's Democracy in America,
Mill declared, "changed the face of political philosophy . " 3
Mill not only recognized the need for a more comprehensive con
ception of p olitical theory than the one he had inherited from his
father or Bentham, he especially emphasized three specific features
actually, a set of interrelated beliefs-that characterized French po
litical philosophy which he believed had been ignored by traditional
liberal thinkers . 4 It is worthwhile paying close attention to these omis
sions, for although the three propositions can be simply stated, each
of them embodies several implications. Mill was quite right to believe
that, taken together, they represent a significant theoretical critique
of the then dominant form of liberalism.
The view that all the elements of social life form an interrelated
whole, such that any discussion of political institutions presupposes
a theoretical analysis of how social power is distributed in a particular
society, made a deep impression upon Mill. Similarly, he immediately
saw the force of the argument that the development of society is a
process marked by historical stages and, therefore, some theory of
history is an essential ingredient of a political theory. Finally, Mill
perceived that, methodologically speaking, a political theory is simply
an analysis of empirically observable tendencies which, in ensemble,
constitute the social system.
Recalling this period of his intellectual development, Mill wrote in
his Autobiography that he learned from the St. Simonians that " gov
ernment is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands of
whatever is the strongest power in society, " and that " whatever is
the growing power in society will force its way into the government, "
because "the distribution of constitutional power cannot long con
tinue very different from that of real power, without a convulsion. "5
"Underneath all political philosophy, " he argued, " there must be a

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 07

social philosophy-a study of agencies lying deeper than forms of

government, which, working through forms of government, " pro
duce their effects . 6 Such a viewpoint undermined any belief in the
autonomy of politics . "There can be no separate science of govern
ment, " Mill insisted, once one sees that political phenomena are
shaped and constituted by sociological phenomena. Hence, politics
is simply "part of the general science of society, not [a] separate branch
of it. "7 In other words, politics was redefined as the science of man
in society, or sociology. 8
Just as he broadened his conception of political economy, which
became social economy, so Mill enlarged his view of politics and of
political theory. 9 The latter became identical with a theory of how
society was constituted: that is, of what social classes it is composed,
and what their relations to each other are. How is wealth produced
and distributed? What are the dominant beliefs held by individuals in
society? What is the level of their intellectual and cultural develop
ment ?10 These were j us t a few of the questions, according to Mill, to
which any prospective political theorist would have to supply answers
in order to formulate meaningful statements regarding the political
institutions in a particular society.
Political theory-now defined as "social science" -was for Mill
the most complicated expression of human knowledge. 11 In part, this
was because it included so many specialized areas of information
economics, ethics, history, anthropology, science, and philosophy.
As Mill's second essay on Bentham ( 1 838) made clear, he could not
accept the view that human nature could be reduced to a few phil
osophical precepts analytically stated in the language of universality .
Rather, h e insisted, human beings are what they are because their
characters have been shaped by the habits, beliefs, and social insti
tutions transmitted to them by previous generations. 1 2
The shift from philosophy to sociology not only increased the
complexity of any theory of human nature, it also awakened in Mill
a deep appreciation for the value of history that went far beyond any
understanding of history he had derived from his "course in Ben
thamism. " Here too it was the French who demonstrated the im
portance of history to an understanding of politics. '3 " Any general
theory or philosophy of politics, " Mill declared, " supposes a previous
theory of human progress, and . . . this is the same thing with a
philosophy of history. " 1 4 Nor did he hesitate to insist upon "the
ne cessity of historical studies as the foundation" for political theory . 15
The latter, therefore, could not be formulated in abstract or absolu tist

Moral Conflict

1 08

terminology; rather, political theory had to be seen "as a question of

time, place, and circumstance. " 1 6 Political philosophy was a " con
vention" created by "the wants of the time" rooted in "the conditions
of [the) society" in which it was developed. This perspective ex
pressed " the whole spirit of the new historical school" of French
thinkers . 17 That political "truths " are "strictly relative . . . [and) cor
relative [to) a given state or situation of society" states "one of the
principal differences between the political philosophy of the present
time and that of the past. " 1 8 "The science of politics, " in other words,
must be seen as "fluctuating with the exigencies of society. " 19
This contextualization of political theory placed a decisive emphasis
upon the empirical investigation of social phenomena, but what ex
actly did such an investigation uncover? The mere accumulation of
facts would, Mill argued, amount to nothing more than the crudest
empiricism. Besides, the notion that an "affect" was the result of a
singular "cause" was a far too simplistic conception of causality to
be applicable to human affairs. To Mill there was little point in aban
doning a simplified view of human nature while retaining such a
simplistic methodological characterization of human action as causal
events . If human nature as the ensemble of influences acting upon
individuals in society was complicated, it was because the interaction
of all the elements that constitute society was itself a complicated
process. The latter could best be understood in terms of a plurality
or composition of causes. 20 Even this expression does not adequately
comprehend the extent to which there are counteracting causes, or
the degree to which, from a contextualist standpoint, it is " capricious"
to draw a hard and fast "distinction b etween the cause of a phenom
enon and its conditions. "21 Thus, Mill argued, " all laws of causation,
in consequence of their liability to be counteracted, require to be stated
in words affirmative of teridencies only, and not of actual results. "22
Political theory, therefore, must be formulated in terms of the
observable tendencies at work in society; it is composed of "approx
imate generalizations" and conditional proj ections . There are, ac
cording to Mill, no universal tendencies or certainties with respect to
human behavior. Social science is, fundamentally, a science of prob
abilities. 23 Political theory rests upon empirical laws-observed uni
formities-and these laws, Mill maintained, "can only be received as
true within the limits of time and place in which they have been found
true by observations. "24 The fact is, he declared, "human interests
are so complicated, and the effects of any incident whatever so mul
titudinous, that if it touches mankind at all, its influence on them is,

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 09

in the great maj o rity of cases, both good and bad. " 25 The task of the
political theorist is to analyze the tendencies in society relative to each
other, to determine the good and bad effects of each , and to state, in
conditional language, the probable future outcome if these tendencies
continue to operate as they appear to be operating in the present.
Tocqueville's Democracy in America drew so much praise from Mill
because the work was written from this standpoint; from the per
spective, that is, of the "new political philosophy . " 26
Mill's aim was to provide an empirically grounded basis for a theory
of social structures. Hence, some tendencies were certainly long-term
ones, and, with respect to human endeavor, they were, for all practical
purposes, irreversible. Yet, because "the science of politics, or of
human society . . . is principally concerned with the actions not of
solitary individuals, but of masses, " to know that most people act in
a certain way most of the time generally is a sufficient epistemological
foundation for the realization of the practical objectives of that sci
ence. 27 The obj ective of a political theory as an instrument of practical
politics is " to surround any given society with the greatest possible
number of circumstances of which the tendencies are beneficial, and
to remove or counteract, as far as practicable, those of which the
tendencies are inj urious. "28 This application of political theory nat
urally relied upon the investigatory techniques and the methodolog
ical assumption that Mill built into his definition. Stated in its broadest
formulation, "the fundamental problem, therefore, of the social sci
ence, is to find the laws according to which any state of society
produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place. "29
It is true, Mill conceded, that the complicated and comprehensive
knowledge demands social _science places upon its practitioners pro
duces an inescapable condition of uncertainty attached to the pro
nouncements of political theorists; that is, it makes it less likely that
" two inquirers equally competent and equally disinterested will take
the same view of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. "
When " to this intrinsic difficulty is added the infinitely greater extent
to which personal or class interests and predilections interfere with
impartial j udgment, " it is evident that "political theory, " so defined,
is deeply rooted in the structural conditions of political controversy. 30
How these methodological presuppositions are expressed in Mill's
analysis of nineteenth-century British society will be discussed later.
Here my purpose is to indicate the importance that Mill's redefinition
of political theory had as a prolegomena to that analysis. If class
conflict were a structural feature of capitalist society, and if it played

Moral Coriflict

1 10

a role within a theory of social change, then a contextual, historical,

sociological approach to the study of politics certainly supplied the
intellectual framework in terms of which these issues could be in
vestigated .
I do not wish to draw a sharp distinction between the "philosoph
ical" elements of Mill's thought-concepts he borrowed from other
thinkers-and the "sociological" observations he made with respect
to the prevailing conditions in his own society, but, in tracing the
emergence of a concept of " class interest" in his political theory, let
us begin with Mill's interesting interpretation of Bentham's political
thought. In his essay on Bentham, Mill draws a critical distinction
between cultural or "spiritual interests" and the "material interests"
of society . Bentham's philosophy has little to say about the former,
but, Mill observes, "it can teach the means of organizing and regu
lating the merely business part of the social arrangements " between
individuals. That is, it can "indicate means by which . . . the material
interests of society can be protected. " 3 1 Less emphasized in the sec
ondary literature on Mill is his commentary on what Bentham' s phi
losophy really means if these "social arrangements" are analyzed in
greater detail. In the political world of mass and collective action,
what the Benthamite pursuit of self-interest means "is selfish interest
in the form of class interest, and the class morality founded thereon. "
That " the social feelings of members of the class are made to play
into the hands of their selfish ones, " resulting in " the most odious
class-selfishness, " Mill insists, "was one of Bentham's leading
ideas. " 32 As he himself put it in his Benthamite period, "in every
class, the purely selfish [individuals] always form a large maj ority. " 33
In one sense this proposition he borrowed from Bentham remained
a keystone of Mill's thought throughout his life. At the same time,
he concluded from the mere existence of classes in society that social
institutions had not been properly constituted to realize the general
good of society . 34
If classes were organized collective pursuits of selfish interests, it
followed for Mill that they would employ any political power placed
in their hands to advance those interests, and they would do so at the
expense or through the oppression of classes that were politically
weaker than themselves. 35 The very principle of constitutional gov
ernment, Mill wrote in the Considerations, "requires it to be assumed
that political power will be abused, " and, as he specifically noted,
this means that it will be abused in the form of "class legislation. " 36
Nor will the use of this power be confined within the boundaries of

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in }. S . Mill's Thought

111

the law. " Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the
morality of the country emanates from its class interest and its feeling
of class superiority. " 37 That observation on the exercise of class power
occurs in On Liberty, where Mill is especially concerned not so much
with governmental authority as with the social forces that shape public
op inion and the everyday activities of social life. In other words, as
Mill developed the insights he gained from French political thought,
he increasingly translated the general relationship between "social
power" and "constitutional power" into a form of political analysis
that specifically singled out "the class which wields the strongest
power in society. " 38
Mill's essay on the "Reorganization of the Reform Party" is a
brilliant illustration of an analysis of political power in terms of the
social class support for three political parties (Whigs, Tories, Radicals)
with representatives in Parliament. The "permanent causes" of the
divisions expressed as contending political viewpoints, Mill argues,
"are for the most part" to be identified with the class interests of
individuals and their " class feelings" that those interests can be ad
vanced through the organization and policies of a particular political
party. 39 Moreover, if, for example, one's analysis revealed that the
middle class was the most powerful class in society, "any counter
balancing power can henceforth exist only by the sufferance of the
commercial class. " 40 That the tendencies of one class to dominate
society could only be offset or counterbalanced by developing ten
dencies that favor another class with opposing interests is an important
point, to which I shall return.
I am not suggesting that Mill would have subscribed to Marx's
statement the "all history is the history of class struggle" as a general
proposition of his theory of history-though he does characterize all
historical forms of representative government as "a standing league
of class interests . "4 1 He certainly did believe, however, that " the ruling
principle in the government of this country is not the public good,
but the particular interests of certain classes, who command a ma
j ority . . . (in] Parliament. " 4 2 What I am suggesting is that when Mill
employed his revised definition of political theory and the method
ological tools of social science in an analysis of nineteenth-century
British society, he was quite prepared to discuss political power in
terms of the class interests that structured and exercised it.
Thus, although it is an oversimplification to say that all Mill had
to do in order to fit the conflict between the working class and the
cap italist class into this framework was to observe its empirical man-

Moral Conflict

1 12

ifestations, nevertheless , it is true that this particular expression of

class conflict posed no novel or unique problems from the standpoint
of Mill's theoretical analysis of his society, though this conflict did
present him with considerable difficulties in his endeavor to find a
theoretical solution to it. "Chartism, " he wrote in an essay on "The
Claims of Labor" published in 1 845, " was the first open separation
of interest, feeling, and opinion, between the laboring portion of the
commonwealth and all above them. It was a revolt of nearly all the
active talent, and a great part of the physical force, of the working
classes, against their whole relation to society. "43 Notwithstanding
the fact that Chartism was avowedly a movement to win political
power for the working class, Mill recognized that the working class
was preoccupied "with one subj ect-the relation between laborers
and employers. " 44 Moreover, there is "no sense of co-operation and
common interest" between workers and their employers; their rela
tion to each other is that of "hostile rivals. "45
Even if such a thing were possible, it is not my concern here to
state the precise moment when the pervasiveness of class conflict
became apparent to Mill. Suffice it to say that he was a sufficiently
keen social observer to recognize that "the most deep-rooted distrusts
and aversions which exist in society" were grounded in "the oppo
sition between capitalist and laborers. "46 Thus, there is an "animosity
which is universal in this country towards the whole class of em
ployers in the whole class of the employed. "47 Chartism demonstrated
not only that "the working classes have taken their interests into their
own hands, " but also that "they think the interests of their employers
not identical with their own, but opposite to them. "48 Yet this op
position was not rooted in-only intensified by-the unequal distri
bution of political power between classes in Victorian England, nor
would extension of the franchise to the working class remove the
source of this class conflict. In this respect, Mill's understanding of
the situation paralleled that of the radical Chartists, such as Ernest
Jones, or Owenite Socialists, both of whom maintained against their
suffrage-minded colleagues in the working class that only a restruc
turing of the system of economic production would put an end to
the opposition of class interests.
In the 1 860s, long after the Chartists has spent themselves as a
political force, Mill believed the capitalist-labor conflict was wors
ening. "The most important questions in practical politics, " he de
clared, " are coming to be those in which the working classes as a

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 13

body are arranged on one side, and the employers as a body on the
other. " 49 Six months later he wrote another correspondent that "the
division between labor and employers of labor seems to me to be
increasing in importance, and gradually swallowing up all others, and
I believe it will be always widening and deepening unless, or until,
the growth of Cooperation practically merges both classes into one. " so
There are numerous reaffirmations of this point in Mill's writing and
correspondence of the 1 860s . 51 Two years before his death he singled
out "the land question and the relation between labor and capital" as
"the points on which the whole of politics will shortly turn. " They
were "questions involving the whole structure of society. "52
At the time of his death Mill was writing a book on socialism
which, according to his design, would have been a substantially longer
work than any he had hitherto written . In the opening pages of that
unfinished manuscript, he explains that, with the passage of the 1 867
Reform Bill and the likelihood of further extensions of its provisions
in the near future, the working class would soon exercise predominant
political power in society . Since "they believe, rightly or wrongly,
that the interests and opinions of the other powerful classes are op
posed to theirs, " workers will use "their collective electoral power, "
for "the promotion of their collective objects" -that is, for the ad
vancement of their class interests. Not only does the working class
have special interests, but they also have "definite political doc
trines . . . organized into systems and creeds, " which can claim the
status of "political philosophy. " For, Mill observes, politics is "now
scientifically studied from the point of view of the working classes. "
Hence, by the 1 870s to Mill class conflict meant not merely a conflict
of interests, the existence of which he had long recognized, but also,
and perhaps more important from his standpoint, a conflict between
competing class-oriented political theories . In response to this situ
ation, Mill argued, " the discussion that is now required is one that
must go down to the very first principles of existing society. " By
that he meant the principles defining the "rights" attached to prop
erty, because, he explained, the conflict between the working class
and the property-owning classes centered on the question of who
controlled the system of production and how it was to be organized. 53
Before considering Mill's response to this challenge, it is important
to recognize the clarity of his perception of the conflict between the
working class and the capitalist class, the seriousness with which he
treated the problem as being crucial to an understanding of the struc-

Moral Conflict

1 14

ture of society and of the scientific claims of political theory, and the
degree to which he believed that this problem claimed priority over
other problems in requiring a practical political solution.

Social Conflict, Liberty, and Socialism

Given the precepts of Mill's methodology and the aims of social
science, it is surprising that he never systematically explored or elab
orated upon the causes of the social conflict between workers and
capitalists to which he attributed such practical importance. Mill ac
cepted the Ricardian proposition that an inverse relationship obtained
between wages and profits, and, at least until his rejection of the wage
fund theory in 1 869, he apparently believed that this relationship,
supported by the scientific laws of the marketplace, supplied a suf
ficient explanation for the "opposite interests" of workers and their
employers . s4 Mill certainly did not accept what he called the "irritating
cant" repeated by many of his contemporaries to the effect that "the
interest of laborers and employers . . . is one and the same. " He
thought this a ridiculous proposition, for, " to say that they have the
same interest . . . is to say that it is the same thing to a person's
interest whether a sum of money belongs to him or to someone
else. "ss It was pointless to imagine that a harmonious alliance of in
terests existed when it was obvious (to Mill) that a real conflict, in
the form of strikes, lockouts, and trade-union demonstrations char
acterized the relations between workers and capitalists . The only ques
tion worth considering, therefore, was on what grounds one could
render a decision respecting the conflicting claims of workers and
their employers to possession of the same sum of money, which was
the product of the j oint production of capital and labor?
In order to answer this question and, in general, to offer an as
sessment of the conflict of interests between workers and capitalists,
Mill argued, one would have to have "a clear view of the causes
which govern the bargains between them. " In other words, there
must be a theory of how wages are determined. s6 The conventional
view among nineteenth-century political economists-Mill in
cluded-was that the price of labor, like the price of all other com
modities , was determined by the laws of supply and demand. When
Mill, in his review of W. T. Thorton's On Labor ( 1 869) , repudiated
or, rather, modified his previous position on this issue, he realized
that since there was no longer a "scientific foundation" in the "ne
cessities of political economy" for the heretofore accepted causal ex-

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 15

planation of wages , any new theory of wages would have to emerge

from a consideration of those causes which operate within the realm
of politics, broadly defined. Because "the price of labor is decided by
a conflict of wills between employers and laborers, " Mill wrote, "it
is necessary, as in every other case of human voluntary action, to
ascertain the moral principles by which this conflict ought to be reg
ulated. "57
If wages were " decided by a conflict of wills between employers
and laborers, " it was also true that "every opinion as to the relative
rights of laborers and employers involves expressly or tacitly some
theory ofj ustice. "58 In 1 86 1 , reflecting upon this class conflict, Mill
wrote to a correspondent that the difficulty was to find some principle
of equity between the claims of workers not to starve and the claims
of employers that they should receive some remuneration (profit) for
their efforts . Yet, he confessed, "between these limits I do not see
what standard of equity can possibly be laid down. " Looking to the
future, Mill said, "I can conceive Socialism" supplying a general rule
of equity that would resolve the conflict; but, for the present, "under
a system of private property in past accumulations in which no general
rule can be laid down, " it was not at all clear how "the quarrel between
capital and labor" was to be resolved. Since neither party in the dispute
was likely to submit to another's arbitrarily imposed "views of eq
uity" as to their competing claims, Mill concluded that "the only
thing which people will in these circumstances submit to as final, is
the law of necessity , that is, the demand and supply of the market. " 59
But of course these remarks were made prior to Mill's recantation
of the wage fund doctrine and his recognition that strikes, trade
union organization, and the exercise of political power could affect
bargaining outcomes between workers and capitalists. 60 He now saw
that "the law of necessity" and market determination neither reigned
in fact, nor, from the phenomenological viewpoint, would "the mar
ket" be consciously accepted (and especially not by the working class)
as a functional principle of equity for resolving this class conflict.
What this signified to him, therefore, was a renewed sense of urgency
associated with the endeavor to find some "standard of equity, " some
set of "moral principles by which this conflict ought to be regulated. "
A situation in which, in addition to the actual physical hardships
imposed by strikes, lockouts, and unemployment, there were two
conflicting class-based theories ofjustice was hardly conducive to the
maintenance of social peace, not to mention the realization of the
greatest good for the community.

Moral Conflict

1 16

Of course Mill believed that relations between workers and capi

talists, like all social relations, ought to be governed by the general
principle of utility-the happiness of mankind. But he was not such
a fool to believe that, stated abstractly in this manner, the utilitarian
principle contributed in any specific way to the resolution of this class
conflict. 61 In general, I believe that Mill's sociological realism has been
greatly underestimated by interpreters of his thought making their
way across the arid desert of philosophy with their divining rod of
logical consistency. Mill could see that, in fact, both workers and
employers had more regard for their respective class interests than
for the "permanent interest" of the community as a whole. Never
theless, he argued, "it cannot be right that a contest between two
portions of society as to the terms on which they will cooperate,
should be settled by impairing the efficacy of their joint action, " for
example, through strikes. 62 Mill was not opposed to strikes-indeed,
he was part of a small minority of those outside the working class
who resolutely defended workers' rights to engage in strikes. 63 He
simply wanted to make the point that "there must be some better
mode of sharing the fruits of human productive power" than ac
cording to the practices that presently govern the conflict of wills
between workers and capitalists . 64
This "state of war" could and would be brought to an end, Mill
believed, if a system of cooperative socialism replaced the capitalist
mode of production. Cooperative socialism expressed that "principle
ofj ustice" and equity, he argued, according to which " the great eco
nomic problem of modern life, " the conflict between labor and
capital, could be resolved. 65 "Nothing that I can imagine except coop
eration, " Mill declared, "would entirely take away the antagonism"
or the "opposition of interests between employers and employed. " 66
Cooperative socialism, he insisted, is "the real and only thorough
means of healing the feud between capitalists and laborers . "67
There were several versions of socialism current in the nineteenth
century, and, commenting upon them, Mill states what he believes
they all have in common. "What is characteristic of socialism, " he
observes, "is the j oint ownership by all the members of the com
munity of the instruments and means of production. "68 This is the
situation, according to Mill, that must obtain if there is to be a solution
to the problem of class conflict. In addition to recognizing cooperative
socialism as a practical response to the conflict between workers and
capitalists, Mill subscribed to it as a principle of justice, whose im
plementation would produce a moral revolution in social relations. 69

Class Conflict and Constitutional ism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

117

It is a perfectly acceptable procedure, Mill wrote, to begin with a

"standard of absolute j ustice" and then consider what "practical ob
stacles " stand in the way of its realization. 70 This is the procedure he
adopts in the Considerations, where he is attempting to "work to
wards . . . the true ideal of representative government . . . by the
best practical contrivances which can be found" within the context
of a particular set of social conditions. 7 1 In 1 85 1 Mill declared: "It
appears to us that nothing valid can be said against socialism in prin
ciple; and that the attempts to assail it, or to defend private property,
on the ground ofj ustice, must inevitably fail . " The inequalities created
by that system of p rivate property are so "obviously unjust" that no
sensible person would include them in "the rudest imaginings of a
perfectly just state of society. " They " could only be defended, " Mill
argued, "as an affect of causes in other respects beneficial. "72 In other
words, the inequalities of the private ownership of the means of
production must be counterbalanced by some beneficial effect suffi

ciently proximate to the system ofprivate property that it would disappear

if the latter were abolished. Only then, Mill argues-and it should be
noted that he is speaking hypothetically-could a defense be provided
for existing social institutions . At the same time, he maintained that
"The reasonable obj ections to socialism are altogether practical, con
sisting in some difficulties to be surmounted. "73 Hence, both the
benefits of private p roperty and the deficiencies of socialism could be
assessed in terms of practical expediency, but, as competing principles
ofj ustice, socialism was clearly the superior of the two. 74 "The rough
method of settling the laborer's share of the produce, the competition
of the market, " Mill wrote, "may represent a practical necessity, but
certainly not a moral ideal . " Echoing the language he had used nearly
twenty years earlier, he added that it was nothing more than a " rude
approach to an equitable distribution, " compared to the ethical prin
ciple of cooperative socialism. 75
Mill's practical obj ections to socialism, expressed in his earliest and
in his last writings, display a remarkable consistency. For the most
part he concentrates upon the difficulty of inducing individuals to act
for motives higher than that of self-interest. Yet, since he never ceased
to insist that the foundations of morality must be laid deeper than
"the calculations of self-interest, " this "difficulty" could never, in itself,
constitute a sufficient ground for rej ecting socialism. 76 Mill was con
vinced that individuals could be educated, through various social
practices, to act for the common good. "Everybody, " he insisted,
"has selfish and unselfish interests, and a selfish man has cultivated

Moral Conflict

1 18

the habit of caring for the former, and not caring for the latter. "77
Thus, "education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments will
make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight
for his country. " A change in the habits , and therefore in the character,
of individuals may take some time, "but the hindrance is not the
essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good
is at present so weak a motive" in individuals, "not because it can
never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell
on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only
to personal advantage. " If, as Mill insists, "the deep-rooted selfishness
which forms the general character of the existing state of society is
so deeply rooted only because the whok course of the existing in
stitutions tend to foster it, " then it is easy to appreciate his identifi
cation of social reform with the practical realization of the imperatives
of a higher morality. 78 And, given the importance Mill assigned to
socialism within the general proj ect of social reform, it is understand
able why his obj ections to socialism-with one important exception
to be discussed later-had to assume the form of practical expedien
cies, as temporary obstacles to be overcome.
Suppose, however, one accepted the constraints imposed by " the
vulgar incentives of individual interest, " which manifest themselves
socially in the form of class interests and in the conflict between
opposing class interests . 79 What are the prospects that j ustice can be
realized in such a society? We have seen that, on the most fundamental
level of social relations, Mill denied that class conflict was compatible
with his principle of justice, nor was it conducive to the happiness
of mankind. Still, reform of existing political institutions might be
effected even within a society marred by defective social relations.
Hence, the question to be considered-discussed at length by Mill in
the Considerations on Representative Government-is: How can demo
cratic political institutions be established in a society characterized by
class conflict?
In an early comment on the general problem, Mill wrote that "when
different sections of the community have clashing interests, and are
ranged under hostile banners, the proper place of government is not
in the ranks of either body, but between them"; that is, it should
assume the role of "a mediator and peace-maker. " 80 Later, and with
specific reference to the conflict between laborers and capitalists, he
repeated the point that "it is the grand business of government to
attempt to reconcile" these conflicting social forces. 8 1 By the 1 860s,
as we have seen, it was " above all" this conflict between classes that

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 19

"requires an arbiter, " deciding the issues in dispute between workers

and capitalists according to "general rules and comprehensive views. "
And, Mill added, "when properly constituted . . . the govern
ment . . . is that arbiter. " 82 But how "properly constituted" ?
Since the fatal defect of all forms of government, according t o Mill,
is that of "class legislation, " it follows that "in determining the best
constitution of a representative government, " the question is, "how
to provide efficacious securities against this evil?" 83 We may put aside,
as Mill does, any consideration of this problem outside the framework
of democracy, for it is obvious to him that the absence of universal
suffrage insures class domination in that society . 84 Given a class
divided democratic society, therefore, "the desirable object would be
that no class , and no combination of classes " could exercise a pre
ponderant influence in the government. " 85 Since Mill strongly disliked
the idea of "class representation, " it is clear that this "ideal, " even if
realized, operates under seriously defective social conditions . For, in
a true democracy, there should be no social classes to be "com
bined. " 86
Be that as it may, in a society divided between classes of workers
and capitalists, "if the representative system could be made ideally
perfect . . . its organization must be such, that those two classes . . .
should be, in the arrangement of the representative system, equally
balanced, each influencing about an equal number of votes in Parlia
ment. " This arrangement remained as close as possible to the pre
vailing tendencies in Mill's society by "assuming that the majority
of each class, in any difference between them, would be mainly gov
erned by their class interests. " The "ideal" aspect of this constitutional
system only required that a minority of individuals within each rep
resented class subordinate their class interests " to reason, j ustice, and
the good of the whole. " Their votes on a particular issue would thus
tip the balance in favor of j ustice, thereby avoiding the evil of class
subj ection as a systemic feature of representative government. 87 Bal
ancing evils against each other, Mill conceded, is much less desirable
than the process of synthesizing goods, but his limited obj ective in
the Considerations was to describe the "relative perfection" of "a po
litical constitution" for a society with the sociological tendencies pres
ent in Victorian England. 88
If we view j ustice emanating from this model as the outcome of
practical expediencies rather than "permanent causes "-who could
be sure that each class would elect as representatives a minority of
relatively classless intellectuals?-there is, nevertheless, one positive

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120

principle that is actually constitutive in this form of government. It

is that the free expression of different and conflicting opinions in
Parliament is guaranteed under the arrangement described by Mill.
More than a decade before writing the Considerations, he had asked:
" Ought not parliament to be the place of discussion for adverse in
terests and principles, the arena where opposing forces should meet
and fight out their battles?" 89 Mill realized that unless representatives
from the working class acting for the working class were elected to
Parliament, this goal was unobtainable. 90 He accepted the relative evil
of class representation for the sake of obtaining the greater good of
gaining a hearing for workers' views. 9 1 To this end he personally
contributed funds to support the parliamentary candidacies of work
ing-class individuals, and, notwithstanding his own relatively classless
status as a spokesman for working-class interests, offered to stand
down himself as a parliamentary candidate if a member of the working
class could be induced to run in his place. 92 But the point, to emphasize
it once more, was to ensure that adversaries had to listen to each
others ' views and to defend their own proposals with reasons and
well-constructed arguments. 93
Anyone passably familiar with On Liberty recalls those passages in
which Mill affirms that "truth" almost never appears to mankind as
a unity because, generally speaking, "conflicting doctrines . . . share
the truth between them. " These partial perspectives arise from the
"standing antagonisms of practical life. " Thus , "Truth, in the great
practical concerns oflife, is so much a question of the reconciling and
combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently ca
pacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to
correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle
between combatants fighting under hostile banners. " If these state
ments are read in the context of the argument Mill advances in the
Considerations-not an unreasonable suggestion in view of other sen
tences contained in this passage from On Liberty-it appears that the
diversity of opinion can not only be preserved, but might even be
strengthened, through the constitutional recognition through repre
sentation of class conflict. 94
In order to appreciate this somewhat paradoxical defense of liberty,
it is necessary to consider one of Mill's oft-repeated sociological pro
nouncements regarding the historical development of society (though
I will not reproduce the several perturbations through which it passed
during his intellectual development) . Stated succinctly (in the Con
siderations) , it is this : "No community has ever long continued pro-

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121

gressive, b u t while a conflict was going o n between the strongest

p ower in the community and some rival power. " Without some form
of social conflict, "a social support" for "opinions and interests"
opp osed to the dominant tendencies in society, that society will stag
nate and decay . 95 Some mechanism is needed in order to generate that
"systematic antagonism" of ideas upon which, in Mill's view, the
progressive develop ment of the community as a whole depends. 96
Naturally he allowed that the specific form assumed by this principle
of antagonism varied through history relative to the contextual cir
cumstances of particular societies. Even in the earliest examples he
cited, however, this form included, but was not limited to, a conflict
between classes. 97
Within the framework of democracy, Mill wanted to place his
hopes upon a "learned class, " an "instructed minority, " acting to
check the impulses of a popular majority. 98 Yet he realized that, so
ciologically and politically speaking, it was futile to imagine that a
"separate organization of the instructed classes" could be constitu
tionally incorporated into the structure of a democratic government. 99
Various contrivances-plural voting, personal representation-might
be tried experimentally as a means of ensuring that some intellectuals
were elected to Parliament; but even if they were, Mill's sociological
analysis no longer supposed that "the standing antagonisms of prac
tical life" a rose from a conflict between the opinions held by an in
tellectual minority and the opinions subscribed to by the majority of
citizens . 1 00 Intellectuals in Parliament might articulate their class
oriented positions as well as those positions could be stated, but Mill
expected very few conversions to occur across class lines as a con
sequence of even the most reasoned discussion. 101 The "permanent
causes" of social conflict were rooted in the social relations underlying
the form of government .
. Of course there is no analytical necessity for the diversity of opin
ion, individual spontaneity, and the conflict of ideas to be tied to the
social conflict between classes . Religious beliefs and gender-based
interests also foster differences of opinion. Yet, neither of these phe
nomena were likely to generate that systematic form of antagonism
needed to propel a society forward if, in fact, that society had resolved
the problem of class conflict. 102 What, then, would serve as a func
tional replacement for the latter with respect to the preservation and
development of liberty?
The one principled, and not merely practical, objection Mill con
sistently directed against socialism concerned its inability to provide

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122

for "individuality of character" or a "variety of intellectual points of

view" as a structural feature of society . 103 This last proviso is im
portant, because it is a mistake to assume that the dimensions of this
problem were, in Mill's view, confined to the intentions of his socialist
contemporaries . True, their beliefs, insofar as they did undervalue
liberty and individual agency, represented a practical obstacle to be
overcome. 104 But, setting aside the specific influence exercised by
Owen, St. Simon, Comte, or other individuals, what was even more
worrisome to Mill was the "oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion
and practice, " viewed as the unintended consequence-that is , as a
social tendency-of " the inevitable growth of social equality. " 1 05
Given Mill's definition of social science, it is not difficult to see why
this should be so. In a famous passage in On Liberty, reflecting upon
one possible outcome of this tendency, he declares : "If the roads, the
railways, the banks, the insurance offices , the great j oint-stock com
panies , the universities, and the public charities , were all of them
branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corpora
tions and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became
departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these
different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and
looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom
of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make
this or any other country free otherwise than in name. " 1 06 The ques
tion I wish to raise is, why not? Why, in a democratic society, with
a free p ress and free elections-assuming the cognate freedoms of
assembly, speech, and religious belief, as I believe Mill does in this
passage-are the citizens not " free" ?
Mill' s most general answer is that in such a situation the "energy"
of the community at large has disappeared, and it is "chiefly the
qualities of mental activity, enterprise, and courage" that are needed
to avoid a condition of social stagnation . 107 The latter might be the
consequence either of a "tame uniformity of thought, feelings, and
actions, " arising from the oppressive yoke of public opinion, or of a
centralization of power in the hands of a government bureaucracy
managing the "collective interests" of society. 108 Much, if not all, of
Mill's criticism of socialism can be accounted for in terms of the
projected development of these two tendencies in a socialist society .
With the record of twentieth-century socialism before us, the pres
cience of Mill's warning is obvious. Indeed, it is generally from the
perspective of hindsight that most interpreters of Mill's thought have
read his strictures against bureaucracy and conformity as being equi-

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 23

table with an attack upon socialism. This is not an accurate repre

sentation of Mill's critical assessment of these phenomena. He had
Tocqueville to remind him-as we have Weber to remind us-that
th ese tendencies are " glaring evils of the existing state of society. " 1 09
The difficulty for Mill, as for us, is to locate those countertendencies
in a democratic society which -as Mill's remark seems to imply
operate at a more fundamental level than free elections or a free press
to preserve " individual agency. "
When the issue is phrased in this way, it is easy to see why so many
interpreters of Mill are disposed to rest their case for individual liberty
upon the social institution of private property. It appears that a struc
tural defense of individual liberty depends upon such an intercon
nection. Mill, however, not only does not make, but explicitly rej ects,
such an argument in On Liberty . Rather surprisingly, he claims that
the doctrine of free trade in commerce "rests on grounds different
from . . . the principles of individual liberty asserted in this essay. "1 1 0
Even questions of how " great enterprises of industry" are to be con
ducted "are not questions of liberty, " but of development. 1 1 1 This is
not to say that there are not statements in Mill's writings, especially
in the Principles of Political Economy, that support the view that some
relationship exists between individual agency and private property.
But virtually all of these remarks are imbued with a Lockean quality;
that is, that individuals are entitled to own what they produce through
their personal labor. 1 12 What does this maxim have to do with the
private ownership of the means of capitalist production? For, as Mill
recognized, and as Marx noted in the Communist Manifesto, if "indi
viduality" and "freedom" depend upon the ownership and control
of private property in capitalist society , then the overwhelming ma
j ority of the members of that society are neither free nor do they
possess the means to develop their individuality. "The generality of
laborers in this and most other countries, " Mill observed, "have as
little choice of occupation or freedom " of movement, and are as
dependent "on the will of others, as they could be in any system
short of actual slavery. " They "have not enough of-personal and
mental freedom-to deserve the name. " 1 1 3
In both On Liberty and Considerations, Mill attacks a "numerous
bureaucracy, " in whatever form of society it exists, and to which he
juxtaposes the democratic participation of individuals . 1 14 It is the "ad
ministrative skill" of "trained officials, " or professional managers,
versus the self-management of institutions through democratic par
ticipation, that is the focus of his argument. 1 15 Participatory democ-

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124

racy is, for Mill, a practical school educating individuals in public

affairs . 1 16 There is very little in the ordinary work activities of indi
viduals "to give any largeness either to their conceptions or to their
sentiments . Their work is a routine, " performed for motives of self
interest. "Every thought or feeling- is absorbed in the individual
and in the family . " The person "never thinks of any collective interest,
of any obj ects to be pursued j ointly with others, but only in com
petition with them, and in some measure at their expense. A neighbor,
not being an ally or an associate, is therefore only a rival. " The means
by which "the manual laborer, whose employment is routine, " and
"whose daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle
round himself, " escapes these deadening limitations is through ob
taining "a share of sovereign power" and through participating in
collective action. Only then will he or she cease to feel like an outsider,
for whom the management of affairs is of no concern because it is
someone else's responsibility. 1 17 Mill's argument, reduced to its sim
plest terms , is that participatory democracy engenders a sense of
collective concern for the general good, while bureaucratic admin
istration fosters alienation and a narrow range within which individ
uals pursue their self-interests.
To return to the question raised earlier, What is the difference
between large-scale capitalist enterprises bureaucratically managed
and bureaucracy-ridden governments, of which Mill is so critical?
Business enterprises in which workers have no personal interest no
more inspire enlarged conceptions of the collective interest than does
a despotic bureaucracy. "A factory operative, " Mill argues, "has less
personal interest in his work than a member of a Communist asso
ciation, since he is not, like him, working for a partnership of which
he is himself a member. " Indeed, "how small a part of all the labor
performed in England, from the lowest-paid to the highest, is done
by persons working for their own benefit. "1 1 8 With respect to the
cultivation of the individual's mental and moral capacities-and even
in terms of the efficiency of management-Mill maintains that there
is really no difference between a corporate and a governmental bu
reaucracy. 1 19 In short, there is nothing in his criticism of the effects
of bureaucracy in destroying "individuality" in the Considerations on
Representative Government that does not apply with equal force to the
relationship between the individual worker and Exxon or IBM.
The cure for this malady is exactly the same: democratization
through participatory control over his "common undertaking. " What
is truly "distinctive" about a free society, Mill argues, is the "dis-

Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 25

cussio n and management of collective interests" by the peop le. 120

When he describes cooperative socialism, it is a system in which
workers "collectively owning the capital" choose "managers elected
and removable by themselves . " 1 2 1 Neither in politics nor i n socio
economic relations , did Mill believe that there were any practical
benefits attached to monopolistic or oligarchical control that out
weighed the value of democratic control. If he, unlike Marx, under
estimated the extent to which the development of monopolies or
oligopolistic industrial enterprises is a prevalent tendency in capitalist
society, Mill did not hesitate to assert the right of the government to
regulate-or even take over-such concerns on behalf of the common
interest of society . 1 22
Although the institutions of liberal society could tolerate the ex
istence of class conflict in the short term, ultimately, for Mill, the
latter was incompatible with the values he associated with partici
patory democracy and cooperative social relations . To put it simply,
class conflict destroys the moral life of liberalism. By extending the
meaning of the radical elements of liberal political theory-its moral
egalitarianism, the belief that individuals can and do act for the public
good, the conviction that political power rightfully lies in the hands
of the people-Mill laid the foundations for a democratic socialist
perspective. Of course, other aspects of his thought, viewed as a
whole, must be regarded as qualifications which he placed upon the
development of these tendencies . In the end, however, both Mill's
moral conviction and his sociological analysis reinforced his belief
that the future of industrial society could be described in terms of the
extension of the democratic-radical-features of liberalism into the
socioeconomic areas of life.
A s ociety in which there is class conflict between workers and
capitalists, in which great inequalities of wealth and opportunity exist,
in which there is little or no public debate regarding the basic standing
antagonisms of practical life that arise from these social divisions, in
which the legislature is not balanced in terms of the representation
of class interests, in which gigantic corporations are conducted with
little regard for the common good or for the mental and moral de
velopment of their employees, and in which a governmental bureau
cracy has extended the scope ofits powers at the expense of democratic
control is not a society for which Mill's political theory is likely to
provide a comforting defense. It is an injustice to Mill-and not to
him alone, but to those historical dimensions ofliberalism which have
not always been so dormant as they presently are-simply to con-

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126

script him as a defender of twentieth-century Anglo-American po

litical and social institutions. If modern liberals have, to a significant
degree, misunderstood the radical dimensions of Mill's political
thought, it is because, unlike him, they have demonstrated little in
terest in exposing and criticizing the fundamental defects and inj ustices
of the institutions that shape their daily lives .

 S E V E N

Making Sense of Moral Conflict

STEVEN LUKES

The title of this chapter might suggest that there is a phenomenon,

or set of phenomena, that can be recognized as moral conflict and a
separate question, namely: How is one to make sense of it? That
would be misleading . For the recognition of moral conflict cannot be
separated from making sense of it. What sense, if any, one makes of
it, will determine the range of recognizable instances . Indeed, there
are several well-known ways of making no sense of it at all.
In such cases what we have are at most instances of merely apparent
moral conflict-of ignorance or error, or of individual or social pa
thology. In either case, it is an affliction to be overcome. Thus, Ar
istotle saw conflicting moral beliefs as a mark of ignorance, never as
a recognition of conflicting moral requirements, while Aquinas fur
ther thought that the moral virtues formed a harmonious unity and
could not exclude one another. 1 Plato followed early Greek thought
in contrasting the valid norm of nomos with its deformation, anomia,
which he identified variously with inj ustice, godlessness, impiety and
iniquity, the less beneficial, terrible and fierce desires, cruelty, an
archy, and disorder. 2 In modern times utilitarianism and Kantianism
have advanced comprehensive moral theories, each of which proposes
an overarching principle that purports to accommodate or else force
us to revise our existing moral intuitions, providing us with a practical
decision procedure for all moral situations. As Charles Larmore
writes : " when moral theories of this monistic sort have run up against
recalcitrant moral intuitions that conflict with their favored higher
order principle, they have too often resorted to the tactic of denying
those intuitions their very status as ' moral' ones . (Recall the charges
of squeamishness and rule-worship that many utilitarians have leveled

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against those who morally rej ect an action knowingly injuring an

other, even though it happens to maximize the general happiness;
recall also the censure of principlelessness that Kantians have often
directed toward those . that have held that sometimes a great good
should be obtained at the price of doing evil) . "3
Ethical relativism is another way of depriving moral conflict of any
sense, for the point of relativism is to explain it away by proposing
a structure in which apparently conflicting claims are each acceptable
in their own place. The trouble is that this raises the puzzle, which
relativism finds hard to solve, of explaining why the claims appeared
to conflict in the first place. Worse, it fails to take such claims seriously
by denying their applicability beyond cultural boundaries (assuming
these are not in dispute) . Nor is it clear how ethical relativism can
handle conflicts within such boundaries . Finally, subj ectivist ethical
theories of various sorts constitute a further way of depriving moral
conflict of sense, by removing the notion of conflicting claims based
on reasons. For instance, emotivism, in its various forms, sees mo
rality as j ust a way of expressing or inducing states of mind and
feeling . But, as Bernard Williams compellingly argues, if anything
attests to the objectivity of ethics, it is the experience of moral conflict:
"That there is nothing that one decently, honourably or adequately
can do seems a kind of truth as firmly independent of the will and
inclination as anything in morality. "4
In short, none of these attempts to make nonsense of moral conflict
seems to succeed. None is adequate to our moral experience, to what
has been called " the fragmentation of value" or the "heterogeneity
of morality" as we know it in our personal and public lives . Ac
cordingly, I shall ask three questions: What kinds of moral conflict
could there be? What kinds of important or significant moral conflicts
are there and why should we believe they are important? What bearing
does making sense of such conflicts have upon the defense of liberty
and of a liberal political order?
Is moral conflict possible and what forms could it take? In addressing
these questions, I am concerned with the possibility of conflicting
moral claims or requirements that face agents, individual or collective,
not with how to reconcile or regulate interpersonal or social conflicts
between individuals, between individuals and groups and commu
nities, or between groups and communities . Moral conflicts are con
flicts between moral claims that may face persons or groups or
communities or governments representing them, when individually

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129

or collectively they deliberate about what to do. Sometimes these are

experienced as one-person conflicts, when individuals experience the
pull of conflicting demands, as in the case of tragic dilemmas of choice
or where people-the children of immigrants, for instance-have
internalized the requirements of mutually incompatible cultural tra
ditions . Accordingly, I shall now ask: What are such conflicts be
tween? In what exactly does the conflict consist?

The Sources Of Conflict

The form of conflict to which moral philosophers have paid most
attention is that of conflicting obligations. Here the conflict consists,
not in an incompatibility between duties abstractly defined, but be
tween the actions they require in a given situation. Sartre's pupil could
not both go to England to fight with the Free French Forces and stay
with his mother, deeply affected by the semi-treason of his father and
by the death of her eldest son, and thereby help her to survive. The
state of the world generated the conflict, and no ethical standpoint,
certainly neither the Kantian nor the Christian (this was Sartre's
point) , can remove it without mauvaise Joi-partly (as Sartre says)
because values are too "vague, " too "general for such a precise and
concrete case, "5 but also because each action involves the violation
of an obligation. Here, as in other such cases, there is no way of
avoiding moral loss, of not committing an uncanceled wrong.
Secondly, there are conflicts between purposes, ends, goals, or
(more vaguely still) " values . " These too are best thought of, not as
instances of inconsistency, but as yielding incompatible directives for
action or policy, given the way the world is. This is what Sir Isaiah
Berlin had in mind when he wrote that "ends may clash irreconcil
ably " : "Should democracy in a given situation be promoted at the
expense of individual freedom; or equality at the expense of artistic
achievement; or mercy at the expense ofj ustice; or spontaneity at the
expense of efficiency; or happiness, loyalty, innocence, at the expense
of knowledge and truth? The simple point which I am concerned to
make is that where ultimate values are irreconcilable, clear-cut so
lutions cannot, in principle, be found. "6
And it is what Leszek Kolakowski doubtless meant when he wrote:
"If socialism is to be anything more than a totalitarian prison, it can
only be a system of compromises between different values that limit
one another. All-embracing economic planning, even if it were pos
sible to achieve-and there is almost universal agreement that it is

Moral Conflict

1 30

not-is incompatible with the autonomy of small producers and re

gional units, and this autonomy is a traditional value of socialism,
though not of Marxist socialism. Technical progress cannot co-exist
with absolute security of living conditions for everyone. Conflicts
inevitably arise between freedom and equality, planning and the au
tonomy of small groups, economic democracy and efficient man
agement, and these conflicts can always be mitigated by compromise
and partial solutions . " There are also, Kolakowski argues, "internally
inconsistent" values such as "the ideal of perfect equality, " but this
is not, as he says, "contradictory in itself " Rather, it involves conflict
because, given the way the world is, it yields incompatible policies .
It implies " more equality and less government, " but "in real life,
more equality means more government, and absolute equality means
absolute government. "7
Thirdly, there are even more holistic and less well-defined entities
between which moral conflicts may be thought to hold: moral codes
or systems or world views or, in Rawls 's phrase, "conceptions of the
good. " These are what Pascal may have had in mind when he ob
served that what is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is error on the
other. 8 (What he meant was perhaps that what is seen as truth on one
side is seen as error on the other. ) Conflicts of this sort are marked
by incompatibilities of perception and belief, in p a rticular over "how
good and evil are to be recognised and distinguished from each other. "
Such cultural differences of moral perception can certainly seem real
enough. As Kolakowski remarks, they cannot be removed by re
treating to some common ground which the adversaries share or by
appealing, as in science, to some "higher tribunal" capable of an
intersubjective adj udication of controversies . 9 But, as Pascal and Vol
taire in his Essai sur les moeurs assumed, and as Allan Bloom and
Kolakowski both rightly insist, real confrontations between culturally
defined moral perceptions in no way imply relativism of moral judg
ment. 1 0 As Kolakowski rather dramatically puts it, "I may perceive,
say, the evil of killing malformed babies, but I have to admit that
this kind of perception is not universal and that people in other civ
ilisations-which I am perfectly entitled to describe in pejorative
terms and call barbarous-see things differently. " 1 1 The example is
extreme and does not capture a real confrontation that many face.
Inhabitants of multiethnic or religiously divided societies or societies
caught between secularism and religiosity can think of many more
familiar and mundane instances-as when communities disagree over
what constitutes respect for women or parents, or the centrality of

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131

rel igious instruction t o education, o r the right t o free choice i n mar

riage.
Finally, and most interestingly, there are conflicts between different
kinds of moral claim. A number of writers have pointed to the ir
reconcilability of the conflict between consequentialism and deon
tology, and I have already referred to the way in which utilitarians
(who embody the dominant form of consequentialism in Anglo
Saxon cultures) and Kantians seek to deny its very existence. Con
sequentialism requires that the agent maximize the overall good (on
some interpretation of that good) , by so acting as to produce the best
outcome, all things considered, for all those affected by this action.
Deontology, by contrast, p roposes a set of (sometimes absolute) side
constraints on action done to others, set by the requirements of the
Moral Law or by divine prohibitions or by their moral rights, what
ever the consequences to them or to others may be.
The irresolvability of this conflict was perhaps foreshadowed in
Machiavelli's dictum that " While the act accuses, the result excuses, "
if we interpret it to mean that, while the act is (consequentially)
justified in retrospect, the accusation stands. 12 And indeed, the problem
of dirty hands in politics is the locus classicus of this kind of clash of
moral claims-a clash inadequately captured by the so-called problem
of "means and ends . " It is perhaps rather the problem of bringing
together Lenin's question " What is to be done?" with another that
Lenin certainly never asked, namely, "What is not to be done?"
or, as Machiavelli put it, of the Prince learning, "among so many
who are not good, " how to enter evil when necessity commands for
the good of the Republic. 13 Politics, as Max Weber saw, is the arena
in which such dilemmas can take their most dramatic form, though
they reappear in all areas of life, wherever doing what is best overall
requires the committing of a wrong, or the violation of a right.
For utilitarians and some other consequentialists (among whom I
include Marxists, for reasons mentioned later) such dilemmas cannot
exist, if the appropriate calculations for measuring the best overall
outcome, all things considered, have been correctly made. (Of course
consequentialists could deny value monism, if they were to recognize
types of outcome as ineliminably pluralistic. Generally, however, they
do not . ) If the consequentially right answer to the question "What is
it right to do?" requires one to override the constraints of ordinary
morality, then in that case to do so could not be wrong, and neither
guilt nor regret would be appropriate. Apparently dirty hands are
clean. For Kantian and other deontologists-exponents of what

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Trotsky called "Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle" 14following the appropriate maxim is all that is required in cases of
moral choice, thereby relieving the moral agent of the need to take
responsibility for consequences that, in any case, flow in part from
the choices and actions of others. The moral agent takes responsibility
only for what he alone does . On this view, one's hands must always
be clean, whatever the consequences.
All this is familiar, if contested, ground, but in Patterns of Moral
Complexity Charles Larmore advances the discussion by suggesting
that we are caught up in conflicts between three equally obj ective
practical demands or principles of practical reasoning which urge
independent claims upon us (we cannot plausibly see one as a means
for promoting another) and so can draw us in irreconcilable ways .
These are the principles of deontology, consequentialism, and par
tiality . The principle of partiality underlies "particularistic duties . "
For example, "Partiality requires that w e show an overriding concern
for the interests of those who stand to us in some particular relation
of affection. There are, for example, the duties of friendship and the
demands that stem from our participation in some concrete way of
life or institution, to protect and foster it. There are also the obli
gations that arise from more abstract commitments, as when we speak
of an artist's duty to his art . " The duties encompassed by this principle
"arise from the commitment to some substantial ideal of the good
life. The other two principles are universalistic and support categorical
obligations . " 15
I cannot here pursue Larmore's interesting exploration of the ways
in which the claims of partiality-our commitments to particularistic
proj ects-can conflict, on the one hand, with consequentialism ("If
we were only consequentialists, we constantly would have to set aside
our own proj ects and friendships , since each of us has countless op
portunities for increasing preference-satisfaction within a wider
sphere") and, on the other, with deontology (against Kant, not every
categorical duty, say keeping a promise, overrides every particularistic
commitment) . 16 Nor can I discuss his interesting, but I suspect mis
taken, suggestion that in a liberal political order neutrally j ustifiable
principles ofj ustice, whether consequentialist or deontological, must
always rank higher than the principle of partiality (how else could
the foreign-aid budget be limited?) . Larmore succeeds admirably in
developing the arguments of others for the view that the basic sources
of morality are plural and against the belief that human beings could
inhabit a world without moral loss and unsettleable conflict.

Ma ki ng Sense of Moral Conflict

133

The Nature of Conflict

In what do such conflicts consist? I suggest that various senses of "con
flict" can be ranged along a scale of increasing intractability. Conflict
may signify diversity, incompatibility, or incommensurability.
Diversity. First, there is what used to be called "the diversity of
morals , " a topic of profound interest to early anthropologists and
sociologists, much discussed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries by Wilhelm Wundt, Lucien Levy-B ruhl, W . G . Sumner,
L. T. Hobhouse, Edward Westermarck, and Morris Ginsberg and still
intermittently addressed by social anthropologists and some sociol
ogists, 17 but somehow lost as a central topic for systematic social
inquiry. I shall allude later to the interpretation of the data and the
inherent difficulties of discerning the actual range of such diversity.
Here I simply observe that mere diversity becomes a form of conflict
when notional confrontations become real, that is, where in a con
frontation between two outlooks, "there is a group of people for
whom each of the outlooks is a real option. " An outlook is a real
option for a group "either if it is already in their outlook or if they
could go over to it; and they could go over to it if they could live
inside it in their actual historical circumstances and retain their hold
on reality, not engage in extensive self-deception, etc. " 1 8
In such cases-as opposed, say, to our contemplation of Athenian
democracy or life among the Incas-conflict involves a more or less
deep but relevant difference of life-world and life-style, that may be
responded to in various ways . Among these ways are rej ection, con
version, and various kinds of syncretistic adaptation. Not all moral
diversity, in short, is conflictual. Nor does all conflictual diversity
issue in incompatible ways of living.
Incompatibility . Some moral conflicts are instances of incompatibility.
I have already alluded to some of them. Antigone cannot both obey
the dictates of family loyalty by burying Polynices and those of the
law decreed by Creon . Agamemnon at Aulis cannot save both his
fleet and his daughter. Sartre's pupil cannot both j oin the Free French
and console his mother. Likewise, there are what are significantly
called trade-offs between policies designed to promote democracy,
equality, liberty, and so on, and other trade-offs internal to the pursuit
of any one of them. Alternative conceptions of the good can turn out
to dictate incompatible ways of treating persons in particular situa
tions. Should the immigrant's daughter attend college? Should the
sick Amish child go to hospital? Should abortion be permitted?

Moral Conflict

1 34

These undoubted incompatibilit i es are not yet incommensurable.

All moralists and most moral philosophers will assume that they are
not, that there is always a point of view from which they are amenable
to the discovery of the "right answer. " (The law of course is one
such point of view, by the very reason of its social role. 19) Indeed, it
is generally assumed that to assert the contrary is a form of irration
alism. Buried very deep in our philosophical consciousness and im
plicit in our social scientific practice is the nearly universal
presumption that consistency of preference and of ethical beliefs is a
mark of our rationality. But is it?
Incommensurability . Incompatible moral claims become incommen
surable when the trade-offs become unavailable because there is no
comon currency. In recent times several writers have appealed to this
difficult notion. Berlin writes : "If the claims of two (or more than
two) types of liberty prove incompatible in a particular case, and if
this is an instance of the clash of values at once absolute and incom
mensurable, it is better to face this intellectually uncomfortable fact
than to ignore it, or automatically attribute it to some deficiency on
our part which could be eliminated by an increase in skill or knowl
edge; or, what is worse still, suppress one of the competing values
altogether by pretending that it is identical with its rival-and so end
by distorting both. "20
Williams, citing Berlin, writes that "values, or at least tl!e most
basic values, are not only plural but in a real sense incommensurable, "
adding that this claim says "something true and important. "21 For
Rawls, a "workable conception of political j ustice" must allow for
"a diversity of doctrines and the plurality of conflicting, and indeed
incommensurable, conceptions of the good affirmed by the members
of existing democratic societies . 22 For Thomas Nagel, "values come
from a number of viewpoints, some more personal than others, which
cannot be reduced to a common denominator, " and when "faced
with conflicting and incommensurable claims, we still have to do
something-even if it is only to do nothing. " For Nagel, the " frag
mentation of value" encompasses conflicts between "moral and other
motivational claims of very different kinds " coming from "many
perspectives-individual, relational, impersonal, ideal, etc. " 23 This is
to deepen and broaden the issue we are seeking to confront. And
Larmore advocates that we "suspend the monistic assumption un
derlying so much of moral theory" and "acknowledge that not every
thing is good or right to the extent that it is commensurable with
respect to any single standard. "24

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135

The key idea, then, is that there is no single currency or scale on

which conflicting values can be measured, and that where a conflict
occurs no rationally compelling appeal can be made to some value
that will resolve it. Neither is superior to the other, nor are they equal
in value. To believe in incommensurability is not to hold that all or
even most value conflicts or even more conflicts are of this sort; only
that some are and that they are nontrivial. Conflicts could be trivially
incommensurable where preference rankings are indeterminate be
cause incomplete or discontinuous, as where I j ust don't know how
much more I value Mozart than Bach or how much the weather must
improve before I prefer a walk in the park to staying at home with
a book . 25 But they could also be nontrivially so if and when I cannot
appeal to some single value standard to determine whether, say,
E . M. Forster was right to place the value of friendship above patri
otism, or how far local autonomy should be protected against policies
of equalization, or how things stand between your belief in the fetus '
right to life and mine in the mother's right to choose. The fact that
one must decide in such cases, in favor of one or the o i: her or by
appeal to some value independent of both (such as maximizing utility
or well-being) , does not show which is worth more. That question
does not admit of a " right answer, " refusal to accept which is a sure
sign of irrationality. However one decides, it will be from and not
j ust for, one of the viewpoints in contention, or from a further view
point that is no less contentious .
So far I have sought to suggest the possibility of moral conflict, in all
the senses I have distinguished. I have done this in two ways : by
seeking to discredit various attempts (by Aristotelians, Platonists,
Kantians, utilitarians, relativists, and subjectivists) to make nonsense
of such conflicts; and by suggesting that our moral experience bears
witness to their presence and to their importance. In doing this, I
have enlisted, by citing them, various recent allies in this argument
against the prevailing view in both philosophy and social science. I
now wish further to motivate the thought that the possibility is ac
tualized and that it is central to our personal and public lives.
Consider first the diversity of morals. Those who have sought to
deny, or minimize, this have, appealing to Hume's thought that
" mankind is much the same in all times and places, "26 interpreted
differences of belief and practice as best explained by differences in
the circumstances human beings face. There is a deep interpretive
problem here. Any study of the moral thought and action of others

Moral Conflict

1 36

is inexorably caught up in a hermeneutic circle: Is there any way into,

say, Navaho or Hopi ethics that does not already presuppose our
moral categories and distinctions? Is there, in other words, any way
that such a study could avoid John Ladd's criticism of Richard
Brandt's study of Hopi ethics, that it "consists in a cross-cultural
investigation of the extent to which the Hopi accept principles like
our own" ?27 Or, more deeply and worryingly, that they should
emerge as reflecting some recognizable fragment of our own moral
world? The p roblem is only deepened by the plausible suggestion
that it is a condition of successful translation that "the imputed pattern
of relations between beliefs, desires and the world be as similar to
our own as possible. "28 If all this is so, perhaps it is no accident that
Brandt' s Hopi end up as impartial and disinterested and Ladd' s Na
vaho as egoistic prudentialists.
These are deep waters into which I propose to go no further except
to suggest that the diversity of morals reveals itself clearly in what,
following Bernard Williams, I have called "real confrontations, " as
in intercultural conflicts within and between contemporary societies.
It is possible but not easy to deny the diversity of morals when
contemplating cultural conflicts in South Africa or Northern Ireland
or the Middle East and the clash between secularism and the various
forms of religious fundamentalism.
As for moral conflict as incompatibility, that too is surely a per
vasive feature o f the modem world. There are two ways of taking
the sting out of this, neither of which looks very plausible in the late
twentieth century. One is to deny its reality via theodicy: by believing,
as Bishop Butler did, that God has so arranged the world and our
natures that, though in acting morally we may appear to follow
divergent moral principles that exclude general benevolence, never
theless, sub specie aeternitatis, the general happiness is secured. 29 Leszek
Kolakowski has well said, "in an apologist's eyes God's inscrutable
ways can always be plausibly defended. "30
The other implausible way of removing the sting from moral con
flict as incompatibility is to deny, not its reality, but its necessity via
the secular inheritance of theodicy: moral utopianism. A moral uto
pian believes that there is in prospect a perfect world in which all
actual moral incompatibilities will be overcome because the subjective
and obj ective conditions of life will render them impossible, even
inconceivable. Like Kolakowski, I think that Marxism is committed
to such a belief: for the present to a kind of long-term consequen
tialism in which pursuing the perfectionist goal of human emanci-

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pation is the overriding practical guide to action; and for the future,
the undefended and indefensible hope that under "truly human" con
ditions there will be ( 1 ) a maximization of overall good (welfare and
perfectionist achievement) ; (2) a transcendence of the conditions that
have made the lawlike ethics of obligations, j ustice, and rights nec
essary; and (3) an overcoming of the conditions that render partial
obligations and commitments to particular communities and groups
incompatible with universal ones. 31 Neither the conceivability nor the
feasibility nor indeed the desirability of such a reconciliatory future
can any longer be plausibly defended.
I turn finally to the difficult issue of incommensurability. Why
should we believe that significant incommensurabilities exist between
the apparently conflicting moral claims we face? I suggest that there
are two main reasons for believing this . First, as Max Weber and
Kolakowski have powerfully argued, in a disenchanted world, there
is no longer any reason to believe in the commensurability of basic
values . 32 As Weber, "speaking directly, " memorably put it "the ul
timately possible attitudes towards life are irreconciliable, and hence
their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is
necessary to make a decisive choice. " What man, he asks, "will take
upon himself the attempt to 'refute scientifically' the ethic of the
Sermon on the Mount? For instance, the sentence 'resist no evil, ' or
the image of turning the other cheek? And yet it is clear, in mundane
perspective, that this is an ethic of undignified conduct: one has to
choose between the religious dignity which this ethic confers and the
dignity of manly conduct which preaches something quite different:
'resist evil-lest you be co-responsible for an overpowering evil. '
According to our ultimate standpoint, the one is the devil and the
other the God, and the individual has to decide which is God for him
and which is the devil. And so it goes throughout all the orders of
life. "33
Some believe that this position amounts to a denial that moral
j udgment can be rationally based and others believe further that it
leads somehow inexorably to moral anarchy or fascism or at least to
the inability to resist them. (By contrast, I believe it to be essential
to a properly defended liberalism . ) Bloom, rightly seeing Nietzsche
behind Weber, obj ects that, on that kind of view, "it is our decision
to esteem that makes something estimable, " that "the obj ects of men's
reverence" become "proj ections of what is most powerful in man
and serve to satisfy his strongest needs or desires, " that "values are
not discovered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them, to find the

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1 38

truth or the good life, " that "producing values and believing in them
are acts of the will" and that we have thereby abandoned "the dis
tinction between true and false in political and moral matters, " that
the choice lies between Plato and Nietzsche and that by choosing
against the former, we have thereby sacrified "reason. "34 Alasdair
Macintyre argues, in a not dissimilar way, that, by choosing
Nietzsche and Weber, in his case against Aristotle, we have abandoned
the possibility of a rational foundation for ethics. He seeks to vindicate
Aristotle's "pre-modern view of morals and politics" against the cen
tral thesis that he takes to underpin Nietzsche's position-" that all
rational vindications of morality manifestly fail and that therefore belief
in the tenets of morality need to be explained in terms of a set of
rationalisations which conceal the fundamentally non-rational phe
nomena of the will. "35
Jurgen Habermas, from a very different standpoint, nevertheless
holds to a " cognitivist position . . . that there is a universal core of
moral intuition in all times and in all societies" and thus rej ects " the
Weberian pluralism of value systems, gods and demons" and the
"empiricist and/or decisionist barriers, which immunize the so-called
pluralism of values against the efforts of practical reason. "36 (Here, I
believe, he wrongly identifies Weber's position with that of Carl
Schmitt. ) He proposes, through the utopianism of a counterfactually
posited "ideal speech situation, " to " vindicate the power of discur
sively attained rational consensus" and show that "practical questions
admit of truth. "37
But Weber, for what it is worth, did not derive values from de
cisions and the will. Quite the contrary, decisions, based on moral
judgment, are needed j ust because conflicting values, some obj ective,
some not, are incommensurable. Neither going back (in Bloom's
words) to "great wise men in other places and times who can reveal
the truth about life"38 nor looking forward to the imagined consensus
of ideal speech serves to gainsay this uncomfortably obj ective truth.
A second reason for holding that incommensurability is both real
and important to our contemporary lives is suggested by Joseph Raz
in The Morality of Freedom. It applies more particularly to that which
holds between partiality, on the one hand, and deontology or con
sequentialism, on the other. Many of the commitments, loyalties,
and obligations that we have to relationships and activities that matter
to us consist in part in a refusal to engage in the very kind of trade
off that full commensurability would require. If l were prepared even
to consider how much the obligations of friendship are worth in

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139

relation to some greater future good to persons unknown, or whether

my parental duties can be traded for some greater overall benefit, or
against, say, some promise I have made, that might only show that
I am not a true friend or parent. Such refusals to compare suggest
that constitutive attachments are what they are in part by virtue of
their very incommensurability with more universalistic moral claims.
To engage in such forms of thinking is itself an expression of the
weakening or absence of those very relationships or else a degraded
simulacrum of them. The very assumption of commensurability
would subvert certain values, which are what they are in part j ust
because they deny it. If all this is right, then we can only conclude
that modernity-in which the separation between the partial and the
universal, like that between fact and value, has become a prevalent
cultural fact-renders incommensurability inescapable. There is no
route back from modernity .
What, finally, does the recognition of moral conflict have to do with
the defense of liberalism? Liberalism was born out ofreligious conflict
and the attempt to tame it by accommodating it within the framework
of the nation-state. The case for religious toleration was central to its
development; and out of that there developed the crucial but complex
thought that civil society is an arena of conflicts, which should be
coordinated and regulated by the constitutional state. In part that
conflict is, as Hume saw, a result of scarcity and conflicting claims
that arise out of selfishness and competing interests. But, more deeply,
it also arises out of conflicting moral claims, which raises the problem
of how to treat these j ustly within a framework of social unity and
mutually acceptable laws and principles of distribution. Given all this,
the prospects for a morally based defense of liberalism-a defense
that derives from a comprehensive or all-embracing moral view
look dim, even self-contradictory.
This has led critics of liberalism to condemn it for being anemic,
pale, morally half-hearted, skeptical, even indifferent. Others, notably
Kant and the utilitarians, and in some moods John Stuart Mill, defend
it by appealing to j ust such a comprehensive moral theory. But it
leads others to argue that its proper defense requires that such a defense
be unavailable. Thus, Isaiah Berlin attacks those he calls "single
minded monists, " arguing that "The notion that there must exist final
obj ective answers to normative questions, truths that can be dem
onstrated or directly intuited, that it is in principle possible to discover
a harmonious pattern in which all values are reconciled, and that it

Moral Conflict

1 40

is toward this unique goal that we must make; that we can uncover
some single central principle that shapes this vision, a principle which,
once found, will govern our lives-this ancient and almost universal
belief, on which so much traditional thought and action and philo
sophical doctrine rests, seems to me invalid, and at times to have led
(and still to lead) to absurdities in theory and barbarous consequences
in practice. "39
Rawls too distinguishes between "those that allow for a plurality
of opposing and even incommensurable conceptions of the good and
those that hold that there is but one conception of the good and which
is to be recognized by all persons, so far as they are fully rational . "
He sees the latter as the "dominant tradition, " which includes Plato,
Aristotle, the Christian tradition as represented by Augustine and
Aquinas, and classical utilitarianism. He contrasts that tradition with
liberalism as a political doctrine, which holds that "there are many
conflicting and incommensurable conceptions of the good, each com
patible with the full rationality of human persons" and that "the
question the dominant tradition has tried to answer has no practicable
answer. . . for a political conception of j ustice for a democratic so
ciety. "40
Allan Bloom , by contrast, while defending "liberal education, " is
plainly a monist and a full subscriber to the "dominant tradition . " I
doubt that there could be a more devout form of adherence to that
tradition than the Straussianism he has so successfully popularized.
For him , the Rawlsian defense of liberalism is nothing short of a plea
for moral indifference and skepticism, even "value-relativism . "
Rawls's A Theo ry ofJustice, he writes, argues that "the physicist or
the poet should not look down on the man who spends his life count
ing blades of grass or performing any other frivolous or corrupt
activity. Indeed, he should be esteemed, since esteem from others,
as opposed to self-esteem, is a basic need of all men. So indiscrimi
nateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is discrimination.
This folly means that men are not permitted to seek for the natural
human good and admire it when found, for such discovery is coeval
with the discovery of the bad and contempt for it. "4 1
This is certainly an imaginative Straussian reading of the inner
meaning of Rawls's text, which explicitly and repeatedly states the
contrary. More important, it misses the point and the force of Rawls 's
defense of liberalism altogether. Fortunately, in anticipation of such
a charge, Rawls has fully answered it and I will quote him doing so.
He has fo rthrightly denied advocating "either skepticism or indiffer-

Making Sense of Moral Conflict

141

ence about religious, philosophical, o r moral doctrines . We d o not

say that they are all doubtful or false, or address questions to which
truth and falsehood do not apply . Instead, long historical experience
suggests, and many philosophical reflections confirm, that on such
doctrines reasoned and uncoerced agreement is not to be expected.
Religious and philosophical views express outlooks toward the world
and our life with one another, severally and collectively, as a whole.
Our individual and associative points of view, intellectual affinities
and affective attachments are too diverse, especially in a free demo
cratic society, to allow of lasting and reasoned agreement. Many
conceptions of the world can plausibly be constructed from different
standpoints . Diversity naturally arises from our limited powers and
distinct perspectives; it is unrealistic to suppose that all our differences
are rooted solely in ignorance and perversity, or else in the rivalries
that result from scarcity. Justice as fairness tries to construct a con
ception of justice that takes deep and unresolvable differences on
matters of fundamental significance as a permanent condition of
human life. Indeed, this condition may have its good side, if only we
can delineate the character of social arrangements that enable us to
appreciate its possible benefits. "42
This raises the deep and difficult issue of specifying j ust what sense
liberalism is to make of moral, and more generally value, conflicts .
Some, most obviously some religious conflicts, cannot be resolved,
because their j ustification seems to be internal all the way down: what
is to count as good or overriding reasons remains to the end internal
to the opposed parties and not susceptible to common or public ar
gument. 43 Others-and these are what Rawls has in mind in the
passage quoted-are so susceptible but are nevertheless irresolvable
because there is no prospect of publicly available evidence and ar
gument yielding uniquely determinate solutions rationally compelling
upon all. 44 For the state to impose any single solution on some of its
citizens is thus (not only from their standpoint) unreasonable. Hence
the liberal's commitment to impartiality, at the level of social and
political institutions, among such conflicting conceptions of the
good-and the right- as are compatible with the survival of a liberal
order. The question of how far that commitment is a merely strategic
one (as a means to securing a modus vivendi) and how far, and in
what ways, itself a substantive moral one (appealing, for instance, to
an interpretation of the Kantian categorical imperative) is one I cannot
explore further here.
This, then, is how moral conflict bears on the proper defense of

Moral Conflict

1 42

liberalism . That defense cannot, for the reasons I have sought to

develop, rely on the gleaning of ineffable truths from ancient texts
or on the elaboration of comprehensive moral theories . It cannot be
based on either a return to or a contemporary restatement of Plato
or Aristotle or Natural Law or Kantianism or utilitarianism; or on a
resort of relativism or subj ectivism or an appeal to theodicy or moral
utopianism . It can rest only on taking moral conflict seriously and
making sense of it.

 E I G H T

Liberal Dialogue Versus a Critical

Theory of Discursive Legitimation
SEYLA BENHABIB

Power is a social resource and a social relation in need of legitimation.

Legitimacy means that there are good and justifiable reasons why one
set of power relations and institutional arrangemeuts better than
and to be preferred to others . Conceptions of _legitimac y })!>nsist of
normative arguments , efending thejstice and fairness of a particular
set of institutions, relations, and arrangemenls : -nnain ta1ntriat the "
legitimation of powe- Shoulif oe -thougFiCofas a public dialogue. In
this chapter I shall defend a " dialogic" or "discourse model of legit
imacy" by contrasting it with alternative views of legitimacy prev
alant in contemporary liberal political theory .

Proceduralist Ethics and the Idea of Dialogue

We can identify three dominant models oflegitimacy in contemporary
political thought. I suggest that we view these models as "neo
Kantian" approaches to the relation between morality and politics.
First, one could argue that there is a continuity between Kant's uni
versalist and procedural moral philosophy based on the value of the
autonomous personality and his theory ofj ustice of such a nature that
political institutions must be viewed-in Kantian language-as em
bodying those "external conditions of freedom" most compatible
with the dignity of the autonomous person. 1 This connection between
the moral worth of the autonomous personality and the institutions
of a j ust society remains the guiding and constant theme of the Rawls
ian view of justice. 2 According to this view, the principles of justice
most compatible with the value of the autonomous personality can
be specified via a model of collective choice constrained by certain

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144

procedural rules . These are deemed to be reasonable limitations on

choice, defining the circumstances of j ustice. Although procedural,
this Rawlsian model of legitimacy is not dialogic. The choice of the
principles ofj ustice is not thought to result from any kind of dialogue
among the parties to the original position. 3
Let me contrast this view with the model of procedural dialogue
developed by Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas who view nor
mative j ustification as a public dialogue. The sum of those procedural
constraints to be respected in such situations of dialogue are referred
to by Apel as "the ideal communication community, " and by Ha
bermas as the model of the "ideal speech situation . " 4 Both can be
viewed as going back to what Kant calls the "transcendental condition
of publicity, " namely, that "All actions affecting the rights of other
human beings are wrong if their maxim is not compatible with their
being made public. "5 The emphasis in this model is not so much on
those institutions most compatible with the "coexistence of the will
of one with the will of all under conditions of external freedom, " but!
rather on the question: Which norms and which institutional arrange.!
ments would individuals who engage in a practical discourse, gov
erned by the procedural constraints of an ideal speech situation, accept
as legitimate? This model is both procedural and dialogic.
There is a third way to conceive of the relation between morality
and politics within Kantian thought. This is the idea of a "republic
of devils . " Kant defines it as follows: "As hard as it may sound, the
problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils
(so long as they possess understanding) . It may be stated as follows:
'In order to organize a group of rational beings who together require
universal laws for their survival, but of whom each separate individual
is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, the constitution
must be so designed that, although the citizens are opposed to one
another in their private attitudes, these opp.o sing views may inhibit
one another in such a way that the public conduct of the citizens will
be the same as if they did not have such evil attitudes. ' "6 According
to this view, a j ust constitution need not make strong moral as
sumptions about the person and motivations of individuals. In fact,
assuming the worst about them, one must be able to come up with
a set of public rules that would ensure public order, continuity, and
stability. I suggest that B ruce Ackerman's conception of modus viv
endi liberalism , as defended in Social Justice in the Liberal State7 and in
his article " Why Dialogue?" 8 represents this position .
For Ackerman liberalism is a form of political culture in which the

Liberal Dialogue

1 45

question of legitimacy is paramount. In Social Justice in the Liberal

State he writes : "Whenever anybody questions the legitimacy of an
other's power, the power holder must respond not by suppressing
the questioner but by giving a reason that explains why he is more
entitled to the resource than the questioner is. "9 Ackerman under
stands liberalism as a way of talking about p ower, as a political culture
of public dialogue based on certain kinds of connrsational constraints. 1
The most significant conversational constraint in liberalism is neu
trality which rules that no reason advanced within a discourse of
legitimation can be a good reason if it requires the power holder to
assert two claims: that his conception of the good is better than that
asserted by his fellow citizens; or that, regardless of his conception
of the good, he is intrinsically superior to one or more of his fellow
citizens. 1 0 In " Why Dialogue?" Ackerman presents a pragmatic
political as opposed to moral justification of the idea of a public
dialogue based on the conversational constraint of neutrality.
Since Ackerman' s ideal of liberal dialogue articulates a procedural,
public discourse of legitimation, it is instructive to contrast it with
the " discourse model of legitimacy. " Such a contrast is a useful start
ing point for highlighting some of the differences between liberal
models of legitimacy and a discourse theory of legitimacy.
Although we are both committed to a dialogic model of legitimacy,
I disagree with Ackerman on two points : first, his model of "con
versational restraints" imposes arbitrary as opposed to reasonable and
defensible limits on the content and scope of public dialogue; and
second, the superiority of the Habermasian model of an "ideal speech
situation" is precisely that it allows us to publicly thematize what
Ackerman's model privatizes . As opposed to the model of public
based on conversational restraints, the ideal speech situation
or the "discourse model of legitimacy, " is reflexive, that is, it allows
radical self-questioning; it is critical, which is to say that it allows us
to challenge precisely existing forms of power relations that hinder
the conversation from being fair, j ust, and genuinely open.

Modus Vivendi Liberalism Versus a Discourse Model of Legitimacy

Bruce Ackerman bases his case for public dialogue, "not on some
general feature of the moral life, but upon the distinctive way lib
eralism conceives of the problem of public order. " 1 1 His question is
how different primary groups, about which we know only that they
share the same conception of the good, can "resolve the problem of

Moral Conflict

1 46

coexistence in a reasonable way . " 1 2 Ackerman believes that citizens in

a liberal state must be guided by a Supreme Pragmatic Imperative
(SPI) which s tates that they must be willing to articipate in an ongoing dialogue about their conception of th goo
1th others who
are not members of their primary group .
-)
Ackerman is concerned to find a justification of this imperatt ve'-til'a!
will not fall into the three traps that traditionally affect moral phi
losophies of liberalism'."Dnerilusf find a j ustification of the SPI that
is not based on trumping, that is, already asserting as supreme one
moral view over others. Furthermore, one cannot assume, as utili
tarians do, that there is a translation manual neutral enough in its
language and in terms of which all our various moral commitments
can be stated. According to Ackerman, such a translation manual
would violate one of the parties' sense of the good. Finally, one cannot
ask the parties to assume a "transcendental perspective" as the pre
condition for entering into dialogue. Such a transcendental perspec
tive, let us say the point of view of the "original position" or that of
the "ideal speech situation, " abstracts so radically from the condition
of existing differences that it forces the parties to the public dialogue
to assent to moral truths which they do not hold.
The way out is the path of "conversational restraint. " "When you
and I learn that we disagree about one or another dimension of the
moral truth, we should not search for some common value that will
trump this disagreement; nor should we try to translate our moral
disagreement into some putatively neutral framework; nor should we
seek to transcend our disagreement by talking about how some hy
pothetical creature would resolve it. We should simply say nothing at
all about this disagreement and try to solve our problem by invoking
premises that we do agree upon. In restraining ourselves in this way,
we need not lose the chance to talk to one another about our deepest,
moral disagreements in countless other, more private, contexts . . .
Having constrained the conversation in this way, we may instead use
dialogue for pragmatically productive purposes: to identify normative
premises all political participants find reasonable (or at least, not un
reasonable) . "13 I want to challenge this argument.
First, the pragmatic justification of " conversational restraint" is not
morally neutral; this j ustification both trumps and transcends . The
idea of a supreme categorical imperative governed by conversational
restraint can appear as a reasonable, pragmatic approach only when
the primary groups regard public peace and order as the supreme
good. If peace is not the supreme moral good, then there is no reason

),(

Liberal Dialogue

147

t o engage i n such a public conversation; our vision o f the good may

in effect dictate that the disruption of the seeming tranquility and
civility of this order is the supreme good. In the view of such groups
as the Dadaists of the early twentieth century to various separatist
movements in our own days, submitting to such a conversational
restraint would simply perpetuate the false peace we want to destroy.
Second, the pragmatic j ustification not only trumps but also "tran
scends, " for it asks the parties to the conversation to agree to "say
nothing at all about" fundamental disagreements. It is unclear to me
why this agreement not to talk about fundamental disagreements in
public is any less loaded or controversial an assumption than the idea
of a "veil of ignorance" which asks us to feign ignorance about our
conception of the good. If I am deeply committed to the belief that
prevalent conceptions of sexual division of labor in our societies are
morally wrong because they oppress women and hinder their full
expression of themselves as human beings, why should I agree not
to do the best I can to make this a public issue and to convince others
of my point of view? Or suppose I am a member of the Israeli
opposition to the occupation of the territories. I consider this occu
pation wrong not on pragmatic grounds but on moral ones, because
I believe that the occupation is corrupting the ethical values of the
Jewish people. I may well be aware that under current conditions
public opinion is so divided that I stand no chance of winning assent;
nevertheless, is it unreasonable of me to seek the widest possible
forum of public discussion and participation to air my views, rather
than to agree with you, as Ackerman advocates, not to talk about
what is of most concern to me. Either Ackerman's j ustification of
the SPI is based on stronger moral grounds than he admits to or it
cannot claim the supreme status it is supposed to enj oy . 14
I see no way of j ustifying a dialogic or discursive model of legit
imacy-including Ackerman's-without making some strong as
sumptions both about morality and about rauonalit. No procedural
theory can be developed without making some substantive assump
tions. If a procedural ethical theory is going to say anything worth
while, it will have to make a number of controversial substantive
commitments. This, though unavoidable, is not as damaging to the
case for proceduralis m as it is usually thought to be. For we can then
do two things. First , we can allow the conditions of the procedure
to be thematized within the dialogue situation itself. The dialogue
must be so open that we can even discuss how the rules of dialogue
are set up, while seeing, however, that we are in Neurath's boat, that

Moral Conflict

148

we can throw overboard only some of the planks at certain points in

time, but that we cannot remove all the planks of the boat and con
tinue to remain afloat. In other words , even while challenging the
rules of dialogue we have to respect some rules to keep the conver
sation going. Second, we must seek to justify the presuppositions of
dialogue in the context of our most explicit assumptions about human
nature, history, and society. Proceduralism does not imply formalism
and ahistoricism, as it is usually thought to do. There is no reason
why a procedural theory cannot be part of a more general theory of
the self, historical change, and social structure.
But is the path of conversational restraint so arbitrary? Why can it
not be regarded as one of those procedural constraints on dialogue
that we all have to agree to on reasonable, moral grounds, even if
not wholly pragmatic ones? My answer is that the idea of conver
sational restraint presupposes a questionable moral epistemology and
that it implicitly j ustifies a separation between the public and the
private that is oppressive to the concerns of certain groups.
By the "moral epistemology" of the conversational restraint model
I mean the following. The liberal theorist of conversational restraint
presupposes that the primary groups to the conversation already know
what their deepest disagreements are even before they have engaged
in the conversation. These groups already seem convinced that a
particular problem is a m oral, religious, or aesthetic issue as opposed
to an issue of distributive justice or public policy. We can legitimately
discuss the second, says the liberal theorist, but let us abstract the
first. Take, however, issues like abortion, pornography, and domestic
violence. What kind ofissues are they? Are they questions of ' 'j ustice"
or of the "good life"? I have no more definitive answers to these
questions than anybody else at this stage in the debate, but what I
am suggesting is that the very process of unconstrained public dia
logue will help us define the nature of the issues we are debating. The
distinction between issues ofj ustice and those of the good life cannot
be decided by some moral geometry. I suggest that all issues that
participants in a practical discourse agree cannot be universalized and
be subj ect to legal norms constitute issues of the good life; the rest
are issues ofj ustice. This means that citizens must indeed feel free to
introduce, as Bruce Ackerman says, "all kinds of moral argume@
into the discussion. For it is only after the dialogue has b een opened
in this radical fashion that we can be sure that we do agree upon a
mutually acceptable definition of the problem rather than reaching
some compromise consenses.

Liberal Dialogue

1 49

The issue of pornography illustrates my point well. This question

has been so divisive and has created such strange and unholy alli
ances-Andrea Dworkin and Jerry Falwell, for example-that it is
the paradigm example of the kind of moral disagreement that the
modus vivendi liberal may urge us to agree not to publicly disagree
about. This, however, is precisely what we should not do at this stage
of the debate. Whether pornography is to be defined as a question of
the reasonable limitations to be imposed upon the First Amendment
right of free speech; whether pornography is to be thought of as a
private, moral issue concerning matters of sexual taste and style;
whether pornography is to be thought of as a matter of aesthetic
cultural sensibility and as a question of artistic fantasy-these we
simply cannot know before the process of unconstrained public dia
logue has run its course. Now I no more want to live in a society
which cannot distinguish between Hustler magazine and Salinger's
Catcher in the Rye than Ackerman does, or in a society that would
place Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence in the company of "Deep
Throat. " As sensitive as one may be, however, to the traditional
liberal fear that unlimited public conversation might erode those few
constitutional guarantees we can rely upon, I think that the repri
vatization ofissues that have become public only generates conceptual
confusion, political resentment, and moral outrage. I consider limi
tations upon the content and scope of public dialogue, other than
constitutional guarantees of free speech, to be unnecessary. A nor
mative theory of such conversational constraints fails to become a
critical model of legitimation .

The Discourse Model of Legitimacy

The discourse model of legitimacy, based on the procedural con
straints of the ideal speech situation, places no such limits upon the
content and scope of the public conversation. Ackerman considers
this model hopelessly utopian, and maybe even politically pernicious.
The "ideal speech situation" is so counterfactual, in his view, that it
trumps , translates, and transcends . Or it is so devoid of content that
it is irrelevant for the resolution of public issues . 15 I suggest that one
can offer a moral j ustification of this model that neither trumps,
translates , nor transcends . Furthermore, this model appears empty
only because its critics have not appreciated that the purpose of the
discourse theory of legitimacy is not to develop a blueprint for social

Moral Conflict

1 50

order but to suggest a critical vantage point from which to j udge

power relations in our societies. 1 6
The procedural constraints of the "ideal speech situation" are that
each participant must have an equal chance to initiate and to continue
communication. Each must have an equal chance to make assertions,
recommendations, and explanations. All must have equal chances to
express their wishes, desires, and feelings . And finally, within the
situation of dialogue speakers must feel free to thematize those por
latio!ls which in ordinary contexts would constrain the wholly free
arti 2'Urauon of opinions and positions . Together these conditions spec
ify a norm of communication that can be named one of egalitarian
reciprocity
. Although I cannot expand on the differences he re, let me
.
state that as opposed to Apel in particular, who claims to j ustify t his
model via a "transcendental" argument, I prefer a "weak" justification
strategy which functions more like a " coherence test. " 17
The discourse model of legitimacy is an aspect of a communicative
theory of ethics . The discourse model develops the basic idea of this
theory in its application to institutional life. Communicative ethics is
first and foremost a theory of moral j ustification. The question from
which it proceeds is how to defend the cognitive or rational kernel
of moral j udgments without assimilating these either into statements
about the world (naturalism) or into statements about my preferences
(emotivism) . Briefly, the answer is that we should view moral j udg
ments and other statements defending the validity of norms as as
sertions whose justifiability we can establish via moral argumentations
named " discourses . " Moral j ustification amounts to a form of moral
argumentation. This is the fundamental principle governing a dis
course ethic. Habermas names it D, and I see no reason to depart
from this : "only those norms can be called valid, which all concerned
agree to (or would agree to) as participants in a practical discourse. " 1 8
The j ustification for D involves an epistemic account of what it
means to raise validity claims and how one redeems them . This j us
tification is part of the transcendental and universal pragmatic refor
mulation of the concepts of truth and rationality which Apel and
Habermas have undertaken. A maj or consequence of this "pragmatic
turn" in critical theory is that theoretical truth as well as normative
claims should be viewed as " discursively redeemable assertions. " In
fact, from an epistemic standpoint there is no difference between the
kinds of argumentative processes through which truth claims are
debated and those through which normative assertions are examined.
In addition, the j ustification for D must be supported by reference

Liberal Dialogue

151

to aspects of our moral experience. It must be shown that D reflects

or expresses some feature of our moral experience that we can all
recognize. Habermas and Apel at this j uncture have appealed to Law
rence Kohlberg 's moral theory and have maintained that D corre
sponds to the moral experience of "post-conventional" moral
reasoning. This is the stage when a disjunction occurs between "social
acceptance" (soziale Ge/tung) and "moral validity" (morale Giiltig
keit) . Having come to doubt the moral validity of societally given
norms, roles, and expectations, the individual moves to a "principled"
standpoint of j ustifying moral validity via appeal to principles that
have certain formal features , such as impartiality and the ability to
be generalized and reversed. Norms are valid because they would apply
to all; judgments are impartial because we could all agree to them;
and norms and j udgments are reversible because they would be seen
to be fair from the perspective of all involved. But Lawrence Kohl
berg' s theory of moral development per se does not j ustify the specific
formulation of the postconventional moral standpoint suggested by
communicative ethics. It is maintained only that communicative eth
ics is a plausible, even if not the singular, account of postconventional
moral reasoning and argument.
There are thus two presuppositions of a weak justification program:
the epistemic-pragmatic reformulation of truth and rationality in
terms of a discourse theory, and the plausibility of communicative
ethics to serve as an account of postconventional moral reasoning.
The steps guiding this reformulation can be formalized as follows:
1 . A philosophical theory of morality must show wherein the jus
tifiability of moral j udgments and/or normative assertions re
side.
2. To j ustify means to show that if you and I argue about a par

ticular moral judgment-it was wrong not to help the refugees

and to let them die on the wide sea-and a set of normative
assertions-education should be free for all for the first eighteen
years of their lives-we could in principle come to reasonable
agreement (rationales Einverstandnis) .

3. A "reasonable agreement, " however, must satisfy some condi

tions which, in p rinciple, correspond to our idea of a fair debate.
4. These rules of fair debate can be formulated as the "universal

pragmatic" presuppositions of argumentative speech, which can

be stated as a set of procedural rules .

Moral Conflict

1 52

5 . These rules reflect the moral idea that we ought to respect each
other as beings whose viewpoint is worthy of equal consider
ation (the principle of reciprocal recognition as moral beings and
the norm of egalitarian reciprocity) and that furthermore,

6. We should treat each other as concrete human beings whose

capacity to express this viewpoint we should enhance by cre
ating, whenever possible, social practices embodying the dis
cursive ideal (the utopian dimension of communicative ethics) .
As I have reformulated the weak justification program, steps 5 and
6 are substantive moral norms . Step 5 is the norm of equal, reciprocal
respect. What is the force of the "ought" which attaches to it? This
"ought" is not arrived at by a philosophical deduction from steps 1
to 4. A weak justification strategy consists in showing that there is
not a single deductive chain of reasoning establishing this principle,
but that there are a family of arguments and considerations, each
supporting the centrality of this principle as a basic moral norm. One
of the arguments leading to the plausibility of the norm of egalitarian
respect is indeed a "universal pragmatic" one. It goes as follows: All
argumentation entails respect for one's conversation partners; such
respect belongs to the idea of fair argumentation; to be a competent
partner in such a conversation entails recognizing the principle of
equal mutual respect. Step 5 in this sense is an explication of the
material normative content of the idea of argument, fair debate, and
so on.
A second argument leading to the idea of egalitarian reciprocity
derives from social action theory. I agree with Habermas that "rec
iprocity" is embedded in the very structures of communicative action
into which we are all socialized, for reciprocity entails that insofar as
we are a member of a particular human group, we be treated by
others equally . 19 All communicative action entails symmetry and rec
iprocity of normative expectations from group members. In fact, to
become a member of a human group involves our being treated in
accordance with such reciprocity. "Respect" is an attitude and a moral
feeling first acquired through such processes of communicative so
cialization. This implies that the basis for respect can be disturbed if
the conditions for developing a sense of self-worth and appreciation
from others are lacking. Respect may cease to be an aspect of our
life experience under conditions of extreme war and hostility leading
to the breakdown of mutuality, or it may shrivel in a culture given
to extreme indifference and extreme forms of atomized individualism .

Liberal Dialogue

1 53

An additional argument supporting the principle of "egalitarian

reciprocity" is provided by analyzing how rationality and freedom
entail each other. The claim that a particular moral principle, norm
of action, or set of institutional arrangements are "rational" entails
the belief that those to whom they are addressed can be convinced
that this is the case. Rationality claims entail the possibility of free
assent. Assent given under conditions which violate the free exercise
of such assent cannot be deemed rational.
Now defenders of inegalitarianism-men and women are "by na
ture" different and hence must be assigned different rights and priv
ileges; the white race is "by nature" superior to others and hence must
be granted "higher" rights than other races ; practitioners of the "one
true" religion are closer to the truths of God and hence must have
more authority than practitioners of other false religions in deter
mining collective moral matters-combine with such claims also the
belief that they can be demonstrated to be "valid" even to members
of those groups singled out for unequal treatment. Only the very
extreme cases of sexism, racism, and religious bigotry consider any
kind of argument futile or unnecessary . Women should not only be
treated differently but they should "want" to be treated differently
by assenting to the fact that this is "natural" ; nonwhite peoples should
willingly accept the superiority of the white man and be grateful for
it; infidels should be converted to see the true path to God. Inegali
tarian arguments also usually require that others "see" the validity of
these principles . And herein lies the paradox of such inegalitarianism .
If such inegalitarianism is t o b e "rational, " i t must seek the assent of
those who will be treated unequally, but to seek such assent means
admitting the "others" to the conversation . But if these "others" can
see the rationality of the inegalitarian position, they can also dispute
its justice. To assent entails just as much the capacity to dissent, to
say no. Therefore, either inegalitarianism is irrational, that is , it cannot
win the assent of those it addresses, or it is unj ust because it precludes
the possibility that its addressees will rej ect it.
Of course one should notice the historical conceit of stating such
an argument in purely "conversational" terms . In the true Hegelian
sense of the term, such conversations of equality and inequality are
less conversations but more historical struggles for recognition, bat
tles, and debates . The reciprocal recognition of equal mutual respect
is a principle which the social struggles of history have established.
However, "world history " should not be "the court of the world, "
and for this reason moral philosophy cannot proceed from the factual

Moral Conflict

154

existence of reciprocal recognition but is always in the position of

arguing for its ever wider universal extension and continuous practice.
Thus, in this " weak j ustification" of the principle of egalitarian re
ciprocity , universal-pragmatic arguments, arguments from social
action theory, and philosophical analyses of rationality claims come
together.
Many consider this model hopelessly utopian and unreachable, but
this is partly because the purpose of the discourse of legitimacy is not
to draw a blueprint for a well-ordered society. Rather, the purpose
is to develop a model of public dialogue such as to demystify existing
power relations and the current public dialogue which sanctifies them .
This involves : identifying those issues which are prevented from be
coming public because of existing power constellations; identifying
those groups that have not had access to means of public expression
and advocating their inclusion in the discourse of legitimacy; distin
guishing between genuine agreement and pseudo-compromises based
on the intractability of power relations; and saying what is in the
public interest as opposed to the universalization of what is only the
interest of a particular group.

The Meta-Politics of the Liberal Model of Dialogue

Proponents of liberal dialogue are not sensitive enough to the fact
that a theory of conversational restraint may be damaging precisely
to the interests of those groups that have not been traditional actors
in the public space ofliberalism-like women, nonwhite peoples, and
sometimes non propertied males. It is characteristic of most social and
political movements since the French Revolution that they demand
the entry of excluded groups into the public realm and that they also
require a restructuring of the boundary between the private and the
public, such that what had hitherto been considered private becomes
a matter of public justice. Socialist movements in the past have de
manded that work conditions and the terms of the contract regulating
the labor-capital relation be made public issues, that is to say, issues
of general concern to all and subject of public regulation and legis
lation . Anticolonialist movements and the civil rights movement have
not only demanded the universal extension of civil and political rights
to nonwhite peoples but have also required the sensitization of the
public to the representation of members of these groups in racist,
demeaning, and pejorative terms and categories. Similarly, the second

Liberal Dialogue

1 55

wave of the women's movement since the end of World War II is

not only asking for the creation of conditions that would allow
and protect the position of women in the public sphere as citizens
and wage earners . Women also want to have the lines between pub
lic and private debate redrawn in such a way that issues like domestic
violence, child abuse, the sexual division oflabor in the family become
matters of public concern. Social struggles both extend the partici
pants of the public realm and extend the scope of the conversation
in the public realm.
It is therefore important that we cease thinking of the public realm
solely in terms of the domain of legislative or state activity . The
original sense of res publica is the "public thing" that can be sh ; red
by all . Sharing by all means first and foremost that certain issues
become matters of public conversation, and that, in Hannah Arendt's
terms , they leave the sphere of private shame, embarassment, silence,
and humiliation to which they have been confined. In making public
those issues and relations that had condemned us to shame, silence,
and humilation, we are restoring the public dignity of those who have
suffered from neglect. I do not want to be misunderstood: all human
societies live with a boundary between the public and the private;
there will always be a realm that we simply will not want to share
with others and that we will wish to be protected from the intrusion
of others . Where I differ from the liberal political theorist is that,
whereas he or she seems to be sure where these boundaries ought to
lie, I am deeply suspicious of the implicit politics of a certainty attained
without truly open public debate.
Power is not only a social resource to be distributed, say, like bread
o r autoffiObil es . It is also a sociocultural grid of interpretation and
communication. J:.lic-dialogtte is not to but constitutive of
power relati,QDS.._ A s Nancy Fraser has observed, there are ofhcally
recognized vocabularies in which one can press claims; idioms for
interpreting and communicating one's needs; established narrative
conventions for constructing individual and collective identities; par
adigms of argumentations accepted as authoritative in adj udicating
conflicting claims; a repertory of available rhetorical devices. 20 These
constitute the " meta-politics of dialogue, " and as a critical theorist I
am interested in identifying the present social relations, power struc
tures, and sociocultural grids of communication and interpretation
that limit the identity of the parties to the public dialogue, that set
the agenda for what is considered appropriate or inappropriate matters

Moral Conflict

1 56

of public debate, and that sanctify the speech of some over the speech
of others as being the language of the public. I believe that the res
publica can be truly identified only after the unreasonable constraints
on public conversation have been removed. I consider the discourse
model of legitimacy to be more conducive to the achievement of such
an ideal than the model of liberal dialogue based on conversational
constraints .

 IV
Repairing Individualist and
Co mmunitarian Failings

 N I N E

Cross-Purposes:
The Liberal-Communitarian Debate
CHARLES TAYLOR

We often hear talk of the difference between "communitarians" and

"liberals " in social theory, and in particular in the theory of justice. 1
Certainly a debate seems to have been engaged between two "teams, "
with people like Rawls, Dworkin, N agel, and Scanlon on one side
(team L) , and Sandel, Macintyre, and Walzer on the other (team C) .
There are genuine differences, but I think there are also a lot of cross
purposes, and just plain confusion in this debate. That is because two
quite different issues tend to get run together in it. We can call these,
respectively, ontological issues and advocacy issues.
The ontological questions concern what you recognize as the factors
you will invoke to account for social life. Or, put in the "formal
mode, " they concern the terms you accept as ultimate in the order
of explanation. The big debate in this area, which has been raging
now for more than three centuries, divides atomists from holists, as
I propose to call them. 2 The former are often referred to as meth
odological individualists. They believe that in (a) , the order of ex
planation, you can and ought to account for social actions, structures,
and conditions, in terms of properties of the constituent individuals;
and in (b) , the order of deliberation, you can and ought to account
for social goods in terms of concatenations of individual goods. In
recent decades, Popper has declared himself a militant advocate of
(a) , while (b) is a key component of what Amartya Sen has defined
as "welfarism, " a central if often inarticulate belief of most writers
in the field of welfare economics. 3
Advocacy issues concern the moral stand or policy one adopts.
Here there is a gamut of positions, which at one end give primacy
to individual rights and freedom, and at the other give higher priority

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 60

to community life or the good of collectivities. We could describe

the positions on this scale as more or less individualist and collectivist.
At one extreme we would find people like Nozick and Friedman and
other libertarians ; at the other, Enver Hodja's Albania, or the Red
Guards of the cultural revolution define the ultimate benchmarks . Of
course most sane people, when not in the grip of some relentless
ideology, find themselves much closer to the middle; but there are
still significant differences between, say, liberals a la Dworkin who
believe that the state should be neutral between the different concep
tions of the good life espoused by individuals, on one hand, 4 and
those who believe that a democratic society needs some commonly
recognized definition of the good life, on the other-a view which
later I will defend.
The relation between these two congeries of issues is complex. On
the one hand, they are distinct, in the sense that taking a position on
one does not fo rce your hand on the other . On the other hand, they
are not completely independent, in that the stand one takes on the
ontological level can be part of the essential background of the view
one advocates . Both these relations, the distinctness and the connec
tion, are inadequately appreciated, and this confuses the debate.
Now when people refer to "liberals" and "communitarians, " they
often talk as though each of these terms describes a package of views,
linking the two issues . The underlying assumption seems to be that
they aren't distinct, that a given position on one commits you to a
corresponding view on the other. Thus, while the principal point of
Michael Sandel' s important book Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice5
is ontological in my terms , the liberal response to it has generally
been as a work of advocacy. 6 Sandel tries to show how the different
models of the way we live together in society-atomist and holist
are linked with different understandings of self and identity: "unen
cumbered " versus situated selves . This is a contribution to social
ontology, which can be developed in a number of directions . It could
be used to argue that because a totally unencumbered self is a human
impossibility , the extreme atomist model of society is a chimaera . Or
one could argue that both (relatively) unencumbered and situated
selves are possibilities , as would be then also (relatively) atomist- and
holist-based societies, but that the viable combinations between these
two levels are restricted: a highly collectivist society would be hard
to combine with an unencumbered identity, or a very individualist
life-form would be impossible where selves are thickly situated .
Taken in either of these directions, the tenor of these theses about

Cross-Purposes: The Liberal- Communitarian Debate

1 61

identity would still be purely ontological. They still don't amount to

an advocacy of anything. What they do purport to do, like any good
ontological thesis , is to structure the field of possibilities in a more
perspicuous way. But this precisely leaves us with choices, which we
need some normative, deliberative, arguments to resolve. Even taken
in the first direction, which purports to show the impossibility of
atomist society, it leaves us with important choices between more or .
less liberal societies; while the second direction is concerned precisely
to define options o f this kind.
Both the relations I have mentioned are illustrated here. Taking an
ontological position does not amount to advocating something; but
at the same time, the ontological does help to define the options which
it is meaningful to support by advocacy. This latter connection ex
plains how ontological theses can be far from innocent. Your onto-_
logical proposition, if true, can show that your neighbor's favorite
social order is an impossiblity or carries a price that he or she did not
count with. But this should not induce us to think that the proposition
amounts to the advocacy of some alternative.
Both this impact of the ontological and the misperception of it can
be seen in the debate around Sandel's book. Sandel made a point
about Rawls's invocation of the Humean "conditions of j ustice. "
According to these, j ustice is a relevant virtue where there are scar
cities, and people are not spontaneously moved by ties of affection
to mutual benevolence. Where the former does not hold, there is no
point dividing up shares; and where the latter does n9t hold, there is
no call to hold people to some rule of distribution . What is more, in
this second case, trying to enforce a rule will quite possibly disrupt the
existing ties : to insist punctiliously on sharing expenses with a friend
is to imply that the links of mutual benevolence are somehow lacking
or inadequate. There is no faster way of losing friends. 7 Similarly,
insistence on clearly defined rights can create distance in a close family .
Sandel has sometimes been read as though his point was to advocate
a society that would have close relations analogous to a family, and ,
thus would not need to concern itself with justice. This proposal has 1
been, rightly, ridiculed. But this seems to me to miss the relevance
of his argument. First we have to see that the choice is not simply
between a close, familylike community and a modern, impersonal
society. Even within the latter, there are important choices about how
zealously we entrench in legislation, or enforce through j udicial ac
tion, various facets of equality which j ustice might dictate. What do
we entrust to the spirit of social solidarity and the social mores which

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 62

emerge from it? In certain societies the answer may be: very little.
But that will be where this spirit is weak or lacking. Where it is
strong, there may be problems with overenforcement of our intuitions
about fair dealing. Trying to define and enforce in detail some of our
common feelings about equality may weaken the common sense of
moral commitment and mutual solidarity from which these feelings
grow . Sometimes of course legislation can help to crystallize a grow
ing consensus: the civil-rights laws in the United States in the 1 960s
are a good example. But sometimes overenforcement can work the
other way. Sandel's point about the conditions ofjustice should serve
to open up this whole issue, which gets left in the shade if we j ust
ask what the principles of j ustice ought to be between mutually in
different contracting individuals.
I will come back to this point from another angle later, when I
consider the relative advantages of two kinds of model of citizen
dignity, one based on political participation, and the other on j udicial
retrieval.
The same point about the impact of the ontological emerges even
more clearly from one of Sandel's central criticisms of Rawls. 8 He
argues that Rawls's very egalitarian difference principle, which involves
treating the endowment of each as part of the j ointly held resources
for the benefit of society as a whole, 9 presupposes a high degree of
solidarity among the participants. This sense of mutual commitment
could be sustained only by encumbered selves who shared a strong
sense of community. And yet the contractors are defined very much
as mutually indifferent. Here again, it is clear that the point of the
argument, whether right or wrong, is to define the alternatives in an
important choice. Sandel's point pushes us toward the issue of
whether the kind of egalitarian redistribution Rawls recommends can
be sustained in a society which is not bound together in solidarity
through a strong sense of community; and whether, in turn, a strong
community of this kind can be forged around a common understand
ing which makes j ustice the principal virtue of social life, or whether
some other good does not have to figure as well in the definition of
community life. My point is just that this kind of choice-definition
is the central function of what I have been calling ontological prop
ositions . This is how Sandel's critique of Rawls has to be read on this
score, not as a counteradvocacy.
This is not to say that Sandel does not also want to make an
important normative statement about the future course of American
society. This has become more and more evident with what he has

Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate

1 63

written since. 1 0 It is simply that his contribution to the ontological

debate should not be lost from view behind them. This would be a
loss, not just because this contribution is important in its own right,
but also because it is part of the background to what he advocates,
and grasping this relation helps us to understand exactly what his
normative position is. Whereas when these normative points are mis
construed as recommendations, the most bizarre interpretations
emerge, and the debate is beclouded beyond hope of recovery.
My belief is that the misconstruals occur because there has been
widespread insensitivity to the difference between the two kinds of
issue. The portmanteau terms "liberal" and " communitarian" will
probably have to be scrapped before we can get over this, because
they carry the implication that there is only one issue here, or that
someone's position on one determines what he holds on the other.,.
But a cursory look at the gamut of actual philosophical positions
shows exactly the contrary. Either stand on the atomism-holism de
bate can be combined with either stand on the individualist-collectivist\
question. There are not only atomist individualists (Nozick) and holist
collectivists (Marx) , but also holist individualists, like Humboldt
and even atomist collectivists, as in the nightmare, programmed uto
pia of B. F. Skinner, "beyond freedom and dignity. " 1 1 This last cat
egory may be of interest only for the student of the bizarre or the
monstrous, but I would argue that Humboldt and his ilk occupy at)
extremely important place in the development of modern liberalism :
They represent a trend of thought that i s fully aware o f the (onto
logical) social embedding of human agents, but at the same time prizes
liberty and individual differences very highly. Humboldt was one of
the important sources for Mill's doctrine of liberty. In the face of this,
it is astonishing that anyone should read a defense of holism as en
tailing an advocacy of collectivism . But the rich tradition that Hum
boldt represents seems to have been forgotten by Mill's heirs in the
English-speaking world.
Recovering the distinction I am making here is therefore worth the
trouble, if it can allow this tradition to return to its rightful place in
the debate. This is a big part of my (not so hidden) agenda, because
it is the line of thought that I identify with. But I also believe that
the confusion of issues has contributed to a kind of eclipse of onto
logical thinking in social theory. Since this is the level at which we
face important questions about the real choices open to us, the eclipse
is a real misfortune. Sandel's first book was very important because
he put on the agenda some issues that a properly aware liberalism

Repa iring Individualist and Communitarian Fa ilings

1 64

ought to face. The reaction of the "liberal" consensus (to use one of
the portmanteau terms I have j ust impugned) was that to obtrude
issues about identity and community into the debate on j ustice was
an irrelevancy . My thesis is that, quite the contrary, these matters
are highly relevant, and the only alternative to discussing them is
relying on an implicit and unexamined view of them . Moreover, in
that the unexamined views on these matters in Anglo-Saxon philo
sophical culture tend to be heavily infected with atomist prejudices,
the implicit understanding tends to be-according to my, holistic
outlook-wrong . The result is that an ontologically disinterested lib
eralism tends to be blind to certain important questions. I would like
in the remainder of this chapter to ry to sketch why I think this is
so.
There is a family of theories of liberalism that is now very popular,
not to say dominant, in the English-speaking world, which I want
to call "procedural. " It sees society as an association of individuals,
each of whom has his or her conception of a good or worthwhile
life, and correspondingly, his or her life plan. The function of society
ought to be to facilitate these life plans , as much as possible, and
following some principle of equality . That is, the facilitation ought ,
not to be discriminatory , although there is obviously some room for
serious question as to exactly what this means: whether the facilitation
ought to aim at equality of results, or of resources , or of opportunities,
or of capacities, or whatever. 1 2 But many writers seem to agree on
the proposition that the principle of equality or nondiscrimination
would be breached if society itself espoused one or other conception
of the good life . This would amount to discrimination, because we
assume that in a modern pluralis t society, there is a wide gamut of
views about what makes a good life. Any view endorsed by society
as a whole would be that of some citizens and not others. These latter,
in seeing their views denied official favor, would not in effect be
treated with equal respect in relation to their compatriots espousing
the established view.
Thus , it is argued, a liberal society should not be founded on any
particular notion of the good life. The ethic central to a liberal society
is an ethic of the right, rather than the good. That is, its basic principles
concern how society should respond to and arbitrate the competing
demands of individuals. These principles would obviously include
the respect of individual rights and freedoms, but central to any set
that could be called liberal would be the principle of maximal and
equal facilitation . This does not in the first instance define what goods

Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate

1 65

the society will further, but rather how it will determine the goods
to be advanced, given the aspirations and demands of its component
individuals. What is crucial here are the procedures of decision, which
is why I want to call this brand of liberal theory "procedural. " 1 3
There are grave problems with this model of liberalism, which
only can be properly articulated when one opens up the ontological
issues of identity and community I have been referring to. There are
questions about the viability of a society which would really meet
these specifications, and an issue about the applicability of this formula
in societies other than the United States (and perhaps also Britain) ,
where it has been mainly developed, which also have a prima facie
right to be called liberal. In o tJi er words, the theory can be taxed
with being unrealistic and ethnocentric. Both of these obj ections are
directed against procedural liberalism's exclusion of a socially en
dorsed conception of the good.
1. The viability issue has been raised by thinkers in the civic hu
manist tradition . One of the central themes of this line of thought
concerns the conditions for a free society . "Free" is understood here
not in the modern sense of negative liberty, but more as the antonym
to "despotic. " Ancient writers, followed by such moderns as Ma
chiavelli, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville, have all tried to define the
conditions in terms of political culture in which a participatory regime
can flourish. The underlying reasoning, in its different forms, has
been of the following sort: fevery political society requires some sac
rifices and demands some disciplines from its members : they have to
pay taxes, or serve in the armed forces, and in general observe certain
restraints. In a despotism, a regime where the mass of citizens are
subj ect to the rule of a single master, or a clique, the requisite dis
ciplines are maintained by coercion. In order to have a free society,
one has to replace this coercion with something else. This can only
be a willing identification with the polis on the part of the citizens,
a sense that the political institutions in which they live are an expres
sion of themselves. The "laws" have to be seen as reflecting and
entrenching their dignity as citizens, and hence to be in a sense ex
tensions of themselves. This understanding that the political insti
tutions are a common bulwark of citizen dignity is the basis of what
Montesquieu called "vertu , " the patriotism which is "une preference
continuelle de l'intent public au sien propre, " 1 4 an impulse which
cannot be placed neatly in the (very modern) classification egoistic
altruistic. It transcends egoism in the sense that people are really
attached to the common good, to general liberty. But it is quite unlike

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 66

the apolitical attachment to universal principle that the Stoics advo

cated, or that is central to modern ethics of the right.
The difference is that patriotism is based on an identification with
others in a particular common enterprise. I am not dedicated to de
fending the liberty of j ust anyone, but I feel the bond of solidarity
with my compatriots in our common enterprise, the common expres
sion of our respective dignity. Patriotism is somewhere between
friendship, or family feeling, on one side, and altruistic dedication on
the other. The latter has no concern for the particular: I am inclined
to act for the good of anyone anywhere. The former attach me to
particular people. My patriotic allegiance does not bind me to indi
vidual people in this fa milial way; I may not know most of my
compatriots, and may not particularly want them as friends when I
do meet them. But particularity enters in because my bond to these
people passes through our participation in a common political entity.
Functioning republics are like families in this crucial respect, that part
of what binds people together is their common history. Family ties
or old friendships are deep because of what we have lived through
together, and republics are bonded by time and climactic transitions .
Here is where we find ourselves pushed back into the ontological
issues of community and identity I have been discussing . Of course
there was a (premodem) time in the history of our civilization when
patriotism was intellectually unproblematic. But the last three cen
turies have seen the growing power of atomist modes of thought,
particularly in the English-speaking world, and more, these have
fostered the constitution of an unrefiecting common sense which is
shot through with atomist prejudices . According
this outlook,
there are individuals, who have inclinations and goa1 a:ld life plans.
These inclinations include affection for others, which may be mutual
and hence bring about bonding. Families and friendships thus find a
place. But beyond these, common institutional structures have to be
understood as in the nature of collective instruments. Political societies
in the understanding of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, or the twentieth
century common sense that they have helped shape are established
by collections of individuals to obtain benefits through common ac
tion that they could not secure individually. The action is collective,
but the point of it remains individual. The common good is consti
tuted out of individual goods, without remainder. This construal of
society incorporates the a to mist component of Sen's "welfarism" that
I have already mentioned .
This i mplicit ontology has no place for functioning republics, so-

Cross-Purp oses: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate

1 67

cieties bonded by patriotism in the above sense. For these are

grounded on a common good of a stronger kind than atomism allows .
T o see this w e have t o dive deeper into the ontological level. I want
to take a plunge now for a few paragraphs and raise an issue wider
than the political, before returning to this question of the nature of
republics .
There is a distinction largely ignored, or mischaracterized, in post
Cartesian thought: that between matters which are for me and for
you, on one hand, and those which are for us, on the other. This
distinction plays a tremendously important and pervasive role in
human affairs, in ways both banal and fateful. In a banal context, we
transfer matters from one category to the other when we open an
ordinary conversation over the back fence. " Fine weather we're hav
ing, " I say to my neighbor. Prior to this, he was aware of the weather,
may have been attending to it; obviously I was as well. It was a matter
for him, and also for me. What the conversation-opener does is make
it now a matter for us: we are attending to it now together. It is
important to see that this attending-together is not reducible to an
aggregation of attendings-separately. Obviously it involves some
thing more than each of us enj oying the weather on our own. But
our atomist prejudices may tempt us to try to account for this more
in terms of aggregations of monological mind-states : for example,
now I know that you are attending, and you know that I am attending,
and you know that I know that you know, and so on. 15 But j ust
adding these monological states does not get us the dialogic condition
where things are for us. In certain circumstances, I can know j ust by
seeing you that you are enj oying the weather, and you know the
same of me, and since we're both in plain view of each other, each
will know that the other knows, and so on. Nevertheless, it is very
different when we actually start conversing.
A conversation is not the coordination of actions of different in
dividuals, but a common action in this strong, irreducible sense; it is
our action . It is of a kind with-to take a more obvious example
the dance of a group or a couple, or the action of two men sawing
a log. Opening a conversation is inaugurating a common action. This
common action is sustained by little rituals which we barely notice,
like the interj ections of accord ("unhunh") with which the presently
nonspeaking partner punctuates the discourse of the speaker, and with
rituals which surround and mediate the switch of the "semantic turn"
from one to the other. 1 6
This threshold, which conversation takes us over, is one which

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 68

matters in all sorts of ways and on all sorts of levels in human life.
In human terms, we stand on a different footing when we start talking
about the weather. That is the main point of conversation, where
frequently the actual new information imparted may be sparse or
nonexistent. Certainly I do not tell you anything new with my opener.
On a deeper level, those whom I talk to about the things that matter
to me are my intimates . Intimacy is an essentially dialogic phenom
enon: it is a matter of what we share, of what's for us. One could
never describe what it is to be on an intimate footing with someone
in terms of monological states. On a trans personal, institutional level,
the same difference can play an important role. The steamy personal
life of a political candidate may be for long an open secret, known
to all insiders, j ournalists, politicians, even cab drivers in the capital .
But a significant line is crossed when it breaks into the media and
becomes "public knowledge. " This has to do with the number and
kind of people (unsophisticated country folks, for example) , who
know about it of course, but not only. It is also a matter of the way
in which even those who "always " knew, now know : it is now for
us, out there in public space. Analogous thresholds exist in the dip
lomatic world between states . Some things unsaid, or kept discreet,
can be tolerated, which you have to react to once they are public.
The move from the for-me-for-you to the for-us, the move into
public s pace, is one of the most important things we bring about in
language, and any theory of language has to take account of this. 17
I have been looking at an example of a common focus of attention.
But the monologic-dialogic distinction is j ust as evident in relation
to goods . Some things have value to me and to you, and some things
essentially have value to us. That is, their being for us enters into and
constitutes their value for us . On a banal level, j okes are much funnier
when they 're told in company. The really funny joke is an integral
part of a conversation, using this latter word in a broad sense. What
raises a smile when I read it alone can put me in stitches mediated in
the ritual of telling which puts it in common space. Or again, if we
are lovers or close friends, Mozart-with-you is a quite different ex
perience than Mozart-alone. I will call goods of this kind "mediately"
common goods. But there are other things we value even more, like
friendship itself, where what centrally matters to us is j ust that there
are common actions and meanings . The good is that we share. This
I will call an "immediately" common good.
These contrast with other goods which we enj oy collectively, but
which I want to call "convergent, " to mark the difference. To take

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the classical examples of welfare economics, we enjoy security from

various dangers , through our system of national defense, our police
forces, our fire departments, and the like. This is collectively pro
vided, and could not be obtained otherwise. No individual could af
ford it alone. These are classical cases of collective instrumental action
as understood in the Hobbes-Locke tradition. We might normally
speak of these goods as "common" or "public, " to mark that they
not only in fact are secured collectively, but that we could not get
them any other way . But in my language they are convergent, because
all this concerns only how we have to go about providing them. It
has nothing to do with what makes them goods. Security as a valued
end is always security for A, and for B, and for C. It is in no wise a
different good, let alone a more valued one, because it is in fact ensured
collectively. In the unlikely event that an individual could secure it
for him/herself, he/ she would be getting the same valued condition
as we all get now from social provision .
A little story may illustrate the difference. Jacques lives in Saint
Jerome, and his greatest desire was to hear the Montreal symphony
under Charles Dutoit playing in a live concert. He had heard them
on records and the radio, but he was convinced that these media could
never give total fidelity, and he wanted to hear the real thing. The
obvious solution was to travel to Montreal, but his aged mother
would fall into a state of acute anxiety whenever he went farther than
Saint Janvier. So Jacques got the idea of recruiting other music lovers
in the town to raise the required fee to bring the orchestra to Saint
Jerome. Finally the great moment came. As Jacques walked into the
concert that night, he looked on the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
visit as a convergent good between him and his fellow subscribers .
But then, when he actually experienced his first live concert, he was
enraptured not only by the quality of the sound, which was as he
had expected quite different from what you get on records, but also
by the dialogue between orchestra and audience. His own love of the
music fused with that of the crowd in the darkened hall, resonated
with theirs, and found expression in an enthusiastic common act of
applause at the end. Jacques also enj oyed the concert in a way he had
not expected, as a mediately common good.
What has all this to do with republics ? That it is essential to them,
as I have characterized them, that they are animated by a sense of a
shared immediate common good. To that degree, the bond resembles
that of friendship, as Aristotle saw . 18 The citizen is attached to the,
laws as the repository of his and others ' citizen dignity. That mi ght 1

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sound like the way I'm indebted to the Montreal Urban Community
for its police service. But the crucial difference is that the latter re
lationship secures what we all understand as a merely convergent
good, whereas the identification of the citizen with the republic as a
common enterprise is essentially the recognition of a comon good.
My attachment to the MUC for its police service is based on enlight
ened self-interest. My (frequently inoperative) moral commitment to
the welfare of all humans is altruistic. But the bond of solidarity with
my compatriots in a functioning republic is based on a sense of shared
fate, where the sharing itself is of value. This is what gives this bond
its special importance, what makes my ties with these people and to
this enterprise peculiarly binding, what animates my "virtu, " or pa
triotism.
In other words, the very definition of a republican regime as clas
sically understood requires an ontology different from atomism, and
which falls outside atomism-infected common sense. It requires that
we probe the relations of identity and community, and distinguish the
different possibilities, in particular, the possible place of we-identities
as against merely convergent I-identities, and the consequent role of
common as against convergent goods . If we abstract from all this,
then we are in danger of losing the distinction between collective
instrumentality and common action, of misconstruing the republic
as a hyped-up version of the Montreal Urban Community, delivering
a product of much greater importance, and about which the bene
ficiaries feel (on grounds which are hard to fathom, but which have
possibly irrational roots) particularly strongly . 19
Perhaps this does not matter too much practically, if this kind of
regime has no relevance to the modem world. And such is the view
of many students of modem politics. But if we are going even to
consider the basic thesis of the civic humanist tradition, we cannot
simply j ust assume this from the outset. This thesis, to repeat, is that
the essential condition of a free (nondespotic) regime is that the citizens
have this kind of patriotic identification. This may have seemed self
evident to them because of their concept of freedom. This was not
defined mainly in terms of what we would call negative liberty .
Freedom was thought of as citizen liberty, that of the active participant
in public affairs . This citizen was "free" in the sense as having a say
in the decisions in the political domain, which would shape his and
others' lives . Since participatory self-government is itself usually car
ried out in common actions, it is perhaps normal to see it as properly
animated by common identifications. Since one exercises freedom in

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common actions, it may seem natural that one value it as a common

g ood.
The underlying reasoning of the thesis, as I have said, is that the
disciplines that would be externally imposed by fear under a despo
tism have to be self-imposed in its absence, and only patriotic iden..:
tification can provide the motivation. But the case could also b
argued in slightly different terms. We could say that a free, that is,
participatory regime calls on the citizens to provide themselves for
things which a despotism may provide for them. The foremost ex
ample of this was national defense. A despotic regime may raise
money and hire mercenaries to fight for it; a republican regime will
generally call on its citizens to fight for their own freedom. The causal
links run in both directions. Citizen armies guarantee freedom because
they are an obstacle to despotic takeover, j ust as large armies at the
disposal of powerful generals invite a coup, as the agony of the Roman
Republic illustrates . But at the same time, only people who live in 1
and cherish a free regime will be motivated to fight for themselves. 1
This relation between citizen armies and freedom was one of the main
themes of Machiavelli' s work .
So we could say that republican solidarity underpins freedom, be
cause it provides the motivation for self-imposed discipline; or else
that it is essential for a free regime, because this calls on its members
to do things that mere subj ects can avoid. In one case, we think of
the demands on members as the same, and the difference concerns
the motivation to meet them: fear of punishment versus inwardly
generated sense of honor and obligation. In the other, the demands
of freedom are defined as more onerous, and the issue concerns what
can motivate this extra effort.
The second formulation very much depends on seeing freedom in
participatory terms . Free regimes re more onerous, because they
require service in public life, both military and political, that the unfree
do not. The importance of this latter formulation in the civic humanist
tradition shows the degree to which freedom was understood in terms
of participation. But one can extract a thesis from this tradition about
the essential bases of nondespotic society which is broader than this.
The thesis would define nondespotism not j ust in terms of partici
pation, but by a b roader gamut of freedoms, including negative ones.
It would draw on the first formulation to argue a link between the
solidarity of patriotism and free institutions, on the grounds that a
free society needs this kind of motivation to provide what despotisms
get through fear; to engender the disciplines, the sacrifices, the es-

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sential contributions it needs to keep going, as well as to mobilize

support in its defense when threatened.
If we call this basic proposition connecting patriotism and freedom
the "republican thesis, " then we can speak of narrower and broader 1
forms of this , with the former focused purely on participatory free
dom , and the latter taking in the broader gamut of liberties . With all
these preliminaries behind us, we can finally address the first criticism
of procedural liberalism, that it offers a nonviable formula for a free
regime.
We can see right off how this kind ofliberalism seems to run athwart
the republican thesis . It conceives of society as made up of individuals
with life plans, based on their conceptions of the good, but without
a commonly held conception espoused by the society itself. But that
seems to be the formula for an instrumental society , designed to seek
merely convergent goods; it seems to exclude the republican form
altogether.
This is the usual reaction of people steeped in the civic humanist
tradition when they first confront the definitions of procedural lib
eralism. I confess that I find myself reacting this way. But this crit
icism as it stands is not quite right. There are confusions here, but
what is interesting is that they are not all on one side, not only in
the mind of the critic.
What is wrong with the criticism? The liberal can respond to the .
republican that he is not at all commited to a merely instrumental
society. His formula does indeed exclude there being a societally
endorsed common good, but not at all that there be a common un
derstanding of the right; actually, it calls for this. The misunderstand
ing turns on two senses of "good. " In the broad sense, it means
anything valuable which we seek; in the narrower sense, it refers to
life plans or ways of living which are so valued. Procedural liberalism
cannot have a common good in the narrow sense, because society
must be neutral on the question of the good life. But in the broader
sense, where a rule of right can also count as "good, " there can be
an extremely important shared good.
So procedural liberalism can p arry the obj ection of nonviability.
This obj ection, to recall, came out of the republican thesis, and reading
this type of liberal society as necessarily instrumental, saw it as es
sentially lacking citizen identification with a common good. But since
this is a condition of a nondespotic regime, it judged this form of
liberalism to be by its very nature self-undermining . A free society,
which thus needs to call on a strong spontaneous allegiance from its

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members, is eschewing the indispensable basis of this : strong citizen

identification around a sense of common good-what I have been
calling "patriotism . "
One reply to this attack would remain entirely within the assump
tions of modern atomism. It would simply reject the republican thesis,
and suppose that viable liberal societies can rely on quite different
bases : either the eighteeth-century view that the citizens' allegiance
could be grounded on enlightened self-interest; or the idea that mod
ern civilization has educated people to higher moral standards, so that
citizens are sufficiently imbued with the liberal ethos to support and
defend their society; or else the idea current in modern " revisionist"
democratic theory, that in fact a mature liberal society does not de
mand very much of its members , as long as it delivers the goods and
makes their lives prosperous and secure. As a matter of fact, on this
view it is better if the citizens do not try to participate too actively,
but rather elect governments every few years and then let them get
on with it. 20
But procedural liberalism need not reply in this way. It can accept
the republican thesis, and plead that it does have a place for a common
good, and hence patriotism, hence that it can be viable as a free society.
Which reply ought liberalism to make? Those of an atomist outlook
will opt for the first. They will think that the republican thesis, what
ever its validity in ancient times, is irrelevant in modern mass bu
reaucratic society. People in the modern age have become
individualist, and societies can only be held together in one or other
of the ways I have just described. To hanker after the unity of earlier
republics is to indulge in bootless nostalgia. If this is right, then all
the ontological discussion of the previous pages, designed to make
sense of republican societies, is of purely antiquarian interest, and the
civic humanist critique of liberalism can be shrugged off.
But plausible as this atomist view might seem to us today, it is
wide of the mark. We can see this if we look at the recent history of
the United States, which is after all the main society of reference for
procedural liberals . Think of the reaction to Watergate and, to a lesser
degree, to the Iran-Contra misdemeanors . In the first case, citizen
outrage actually drove a president from power. Now I want to make
two, admittedly contestable, points about these reactions, which to
g ether amount to an important confirmation of the continuing rele
vance of the republican thesis .
The first is that the capacity of the citizenry to respond with outrage
to this kind of abuse is an important bulwark of freedom in modern

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society. It is true that Americans are perhaps especially sensitive to

acts of executive abuse, in comparison to other contemporary de
mocracies-think, for instance, of the (absence of) French reaction
to the Rainbow Warrior incident. But the general point would be that,
although the targets might vary from society to society, most dem
ocratic electorates are disposed to react to violations of the norms of
liberal self-rule, and this is a crucial supporting factor to the stability
of these regimes . Where this disposition has been relatively lacking
as, for example, in a number of Latin A merican countries, where a
large number of people are ready to tolerate "disappearances" per
petrated by semiclandestine arms of the military, or to welcome army
putshes-then one is in danger of ending up with an Argentine Junta
or a murderous Pinochet regime.
The second point is that this capacity for outrage is not fueled from
any of the sources already enumerated that are recognized by atom
ism. People do not respond this way because they calculate that it is
in their long-term interest . Or rather, we should admit that some do,
but they are comparatively few. Nor do most people respond j ust
because of their general commitment to the principles of liberal de
mocracy. This too plays a role, but by itself it would not lead to,
say, an American reacting more vigorously to Nixon's violations than
to Pinochet's or Enver Hodja's. Now there are certainly some people
who feel very s trongly about the fate of democracy everywhere, but
they too are, alas, a relatively small minority of most modern elec
torates . Thirdly, people would barely respond at all if they thought
of their society purely instrumentally, as the dispenser of security and
prosperity.
What generates the outrage is something in none of the above
categories, neither egoism nor altruism, but a species of patriotic
identification. In the case of the United States, there is a widespread
identification with "the A merican way of life, " a sense of A mericans
sharing a common identity and history, defined by a commitment to
certain ideals, articulated famously in the Declaration of Independ
ence, Lincoln' s Gettysburg address , and such documents, which in
turn derive their importance from their connection to certain climactic
transitions of this shared history. It is this sense of identity, and the
pride and attachment which accompanies it, that is outraged by the
shady doings of a Watergate, and this is what provokes the irresistible
reaction .
In other terms, my second point is that republican patriotism re
mains a fo rce in modern society, one that was very palpably operative

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during the days of Watergate. It goes unnoticed, partly because of

the hold of atomist prejudices on modern theoretical thinking, and
partly because its forms and focus are somewhat different from those
of classical times . But it is still very much with us and plays an essential
role in maintaining our contemporary liberal democratic regimes . Of
course patriotism is also responsible for a lot of evil, today as at any
time. It can also take the form of virulent nationalism, and in its
darker forms encourages an Oliver North to violate the norms of a
free society, even as it is generating a healthy defense against the
danger he creates. But whatever menace the malign effects have
spawned, the benign ones have been essential to the maintenance of
liberal democracy. 21
This is my second point. It is of course controversial. It involves
a certain reading of recent history, and of its causes, which is far from
being universally agreed. But I should like to make the point even
stronger. Not only has patriotism been an important bulwark of
freedom in the past, but it will remain unsubstitutably so for the
future. The various atomist sources of allegiance have not only been
insufficient to generate the vigorous defensive reaction a la Watergate;
they will never be able to do so, in the nature of things. Pure en
lightened self-interest will never move enough people strongly
enough to constitute a real threat to potential despots and putschists.
Nor will there, alas, be enough people who are moved by universal
principle, unalloyed with particular identifications, moral citizens of
cosmopolis, Stoic or Kantian, to stop these miscreants in their tracks.
As for those who support a society because of the prosperity and
security it generates, they are only fair-weather friends and are bound
to let you down when you really need them. In other words, I want
to claim that the republican thesis is as relevant and true today, in its
peculiar contemporary application, as it was in ancient or early mod
ern times, when the paradigm statements of civic humanism were
articulated.
If I am right about this, then liberalism cannot answer the charge
of non viability just by assuming atomism and dismissing the repub
lican thesis. To do so would be to be blind to the crucial dynamics
of modern society. But that leaves the other answer: that a procedural
liberal society can be a republican one in a crucial respect. And indeed,
that is one way of reading the Watergate reaction. What the outraged
citizens saw as violated was precisely a rule of right, a liberal con
ception of rule by law. That is what they identified with, and that is
what they rose to defend as their common good. We no longer need

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to argue that, in theory, procedural liberalism allows for patriotism;

we have a living case, or at least a close approximation, of such a
patriotism of the right. The confusion in the mind of the critic would
be to have thought that procedural liberalism entails an atomist on
tology, on the grounds that it speaks of individual life plans, and that
hence it can only draw allegiance from the atomist sources, which
are manifestly inadequate to sustain it. But in fact a procedural liberal
can be a holist; what is more, holism captures much better the actual
practice of societies that approximate to this model. Thus runs a
convincing answer to the critic-which incidentally illustrates again
how essential it is not to confuse the ontological issue of atomism
holism with questions of advocacy opposing individualism and col
lectivism.
Now here it is the critics who seem to have fallen prey to this
confusion. But they may not be the only victims. For once we un
derstand procedural liberalism holistically, certain questions arise
which its protagonists rarely raise.
(i) We can question whether a patriotic liberal regime really meets
the full proceduralist demands. The common good is, indeed, a rule
of right. But we have to remember that patriotism involves more
than converging moral principles; it is a common allegiance to a
particular historical community. Cherishing and sustaining this has
to be a common goal, and this is more than just consensus on the
rule of right. Put differently, patriotism involves beyond convergent
values a love of the particular. Sustaining this specific historical set
of institutions and forms is and must be a socially endorsed common
end.
In other words, while the procedural liberal state can indeed be
neutral between (a) believers and unbelievers in God, or (b) people
with homo- and heterosexual orientations, it cannot be between ( c)
patriots and antipatriots . We can imagine its courts hearing and giving
satisfaction to those who, under (a) , obj ect to school prayers, or those
who, under (b) , petition to ban a manual of sex education that treats
homosexuality as a perversion. But supposing someone, under (c) ,
objected to the pious tone with which American history and its major
figures are presented to the young. The parents might declare them
selves ready to abide by the rules of the procedural republic and to
educate their children to do so, but this they will do for their own
hyper-Augustinian reasons, that in this fallen world of depraved wills,
such a modus vivendi is the least dangerous arrangement. But they'll
be damned (no mere figure of speech, this !) if they'll let their children

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be brainwashed into taking as their heroes the infidel Jefferson, and

the crypto-freethinker Washington, and indoctrinated into their shal
low and impious cant about human perfectibility. Or else we might
imagine a less ideological obj ection, where parents who espouse an
apolitical life-style obj ect to the implicit endorsement of active citi
zenship that flows from the patriots' view of American history.
These examples sound fanciful, and they are, indeed , very unlikely
to happen . But why? Is it not because, while fighting about religion
in schools has become a very American thing to do and the battle
continues well beyond the point where another less litigious people
might have settled on a workable compromise, just because Ameri
cans on both sides feel that what they advocate is dictated by the
constitution, so a questioning of the value of patriotism is profoundly
un-American, and is close to unthinkable as a public act?22 But log
ically such a challenge is possible, and it would be no more illegitimate
on the terms of procedural liberalism than those under (a) and (b) .
But any court which gave satisfaction to such a suit would be un
dermining the very regime it was established to interpret. A line has
to be drawn here before the demands of proceduralism.
This may not be a maj or problem . No political theory can be
implemented in all the purity of its original model. There have to be
some compromises with reality , and a viable procedural republic
would have to be non-neutral about its own regime patriotism . But
another issue, touched on earlier, must be explored .
(ii) This patriotic liberal regime differs from the traditional repub
lican model . We have imagined that the values enshrined in the his
torically endorsed institutions are purely those of the rule of right,
incorporating something like: the rule of law, individual rights , and
some principles of fairness and equal treatment. What this leaves out
is the central good of the civic humanist tradition: participatory self
rule. In fact, one could say that the center of gravity of the classical
theory was at the opposite end of the spectrum: ancient theories were
not concerned with individual rights, and they allowed some pretty
hairy procedures j udged by our modern standards of personal im
munity-such as ostracism. Moreover, their notions of equal treat
ment applied very selectively from our point of view. But they did
think citizen rule was of the very essence of the republic.
Now the question arises of what we make of this good in our
modern liberal society . Procedural liberals tend to neglect it, treating
self-rule as purely instrumental to the rule of law and equality. And
indeed , to treat it as the republican tradition does, which sees self-

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rule as essential to a life of dignity, as the highest political good in

itself, would take us beyond the bounds of procedural liberalism.
Because a society organized around this proposition would share and
endorse qua society at least this proposition about the good life. This
is a clear, unconfused point of conflict between procedural liberals
and republicans. Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Robert Bellah
clearly have an incompatible political ideal, which this liberalism can
not incorporate. 23 Well, so what? Why is that a problem for procedural
liberalism?
Perhaps it is not, but important questions arise before we can be
sure. The issue is, can our patriotism survive the marginalization of
participatory self-rule? As we have seen, a patriotism is a common
identification with an historical community founded on certain values .
These can vary widely, and there can of course be patriotisms of
unfree societies, for example, founded on race or blood ties , and
finding expression in despotic forms, as in Fascism; or the patriotism
of Russians, under tsars and Bolsheviks, which was/is linked to au
thoritarian forms of rule. A free society requires a patriotism, ac
cording to the republican thesis . But it must be one whose core values
incorporate freedom. Historically republican patriotism has incor
porated self-rule in its definition of freedom. Indeed, as we have seen,
this has been at the core of this definition .
Does this have to be so? The point is, that the patriotism of a free
society has to celebrate its institutions as realizing a meaningful free
dom, one which safeguards the dignity of citizens . Can we define a
meaningful freedom in this sense, which can capture people's alle
giance, which does not include self-rule as a central element?
We could argue this point in general terms : What will moderns
recognize as genuine citizen dignity? This has to be defined not only
in terms of what is to be secured for a citizen; the modern notion of
the dignity of the person is essentially that of an agent, who can affect
his or her own condition . Citizen dignity involves a notion of citizen
capacity. Two maj or models are implicit in much of my discussion.
A . One focuses mainly on individual rights and equal treatment,
as well as a government performance which takes account of the
citizen's preferences . This is what has to be secured. Citizen capacity
consists mainly in the power to retrieve these rights and ensure equal
treatment, as well as to influence the effective decisionmakers . This
retrieval may take pla:ce largely through the courts, in systems with
a body of entrenched rights, such as we find in the United States
(and recently also in Canada) . But it will also be effected through

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representative institutions . Only in the spirit of this model, these

institutions have an entirely instrumental significance. They tend to
be viewed as they were on the "revisionist" model mentioned earlier.
That means that no value is put on participation in rule for its own
sake. The ideal is not " ruling and being ruled in turn, " 24 but having
clout. This is compatible with not engaging in the participatory sys
tem at all , provided one can wield a credible threat to those who are
so engaged, so that they will take notice; or with engaging in it in
an adversarial way, in which the actual governors are defined as
"them" to our "us, " and pressured through single-issue campaigns,
or petitions or lobbies , to take us into account.
B. The other model, by contrast, defines participation in self-rule
as of the essence of freedom , as part of what must be secured. This
is thus also seen as an essential component of citizen capacity . In
consequence, a society in which the citizen's relation to government
is normally adversarial, even where he or she manages to bend it to
his or her purposes, has not secured citizen dignity and allows only
a low degree of citizen capacity. Full participation in self-rule is seen
as being able, at least part of the time, to have some part in the
forming of a ruling consensus, with which one can identify along
with others . To rule and be ruled in turn means that at least some of
the time the governors can be "us, " not always "them. " The sense
of citizen capacity is seen as incompatible with our being part of an
alien political universe, which one can perhaps manipulate but never
identify with.
These two kinds of capacity are incommensurable. We cannot say
simpliciter which is greater. For people of an atomist bent, there is
no doubt that A will seem preferable, and for republicans B will seem
the only genuine one. But ranking them in the abstract is not the
issue. The point is to see which can figure in the definition of citizen
dignity in a viable patriotism. This requires us to share an allegiance
to and cherish in common a historical set of institutions as the com
mon bulwark of our freedom and citizen dignity. Can definition A
be the focus of some such common sentiment?
The reasons for being skeptical are that this model of citizen capacity
is so adversarial that it would seem impossible to combine it with
the sense that our institutions are a shared bulwark of dignity. If I
win my way by manipulating the common institutions, how can I
see them as reflecting a purpose common to me and those who par
ticipate in these institutions? But there are also reasons to be skeptical
of a too simple logic. Once again the reality of United States expe-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 80

rience gives us pause. One could argue that America has moved in
the last century more and more toward a definition of its public life
based on A . It has become a less participatory and more "procedural"
republic. 25 Judicial retrieval has become more important; at the same
time, participation in elections seems to be declining . Meanwhile,
political action committees (PACs) threaten to increase the leverage
of single-issue politics .
These are exactly the developments that republicans deplore, seeing
in them a decline in civic spirit, and ultimately a danger for free
society. But liberals could counterargue that the continuing vigor of
American political life shows that a patriotism of model A is viable;
that underlying the adversarial relation to the representative institu
tions is a continuing sense that the political structure of which they
are a part remains a common bulwark of freedom. The law invites
us to litigate as adversaries to get our way; but it entrenches and
enshrines for both sides their freedom and capacity as citizens. After
all, they may add, the agon of citizens struggling for office and honor
was central to the classical polis. That regime too united adversaries
in solidarity.
I do not know who will turn out to be right on this. Republicans
argue that the continued growth of bureaucratic, centralized society
and the consequent exacerbation of participant alienation cannot but
undermine patriotism in the long run. Liberals will reply that the
resources of rights retrieval will increase to empower people pari passu
with the spread of bureaucratic power. Such measures as the freedom
of information acts already show that countervailing power can be
brought to bear.
But the question cannot be settled in purely general terms . It is not
j ust a matter of whether in the abstract people can accommodate to
one or other model of citizen dignity. The question must be partic
ularized to each society's tradition and culture. Procedural liberals
seem to assume that something like model A is consonant with the
American tradition, but this is vigorously contested by others , who
argue that participation was an important part of early American
patriotism and remains integral to the ideal by which American cit
izens will ultimately j udge their republic. 26
My aim cannot be to settle this issue. I raise it only to show how
placing procedural liberalism against the background of a holist on
tology, while answering the oversimple charge of non viability in
principle, opens a whole range of concrete questions about its viability
in practice. These questions can be properly addressed only after we

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181

have settled issues o n the ontological level , in fact in favor of holism.

Both my main theses about the relation of the two levels are illustrated
here: Once you have opted for holism, extremely important questions
remain open on the level of advocacy; but at the same time, one's
ontology structures the debate between the alternatives, and forces
you to face certain questions . Clarifying the ontological question
restructures the debate about advocacy.
When I said that procedural liberals might be confused about these
levels, and not only those who proffer the simple republican criticism,
I was referring to this. Certainly this liberalism has an answer to the
in principle nonviability obj ection, and perhaps it will prove viable
in practice. But procedural liberals seem quite unaware that this issue
has to be addressed. Could it be that they are still too much in the
thrall of commonsense atomist-infected notions, of the instrumental
model of society, or of the various a to mist sources of allegiance to
see that there are questions here? That they are too insensitive to the
ontological issues to see the point of the republican critique? I suspect
that this is so. And thus they fail to articulate the distinction between
ontological and advocacy questions, and take their communitarian
critics to be simply advancing a different policy, which they vaguely
apprehend as more collectivist; instead of seeing how the challenge
is based on a redrawn map of political possibilities.
2. Having gone on at some length about the viability obj ection, I
have little space left to address the charge of ethnocentricity. Fortu
nately I can make the point tersely, having laid some of the ground
work. Whether or not model A is the one entrenched in the American
tradition and can ensure a free society in the United States in the
future, it is clearly not the only possible model. Other societies are
more oriented to model B, Canada for instance. Indeed, this makes
one of the principal differences between the political culture of our
two countries, which expresses itself in all sorts of ways, from the
relatively higher voting participations to the greater emphasis on col
lective provision in Canada, reflected, for instance, in the Canadian
public health service. 27
There are other societies where the fusion between patriotism and
the free institutions is not so total as in the United States, whose
defining political culture from the beginning was centered on free
institutions. There are also modern democratic societies where pa
triotism centers on a national culture, which in many cases has come
(sometimes late and painfully) to incorporate free institutions, but
which is also defined in terms of some language or history . Quebec

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 82

is the prominent example in my experience, but there are many others .

The procedural liberal model cannot fit these societies, because they
cannot declare neutrality between all possible definitions of the good
life. A society like Quebec cannot but be dedicated to the defense and
promotion of French culture and language, even if this involves some
restriction on individual freedoms . It cannot make cultural-linguistic
orientation a matter of indifference. A government that could ignore
this requirement would either not be responding to the majority will,
or would reflect a society so deeply demoralized as to be close to
dissolution as a viable pole of patriotic allegiance. In either case, the
prospects for liberal democracy would not be rosy.
But then one is entitled to raise questions about the procedural
model as a definition of liberal society tout court. Are these other
types of society, organized around model B or a national culture, not
properly liberal? This could of course be made true by definitional
fiat, in which case the claim is uninteresting. But if proceduralism is
an attempt to define the essence of modern liberalism, it has to find
a place for these alternatives . The discussion up to now has suffered
from a certain parochialism. It has to come to terms with the real
world of liberal democracy, to echo one of my compatriots, most of
which lies outside the borders of the United States .
But these vistas can only be properly opened if we can properly
clarify the ontological issues, and allow the debate between "liberals"
and "communitarians" to be the complex, many-leveled affair that
it really is.

 T E N

Democratic Individuality and the

Meaning of Rights
GEORGE KATEB

In recent years a number of theorists have insistently challenged in

dividualism. Speaking simply, one could say that the challenge has
been made in behalf of four ideals: first, the life of continuous and
direct citizenship , with the polis or the revolutionary council held up
as a model for close or approximate imitation; second, the feeling of
community, with its satisfaction of the need for rootedness, belong
ing, fraternity, or harmony; third, the transcendence of selfin a group
identity, understood as the identity in which every individual should
find the completion or perfection of his or her personal identity. There
is a fourth ideal that seems to be individualist, but that I think is at
bottom anti-individualist. That is the affirmation of self-realization
when understood p rimarily as a process of mutual growth achieved
in social activities that are publicly defined and publicly supported
and even enabled. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list of anti
individualist ideals, but only a representative sampling. Among the
theorists who have contributed to them are Hannah Arendt, Sheldon
Wolin, John Schaar, Carey McWilliams, Benj amin Barber, Alasdair
Macintyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and, to a degree, Michael
Walzer. Again, this list is hardly exhaustive.
I dare say that the number of those who have consciously tried to
resist these tendencies would be smaller than the number of those
who have furthered them-a fact of great symptomatic importance.
And I can say this while ignoring two other pronounced tendencies:
the anti-individualism of some authoritarian and disciplinarian con
servatives; and the wordy, and at crucial moments, practically speech
less onslaught on the idea of the individual as subj ect undertaken by
some Marxists, by structuralists, and by Althusser, Foucault, Derrida,

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 84

and their followers. (The critique of the subject may not affirm any
ideal but it certainly works to corrode the individualist ideal . ) Let us
leave these two latter groups aside and concentrate on the anti
individualist ideals I have j ust mentioned, all of whose theorists are
democrats.
I use the word "individualism" as the name of the common ad
versary of these ideals rather than "liberalism" because I think that
"individualism" is more accurate, and also because "liberalism" is by
now so frequently and variously used that we cannot be sure what
it means in any given case, without an explicit definition, which is
only rarely given. It would also be well to notice that though the
four types of anti-individualism that I have singled out are commu
nitarian in some sense, communitarianism in the strict sense is a
separate ideal. We can continue to call our matter the debate between
liberalism and communitarianism, but it could more precisely be
called the debate between individualism and anti-individualism . Anti
individualism is the common element in these four types of idealism,
whatever else may unite them or distinguish them. Of course each
theorist cannot be reduced to a single type. She or he will most likely
show signs of more than one, j ust as the richness of each work may
surpass the specific project of criticizing individualism and affirming
an anti-individualist ideal.
These four ideals all go back a long way. But I think that in recent
years Rawls's work, the great statement of individualism in this cen
tury, has helped many anti-individualist theorists to collect their
thoughts and find their voice. Like any genuine work in political
theory, A Theory ofJustice energizes not only its own cause but that
of its opponents . It does this not by its deficiencies but by its vul
nerability, a vulnerability incurred by its courageous reach and at
tention to particulars ; and even more by its indefinite suggestiveness
than by its vulnerability. It instructs its opponents even as it provokes
them. Doubtless, the works of Ronald Dworkin and Robert Nozick,
among others, have also contributed to the anti-individualist theo
retical fire. Yet having said all this, we should keep in mind the long
lineage of both individualism and its antitheses . We can always find
help for either cause in the remote or nearer past. I hope to do so in
this essay.
What we find in recent political theory, then, is the idealism of
individualism under attack on a broad front. I worry about the per
sistence and intensity of the attack as much as I worry about the force
of the critical arguments; and I worry about the antithetical idealisms

Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights

1 85

affirmed . My purpose in this chapter is to expose my worries-in

particular, my concern that individualism is not always seen in its
fullness and thus is disparaged unfairly or at least prematurely, and
that the losses that would be sustained if anti-individualist idealisms
were to be realized go unremarked, even by those who are more or
less friendly to individualism.
My perspective is made up of two types of individualism, histor
ically related. The first is the individualism of personal and political
rights, profoundly present in Rawls, Dworkin, and Nozick, but, as
we know, the creation of the English Protestant seventeenth century:
the work of the Levellers, Roger Williams, Milton, Hobbes , and
Locke (among others) . This work is carried on, and sometimes im
proved, by Trenchard and Gordon, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Paine,
Kant, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and J. S. Mill (despite his declaim
ers about believing in abstract rights) . The second type is what I have
been calling "democratic individuality, " an idealism imagined and
theorized initially by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and with a
force that has not been equaled since then, must less surpassed. 1
Actually, it is not easy to say who has even made the effort to
further the Emersonian tradition, unless it be poets like Wallace Ste
ven s and Robert Frost, who did so indirectly, even if deliberately.
What should one say? Perhaps most of American imaginative liter
ature indirectly furthers the work of the Emersonians, though usually
not deliberately; but a lot of A merican political science and moral
philosophy does not even do that.
The connection that I see between the two types of individualism
is that democratic individuality is perhaps not the only but probably
the best actuality and aspiration that grows or can grow out of a culture
in which individual personal and political rights are systematically
recognized and appreciated . In other words , the Emersonian tradition
is the best working out of the existential meanings of rights-based
individualism, the best pursuit of its intimations. This means that
de mocratic individuality could not exist, as an actuality or aspiration,
apart from rights-based individualism.
The four anti-individualist ideals that I have mentioned have char
acteristically directed their critique at the individualism of personal
rights, while assuming that those who prize personal rights tend not
to be much interested in political rights . As the critics sometimes put
it: their critique is aimed at liberalism, not at democracy. But I believe
that the whole discourse of rights, political rights included, is found
narrow and obstructive by some of those who affirm any of the four

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 86

antithetical ideals . But whatever the situation is in any given anti

individualist text, the plain fact is that there is scarcely any indication
that the critics have democratic individuality in mind. It is as if the
Emersonian tradition did not exist. For that reason, I would like to
continue the effort of trying to say what the Emersonians were up
to. From them one may gather considerations that pertain to my two
concerns: the unrecognized nature of individualist idealism; and the
size of the loss that would be sustained if, by some mischance, one
or more of the four anti-individualist idealisms were to take hold in
our individualist culture programmatically. Needless to say, in the
debate between the defenders and critics of rights-based individualism
the defenders have ample resources at their disposal to fend off the
critics, without having to enlist the Emersonians. Still, we should
notice that any serious attack on the centrality of rights in political
life is also, and necessarily, even if unknowingly, an attack on dem
ocratic individuality.
I go on the assumption that Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are
best understood in relation to each other. Though Emerson is first,
and is the great teacher of the other two, Thoreau and Whitman are
their o wn geniuses . And what they say expands or qualifies, enriches
or transforms, the thinking of Emerson. They also break new ground.
At the same time, I maintain that not only is Whitman a theorist of
democratic individuality, but so are Emerson and Thoreau, appearances
notwithstanding .
What, then, i s the theory o f democratic individuality? It is, t o begin
with, an insistence that a society with democratic political institu
tions-and for the Emersonians, that can mean only the United
States-is a culture that is distinctive in major respects. The culture
is individ u alist in ways or in degrees that other cultures that lack
democratic political institutions are not. For the Emersonians the
newness of the New World and the newness of modern democracy
are practically the same thing. Something new is going on; a new
sense of life is showing itself. A large part of the explanation is found
in the all too obvious fact that the American government is guaranteed
its continuous existence only through the will and the suffrage of a
population of individuals; and that the government is suffered to exist
only because it acknowledges and protects rights and does not try to
govern too much . That the government functions because of fre
quently disgraceful partisan agon is all to the good. This way au
thorities and their enactments, in their confused changeability, lose

Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights

1 87

enough of their dignity so that individuals can keep and increase theirs.
The government is their government, but it does not originate or
emanate from what is best in them. The real good it does, it does by
the manner of its working, by its procedures and processes, much
more than by its enactments. Its procedures and processes imperson
ally and continuously instruct citizens in the dependence of political
authority on them , and in the unsolid quality of the results of political
activity. Actually the instruction is indistinguishable from remem
brance. Citizens already know but can scarcely believe the lessons .
In such instruction or remembrance, liberation is found: on the one
hand, liberation from feelings of inferiority and from habitual docility,
and, on the other hand, possible liberation to a new stage of char
acter-what I have been calling democratic individuality.
For the Emersonians the actual culture shows evidences of such
liberation. Their common purpose as philosophers is to theorize a
fuller conception of democratic individuality to serve as a reproach
and an inspiration . The obstacles are, first, timorousness, which ac
counts for the strange reluctance of citizens to believe what their own
political creation is impersonally teaching them, and thus to accept
the opportunity for a larger liberation; and second, the temptations
of moneymaking, which threaten forfeiture of democratic individu
ality by confining individualism to acquisitive and consumerist pur
suits . The Emersonians feared the latter obstacle much more than the
first. They knew that economic individualism was historically and
conceptually separate from rights-based individualism and hence from
the democratic individuality that could grow out of it. But they also
knew that economic individualism was the most likely deviation.
Before examining the main aspects of democratic individuality, I
would like to suggest why rights-based individualism leads-both in
the actuality of the culture and in further theoretical aspiration-to
democratic individuality. We may ask why the system of rights,
housed in democratic political institutions, led the Emersonians to
their insistence on recognizing what was going on in the life of their
society and to their elaboration of an aspiration; and also why this
system can or should lead us, more than a century later, to the same
insistence on recognition and the same elaboration of aspiration.
What is the overt as well as the potential meaning of rights-based
individualism-or, at least, what is one possible theorization of such
meaning? I have in mind especially the right to life, the right to a full
range of expression, the right to be let alone, the right to ownership,
and the right to equal citizenship in a constitutional representative

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 88

democracy. To begin with, let us look at the overt meaning of the

acknowledgment and protection of such rights, for each individual
agains t the rest where need be, and with the rest where possible; and
for all against government, where need be.
Anything I say here is either familiar or fragmentary. I think that

the heart of the matter is found in the speeches made at Putney by

the spokesman for the so-called Levellers, and in writings by other
Levellers like Lilburne and Overton. In a famous but not perhaps
sufficiently appreciated sentence, Colonel Rainborough says, "For
really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live,
as the greatest he. "2 What meanings are lodged here? Everyone equally
has a life to live. To live a life, a person 's personal and political rights
must be acknowledged and protected. Living a life does not neces
sarily mean that one will say or do great things, but rather than one
will say and do one's own things, or be like the rest only after one
has taken some thought. What one claims for oneself one must con
cede to the rest: to talk of rights at all is to talk of the same rights
for all, and everywhere. The point of specifically political rights is not
to use them in order to press class advantage but to attain a moral
status-that of self-governance-that every individual deserves just
by being. (The Levellers thus purge democracy of passion for lev
elling, the grossness of demotic resentment. ) Depending on circum
stances, one will be entitled to press one's own claim to this or that
right, or will feel compelled to assert a claim in behalf of others who
may be denied this or that right. There will be mutual recognition,
but there need not be very much mutuality beyond that. The great
duties th:;t correspond to the great rights are largely abstentionist in
nature: to forbear from transgression-though help to the desperate
is always obligatory. Above all, the principle is to tolerate others who
though different are not other, no matter how foreign.
A sense of life certainly inheres in the theory and practice of rights .
The individualism of personal and political rights is a sense of life. It
is best described in negatives, just as its morality is largely negative.
There is no good life, only lives that are not bad. The mere absence
of oppression and degradation is sweet. A person's equal acceptance
by the rest removes the heavy weight of inferiority, contempt, in
visibility . That too is sweet. The weakening of traditional enclosure
in status, group , class, locality, ethnicity, race-the whole suffocating
network of ascribed artificial, or biological but culturally exaggerated,
identity opens life up, at least a bit. The culture of individual rights
has lightness of being; free being is light. It seems insubstantial and

Democratic Indiv iduality and the Meaning of Rights

1 89

lacking in positivity. Yet all its negativity, all its avoidances and
absences and abstentions, are a life, and a life that it takes patient eyes
to see, and a new sense of beauty to admire. The life that is not the
good life is good in itself. However, can something even richer come
ou t of it?
The Emersonian writers think so . More than England itself, North
America inherited the Levellers. The New World can be the place
for the sense of life intrinsic to the indivi dualism of rights to develop
itself, despite the constant danger of forfeiture to economic individ
ualism.
I admit that in the account that I am about to give I make the Emer
sonians more explicit in their attention to the democratic culture of
rights than the surface of their writing usually indicates they are. I
also schematize, and j ust by doing that, offend against their own
beliefs about proper literary procedure. But I am persuaded that we
make a good overall sense of the profoundest elements in these writers
when we see them attentive to the democratic culture of rights and
struggling to raise it to a more intense awareness of itself and its best
possibilities. So, to put it crudely perhaps, the work of Emerson,
Thoreau, and Whitman seeks to draw more meaning from the dem
ocratic culture of rights . The life lived around them gives a fair amount
of evidence that people know the meaning of their rights. But the
realization is very imperfect, very impure.
The work of E merson, Thoreau, and Whitman seeks to suggest
that, to begin with, living a life should mean more: a life should gain
in definition; it should be more assertive or expressive. The regime of
habit or custom or convention should be shaken; sleep should be
"thrown off. " The move should not be from feeling oneself as ill
defined to an acceptance of ascribed identity, but from feeling that
one has unused powers to an acceptance of experiment. Next, the
Emersonians, especially Thoreau, are saying that the readiness to
assert a claim in behalf of others who are denied some crucial right
should convert itself into the readiness to resist political power when
it oppresses others, even when oneself and many others like oneself
are safe and free. The sense of indirect responsibility is as important
as the sense of direct responsibility. And the real grievances of others
must be felt as real, must be felt as if they were one's own. Last,
Emersonians are suggesting that toleration be transformed into an
active generosity of perception, into a receptivity or responsiveness that
aims to take in on its own terms what presents itself; or, if need be,

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 90

on better terms than the person or creature or thing is already claiming

for itself. Put schematically, we may say that the aspiration to a more
fully achieved democratic individuality has three components : posi
tive, negative, and impersonal. These terms do not matter. What
matters is to see that Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman undertake a
complex conceptualization and that its essence is to draw out of the
individualism of personal and political rights a deeper meaning that
is there, awaiting its utterance. The formulation will help to move
in a faithful direction the life that already gives evidence of some
deeper meaning . One possible completion or perfection of rights
based individualism is thus democratic individuality, the life of ex
pression, resistance, and responsiveness, in a constitutional represen
tative democracy. Democratic individuality is what democracy is for.
I think that it is fair to say that the initial component is self-assertion
or self-expression: what Emerson in his most famous essay calls self
reliance. It is the initial component in the sense that any individualism
starts with oneself and with what one means to do, and in the sense
that any society, even a rights-based democracy, tends to be too much
for individuals, tends to induce and reward conformity. There is thus
a tinge of resistance in expression, something negative in the positive.
But because one's commitment to expressing oneself is accompanied
by a recognition of everyone else's right to do the same, there is not
supposed to be any tinge of insolence. There is all the difference in
the world between a culture of expressiveness, in which class strat
ification standardizes expression for each group, ranks the groups,
permits eccentricity for a few inside the few, and encourages the few
as a group to use the rest as resources for their own group stylization,
and a culture of expressiveness in which democratic respect frames,
limits, and inspires self-assertion. Equal rights avoid the kinship to
privilege that unequal rights have.
Relatedly, democratic self-assertion is not conceptualized in the
Emersonian tradition in a subj ectivist way. The stark dualism of ego
and other that we associate with the teaching of Fichte and S timer,
and with the antagonism posited by Hegel between lord and bonds
man, is not part of the mentality of democratic individuality. On the
contrary, the developed individuality of one would not be a threat
to others; nor would it quite be an individuality compensatory to
the different individuality of others, in either the Aristotelian or the
Rawlsian sense. Rather, the concurrence of developed individualities
would be more like a riot of colors, a field of wild flowers, or the

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191

spangled garment of uncertain taste t o which Plato likened democratic

culture. Neither the psychology of subjective scarcity nor the aes
thetics of formal composition would enable the observer to encompass
the scene.
Some of the sentiments of democratic self-assertion or self-reliance,
as observed and theorized by the Emersonians, and that still matter,
can be clustered as follows:
(1) the wish to be different; the wish to be unique; the wish to go
off in one's own direction; the wish to experiment, to wander, to
float;
(2) the wish to be let alone; the wish to be uninvolved in somebody
else's game; the wish to be unobserved; the wish to be mysterious,
to have secrets, to be thought undefined;
(3) the wish to be unbeholden; the wish to own oneself;
(4) the wish to think, j udge, and interpret for oneself;
(5) the wish to feel real, not dazed; the wish to live, not play j ust
one lifelong role o r perform just one lifelong function;
(6) the wish to go to one' s limit; the wish to score, to accumulate
heterogenous experiences;
(7) the wish to shape one's life, but not into a well-shaped story,
or a well-made work of art; the wish to be fluid, not substantial;
(8) the wish to find oneself, to find the "real me" ; to be oneself
rather than somebody else's idea of that self; the wish to be reborn
as oneself
These are some of the sentiments that pervade the writings of the
Emersonians as they strive to understand American social reality and
to coax it further in its own direction. The premise is that if there is
strain in trying to become an individual, there is at least as much
strain in trying not to become one, in trying, instead, to conform.
Strain for strain, there is far more dignity in becoming individual.
Yet such dignity is not without cost. There is the cost to the indi
vidual, which is paid in loneliness of the Calvinist sort, and in a
frequent sense that one is unreal to oneself, that one lacks a continous
sense of existing because one is inclined to rej ect ascribed artificial
identity and hence must often improvise without sponsorship. So
cially sanctified habit is not always or fully available to thicken one's
ego. There is also a cost to the theoretical observers. The secret worm
that gnaws at the Emersonians is not respect for an aristocratic culture
or for classical virture, but misanthropy. They feel an irritation bred
of disappointment with their fellows that sometimes turns into con
tempt. They see democratic individuals lapsing into economic indi-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

1 92

viduals . The underside of the Emersonians ' sense of democratic

potentiality is a steady censure, a dislike, almost. But of course these
writers are and must be discontented with themselves. They too lapse,
if not into economic individualism. They lapse into distraction. Their
misanthropy is forgivable as a form of self-doubt. Thoreau says, in
Walden, "I never knew, and shall never know, a worse man than
myself. "3
For all the salience in the Emersonians of the theme of becoming
an individual self, leading a self-assertive or self-expressive life, my
j udgment is that this component is not the main one. It may seem
odd to give it a subordinate place-after all, what is any kind of
idealization of individualism but an instigation to become different,
to become an individual by one's own definition? Nevertheless, it is
possible to read the Emersonians as pointing beyond positive indi
viduality to states of being-they may be only moments or episodes
in a life-in which concern for one's project gives way to concern
for others in the two special modes to which I have already referred:
resistance in behalf of others when they are denied some right and
are oppressed; and responsiveness to everything outside oneself.
It may be that the most important reason for cultivating a positive
individuality is to effect a break with habit, convention, and custom,
all of which work to condition us to accept the oppression of others,
on the one hand, and to respond in an impoverished manner to dif
ference, on the other hand. Democratic individuality is not egotism;
its highest purpose is to establish a new sort of connectedness, but
one that bears little relation to communitarianism in a strict sense or
in any loose sense. There are ways of working together by working
apart. One must be an individual, must presume to be a self that is
no mere resultant of all that has happened to one, if one is to be
capable of either disinterested protest or a poetical or philosophical
openness to reality. Of course there are many ways of taking others
seriously besides the way of democratic individuality; but democratic
individuality is one way . Its excellence consists in the refusal to confine
concern to those it is easy to care about: oneself, and those like one,
or close to one, or dear to one. A radical and secularized reading of
the Gospels is thus intrinsic to the components of democratic indi
viduality that transcend one's positive project. The story of the good
Sama ritan4 and the precept that the God we should imitate is the God
who " maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the j ust and on the unjust"5 are quintessential in the teachings
of the Emersonians.

Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights

1 93

Thoreau's great essay on civil disobedience is the central text con

cerning the theme of resistance in behalf of others. I do not wish to
repeat what I have said on other occasions about his doctrine of
negative individuality. 6 I only note that Thoreau's whole sense of the
need to resist in behalf of others supposes that one is not oppressed.
The calculation is that when one's personal and political rights are
safe, one should give little thought to what society can do to further
one's prosperity or well-being, material or spiritual. The latter is one's
own business only. One will not look to society for help in living.
It follows that when a dissident presses claims, they must be to basic
rights that are denied others. The rights anyone has , others must
have. That is democracy. Thoreau insists on obliging those who are
safe to risk something-not very much: as much as the good Sa
maritan-for those who are denied. Forbearance from transgression
is normally the greatest of all sorts of duty; but some samaritanism
is also obligatory. Thoreau, however, extends the sense of re
sponsibility . After all, though he wrote an essay called "Slavery
in Massachusetts, " there was no slavery in Massachusetts. But
Massachusetts' membership in the Union helped to sustain slavery;
and Thoreau' s membership in Massachusetts helped to sustain Mas
sachusetts . He therefore refused to pay the most general tax, the head
tax; he went to j ail, prepared to stay, but was released the next day
when someone interfered and paid his tax. But Thoreau was prepared
to stay; he felt responsible.
The act, which had no influence in its time, has had great influence
ever since. What matters, in any case, is not its actual influence, but
its possible influence, its meanings. Its first meaning is that the notion
of personal responsibility is indispensable to resistance in behalf of
others . When Althusser and Foucault, for example, suggest that the
sense of responsibility is imaginary and works only to preserve a
radically unequal distribution of power and wealth, they are thinking
mainly of the impact of the idea of responsibility on the mentality of
the disadvantaged. Resistance in their own behalf would be facilitated
by rejection of this idea: they are victims and must develop the sol
idarity of victims . Victims must not blame themselves or hold them
selves responsible for their condition. One trouble that I see is that
this critique of responsibility can also excuse the privileged. Then
too, it can be interpreted as the contribution made by two generous
spirits who were trying to help others press their claim for the rights
or, at least, the p ower and wealth-that they were denied. I think,
however, that the charity of Althusser and Foucault is exorbitant.

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Even if their doctrine may energize struggle, it teaches people to think

of themselves as material or as animals. For that reason, the struggle
is guaranteed to produce inhuman effects. Thoreau' s idea of respon
sibility is more efficacious for good, even if it may not be directly
efficacious, or very efficacious at all.
The further meaning of Thoreau' s act implies an immense indi
vidual importance. Thoreau's stance is that of a person who only
episodically departs from the state of nature, which is a state of living
by one's conscientious understanding of the law of nature, basic mo
rality, the morality that culminates in personal and political rights for
all. He gives his assent (never a full consent) , he complies when he
has to, as long as what government does is congruent with basic
morality. So often it is not. When it robs Mexico and keeps slaves it
is using democratic forms to eviscerate democracy. Resistance should
take the form of breaking the law, when the policies are atrocious,
because an individual must make a dramatic reversion to the state of
nature, to a politically unpledged situation-at least in some respects .
This takes the specific form of refusing to pay the most general tax,
which is the instrument and symbol of government as such.
In refusing, Thoreau may be said by us, who ponder his act and
the words by which he surrounded it, to disaffiliate, to chastise the
authorities, and to constitute himself as a parallel legislature, as a
"majority of one. " But the new law he lays down is the very law
that people profess but disregard. The lawbreaker becomes the up
holder of the law when the law is twisted to immoral purposes. If
good law is only a memorandum, as Emerson says, 7 the conscientious
lawbreaker will be, in reference to certain deeds and policies of gov
ernment, a memorandum to the custodians of the original memo
randum . The appeal in the act, Thoreau says, is an appeal "from them
to themselves . " 8 From them in a forgetful condition, to themselves
when they can be brought to remember, if reproached and allowed
to witness the punishment entailed by the free act of the lawbreaker.
Emerson said of Thoreau : "It cost him nothing to say No; indeed he
found it much easier than to say Yes . "9 But that may be true of
anyone who appreciates the meaning of rights and insists that one is
truly being an individual when one acts in behalf of those denied
them. To borrow from Wallace Stevens:
under every no
Lay a passion for yes that had never been broken. 10
But I grant that even Thoreau's Yes is suspicious of the positive
component of individuality. In a sentence in Walden that Foucault

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cou ld almost have written , he says : "Do not seek so anxiou sly to be
deve lop ed, to subj ect yourself to many influences to be play ed on; it
"
is all dissipa tion. 1 1
We can say, in sum, that Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman show
a valuable diversity concerning the proper nature of self-assertion or
self-expression; and that Thoreau, much more than the other two,
makes resistance an essential component of democratic individuality.
But on the third component in our scheme, they converge. They all
think that the fruition of democratic individuality is the achievement
of a new relation to reality, what Emerson in his first book, Nature,
embarrassingly calls "an original relation to the universe. " 12 We can
also call it a poetical or philosophical relation to reality, to both human
and nonhuman reality. The works of all three writers are dominated
by the effort to bestow attention, especially on what tends to be taken
for granted, or overlooked, or thought unfit or unworthy. Further,
when we examine the consummatory passages in the three writers,
we find a rapturous contemplation of all existence. 13 I grant that this
rapture is sometimes marred by a still-too-religious proclivity to com
prehend all phenomena as making up a totality and see them as per
meated by something like a divine intelligence. But we can sever the
words from their theological or metaphysical preconceptions without
violating them. We simply continue the process of secularization of
theological and metaphysical insight that the Emersonians did so
much to advance. Any of us committed to democratic individuality
will want to think with their ecstatic words, even though on our own
terms, because they are the best words, in and out of context.
At the same time it is well to recognize that not only is there a
romantic, post-Enlightenment theology or metaphysics in the Emer
sonians, there are also significant traces of an earlier Protestantism .
The Emersonians work i n their own manner with the idea that the
highest relationship is an unmediated relationship between each in
dividual and the most important thing, which must be nonsocial and
which includes the nonhuman. For the Emersonians it is not the
inscrutable God of Luther and Calvin that is the most important thing;
rather, things are the most important thing, things in their beauty,
the impulsive succession of human and natural phenomena as they
present themselves . The necessary supposition is that a man or woman
can become enough of an individual to be able in certain recurrent
moods or moments, to imagine that he or she is entitled to consider
all immediate and local ties as less than final and venture to marry
the world. I exist for nothing less than the world. I exist, and every-

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thing else exists . I define myself as existing in the face of everything

else. When I am my best self, nothing social, not even intimate or
domestic love, can be allowed to interpose itself as supreme. A de
liberate self-possession, though only fitful, is needed to fight off the
inevitable presence of prejudice, conventionality, acquired distaste,
and reflexive disgust that close and enclose one, that impede recep
tivity or responsiveness . In Protestantism one did not dare to equate
oneself to the most important thing . Similarly in the thought of the
Emersonians, the responsive individual, in her or his most concen
trated impersonal moments or moods, knows eagerly that she or he
is not equal to the succession of things that present themselves for
contemplative attention. It is not that one is dwarfed by the relation
ship, it is that one wants to lose oneself in admiration or love or
wonder or gratitude. These feelings are the completion or perfection
of the tolerance intrinsic to rights-based individualism.
Only a self that is possessed can be truly lost; and it is gained in
order to be lost . The consummation of democratic individuality is
therefore a passage beyond self-concern. In one of his descriptions of
ecstatic contemplation, Emerson says (of course embarrassingly) : " all
mean egotism vanishes . I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing;
I see all . "14 The Emersonians take to heart a hidden lesson of Plato's
parable of the cave, namely, that one can see, one can see things as
they are in their true phenomenal beauty instead of their falsely per
ceived shadowy simulacra, one can see the actual sun, only when one
has lost sight of one's social self. Scattered throughout the works of
Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are renderings of the ecstatic state.
But short of the ecstatic state, their more sober and continuous at
tention is lighted by an unparalleled receptivity or responsiveness .
A particularly important text, i n this regard, i s Emerson's essay,
"Art, " from Essays: First Series. He says: "it has been the office of
art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty,
but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single
traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. "15 The passion of the
Emersonians-already present in the great 1 8 1 6 essay " On Imita
tion, " by the English romantic democrat, William Hazlitt16-is to see
beauty in what is not intended or designed to be beautiful. A person,
a creature, a thing in nature, is what it is, or does what it does; it
does not aim at being beautiful. It may even be plain or ugly, and
even think (when it can think) that it is ugly. But if one attends,
much awaits a receptive eye that does not register on a conventional
eye. It may be a matter of beholding the surface of someone or

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something that is making its indeliberate plea to be perceived, to be

perceived as beautiful, or at least as worthy of perception . Or it may
be a matter of empathic interpretation: such interpretation is also a
mode of attention; and it is not creative, it is only patient.
The passion of the Emersonians is to teach us to look at what is
not art with an artist's eye and interpret what is not art with an artist's
energy. The function of artworks is to train the nonartist's eye and
sensibility ; to make each individual's relation to reality like that of
the painter or the poet or novelist. The function of artworks is to be
surpassed because of the perceptual influences they radiate. The
greater beauty is found in reality, not in artworks . Truth is beauty .
The greater beauty resides in what does not try to be beautiful. It
resides in the surface or in the depths of each person or creature or
thing.
In one of his letters Keats said that the imagination is like Adam's
dream: "he awoke and found it truth. "17 One meaning of this famous
passage is that when we awaken, that is, when we throw off the sleep
of convention, we see as for the first time. What we see is what is
around us. The purpose of the artist's imagination is to awaken us,
not to a literally new reality but to reality j ust as it is, and to see it
just as it is, and thus to see it as answering to the imagination, and
indeed exceeding its expectations. As Keats says in another letter, "I
live in the eye; and my imagination, surpassed, is at rest. " 1 8 Art is
not the highest expression in life. The highest art is unpremeditated.
Life itself is the highest art. Life need not be beautiful to be beautiful.
The artwork is indispensable, but it is only instrumental . It is instru
mental to democratic aestheticism. And democratic aestheticism takes
things as it finds them; it is the constant disposition to give each
person or creature or thing, j ust as it is, its due, its rights, in the
fullest sense. Each is to try to do what Whitman says the great poet
actually does : "He bestows on every object its fit proportions neither
more nor less. " 1 9 Democratic aestheticism is the culmination of dem
ocratic j ustice. The attempted rupture with social enclosure redeems
the social, and everything else besides . The democratic individual
most truly is, in Whitman's phrase about the greatest poet, the " com
plete lover. " 20 The complete lover aims not at objectivity, but at a
mobile and multiple perspectivism. Such acceptance does not include
an acceptance of inj ustice. If democratic aestheticism inclines toward
a universal absolution, a sense of "universal innocence, " in Thoreau's
words, that does not mean that denial of rights can ever be allowed. 2 1
Democratic aestheticism presupposes that everyone is already in-

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eluded or on the way to being so. The commitment to equal rights,

to say it again, frames, limits, and inspires every component of in
dividuality .
In sum, the aspiration to greater expressiveness, resistance, and
responsiveness is the theory of democratic individuality . The theo
rized aim of greater expressiveness is to come to know oneself, to
get to know who one is; but especially to know who one isn't, to
know that one is not merely a role or function or ascribed identity,
while leaving perpetually unmeasured the possibilities of self
expression. The aim is not necessarily to live more fully or more
intensely, but rather to live more honestly, as oneself rather than in
"endless imitation. " The aim of greater resistance is to avoid involve
ment in or indifference to the cruelties that come from thoughtless
ness, routine, or conformity; or from tribalism; or from the herd
mentality with its tendency to trample or stampede. The aim of
greater receptivity is to lose oneself in appreciation and admiration,
or in empathy, and thus to allow things to be as they must be or
to appear at their best. Taken together, these desiderated aspects of
democratic individuality point to the democratization of cultivated
inwardness, to a richer consciousness and a more deliberate self
consciousness for all.
When we ponder what the Emersonians are saying, we gain, in
addition to everything else, a perspective on the anti-individualist
ideals that have been pressed so urgently in recent years . From this
perspective these ideals, whether the lifo of continuous citizenship or
membership in a tight community or membership in a well-defined
group vis-a-vis other groups or a life of collectivized and socialized
self-realization, seem to share a common lamentable essence. Ab
stractly considered, they signify an impoverishment of inwardness,
of consciousness and self-consciousness. Despite important differ
ences between them, and also between the several statements of each
of them, they all theorize in the direction of making people more
shallow. It may even be that the theorists feel that ordinary persons
can never be anything but shallow, and hope to enlist them in patterns
of life and action that would have the effect of making them do things
that are more interesting and aesthetically compelling than what they
do when on their own more, when they are individuals. There is a
strong anti-individualist wish that people be taken care of in every
sense.
The upshot of anti-individualism could be an increased coherence

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in society, and perhaps an even more well-defined individuation on

the part of people; but these results would be hollow. Full-bodied
characters, enacting a well-made story, whether in novels or in life,
are actually those who forget the difference between themselves and
what they do: the more full-bodied, the more mechanical. They are
the ones who are most rehearsed, who remember their lines best,
who are most theatrical. Enriched inwardness is not likely to make
society more shapely, intelligible, or manifestly splendid. It may and
does induce a greater lightness, tentativeness, irony, distance, play
fulness, uncertainty, awkwardness, looseness . The anti-individualist
ideals that I have mentioned seem to suggest that what is done, what
is accomplished, matters more than the doer; that the political and
social labor or the moral or aesthetic level of the deed matters more
than the relation between the individual and the labor to be achieved
or the deed to be done. The self-loss that the theorists of anti
individualist ideals seek is losing oneself in what is to be done, losing
oneselfin the effort to be as adequate as possible. The self-loss present
in the third and highest component of democratic individuality, the
idea of receptivity or responsiveness, is losing oneself in the effort to
let everything that presents itself to a person have its being without
the distortions that the egotism of individual or group or species
would inflict on it. These are two divergent types of self-loss or self
forgetting . That of anti-individualism proceeds from a diminished
inwardness; that of democratic individuality from an enhanced in
wardness.
In what I say I here am gu fded by Henry James, whose reflections
on the contrast of the New World and the Old are unsurpassed. For
our purposes this contrast is roughly equivalent to that between dem
ocratic individuality and recent anti-individualism. In a passage from
his autobiographical writing, The Middle Years, James compares living
in what he calls the " thickness " of European class society as one raised
in it with observing it as a sympathetic American raised in the seeming
shapelessness and unrootedness of the United S tates . 22 He knows he
lost much in not being habituated; but his own upbringing had pre
pared him to enter sympathetically into the strange and foreign.
American lightness of being allowed his mind "the ideal play of
reflection, conclusion, comparison" when it encountered a different
and much heavier social order. But he suggests that to be raised, as
he was not, in such a social order is to be "immersed, " and thus to
become less receptive to what is different, to what is outside. To be
im mersed in a social order is to be unable to see, with Emerson, that

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one is "immersed in beauty. " Even in regard to a person's own New

World society, living socially "immersed" exacts the penalties of
diminished everyday inwardness that living a less defined and ascribed
life tends to avoid. James's reflections on the greater possibilities of
inwardness refer not only to himself as an artist and thinker but also
to ordinary persons in their New World actuality.
It seems to me that the only way the theorists of anti-individualism
can neutralize the charge that they encourage diminished inwardness
is to show the truth of the view that expanded consciousness is nec
essarily an expanded bondage; that the work of introspection is merely
self-policing; that honestly pursuing one's genuine responses to things
is simply discovering the unrecognized effects of colonization, of
suggestions planted in oneself by one or another power technique;
that, in short, the more one takes in, the more one is taken in. Ac
cording to Foucault's conceptualization, the inwardness of democratic
individuality is merely and perniciously the type of individualism that
is fabricated by the "pastoral" power of the state, as well as by the
disciplinary power inherent in all lesser sectors. 23 At best, it is the
mere set of effects inexorably produced by culturally specific and
altogether transpersonal rules, as if all activity were an involuntary
adherence to recipes. 24 Can all this really be proven? I think this is
mostly a tactical reductiveness useful for certain kinds of (eventually
self-defeating) radicalism.
I do not deny that there is a place, even on individualist grounds, for
anti-individualist ideals. They are valuable when theorized in full
awareness that in a democratically individualist culture these ideals
are and will be best realized only in temporary or local forms . When
we see them actually practiced in the United States, we see that they
already endure such an individualist reworking. First, the ideal of
continuous involvement in the political life of a sovereign entity gives
way to episodes of direct involvement in movements, or to local and
intermittent participation in such important but unsovereign fo rums
as party caucuses, town meetings, and institutions and work places
of every sort. Second, the ideal of permanent and bounded com
munity gives way to temporary, voluntary, and quite intense expe
riences of staying together for a while and then breaking up. Third,
the ideal of completing or perfecting a person's identity in an armed
group that is encouraged to be proud of its difference from other
groups and ready (perhaps eager) to assert and express itself in relation
to other groups and preferably at their expense, gives way to a local

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or partisan pride that is quite compatible with the sense that playing
is itself at least as important as prevailing. Fourth, the ideal of publicly
defined and sustained mutual self-realization that promises that one
will become a completed person living with other completed persons,
and that all will carry on the good life as if life were a lovely ceremony
and each a flawless performer in it, gives way to private and porous
associations in which one gives and takes, and never dreams (that is,
only dreams) of being finished. Such individualist, hence limited or
temporary enactments of anti-individualist ideals, are compensations
for and frequently attractive emanations of lives that are-at least, to
some noteworthy degree-democratically individualist.
I do not deny that a person sympathetic to the theory of democratic
individuality must retain a concept of citizenship that is more than
episodic, a concept of society that attends to long-lasting ties, and a
concept of a people that is more than an accidental aggregation (even
though it is that, too) . (I find no need to accommodate the ideal of
mutual self-realization as continuous and societywide. ) But the theory
not only sponsors the individualist conversion of ideals into tempo
rary and local forms, it suggests an individualist reworking of the
concepts of citizenship, society, and people. The good citizen is
watchful and independent, though not routinely active. Society
works, to an unusual degree, by means of consent and explicitness
rather than because of involuntary or unarticulated ties . The people
(We, the People) are connected by choice, rather than by blood, faith,
or the past.
But the anti-individualist versions of these continuous and society
wide ideals must turn bad. If we consider them not only abstractly
but as realized, we can imagine terrible results besides the diminished
inwardness to which I have referred. Think first of the impact on
rights . In their common disdain for rights, many anti-individualist
theorists ignore the danger that docility must increase when individ
uals stop thinking of themselves as entitled to those fences that protect
them from oppression, including the soft oppression that comes from
high-minded regulations issuing from a confident and careles sly su
pervised executive power. The danger does not end there. Even when
a particular theorist of these ideals wants to retain the notion of per
sonal rights, they are seen as instrumental to a socially defined pur
pose. That means that one or another right may be abridged or diluted
unless it is clear that the tendency of its use is socially beneficial. What
is thought socially beneficial is always some seemingly substantial
purpose that may turn out, after a while, to be a good deal less than

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substantial. Individuals are to be held accountable for the use they

make of their rights. All four anti-individualist ideals incline in the
direction of the doctrine that Mill powerfully attacks as "monstrous"
in chapter four of On Liberty: namely, the idea of "social rights"
according to which, "it is the absolute social right of every individual,
that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he
ought . . . The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in
each other's moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be
defined by each claimant according to his own standard. "25 The very
notion of having a right is thereby denatured. An oppressive sociality
must ensue. Further, as I have tried to show, the indispensable core
of democratic individuality is undone, and the aspiration itself extin
guished-a cost that anti-individualist theorists do not tally.
Nevertheless, if they are not obliged to tally the cost to the dem
ocratic individualist aspiration when they condemn the idea of rights,
such theorists are obliged to worry about the likely results of the
realization of their ideals in a continuous and societywide manner.
These anti-individualist ideals not only wash away the idea of human
dignity that is contained in the theory and practice of personal and
political rights even without the enhancement of that idea attempted
by the democratic-individualist theorists. The potentialities harbored
in anti-individualist ideals, if realized, would spell the end of those
ideals themselves, not j ust of rights-based individualism and demo
cratic individuality.
I detect in anti-individualist ideals a capacity to do the following.
They can make people much more barbarous than we already are.
This is latent in the ideals of continuous citizenship and group identity .
They can make them more infantile. This is latent in the ideal of tight
community, in the ideal of the group which is subconsciously con
ceived as a natural and discrete substance or a peculiar plant that grows
only in its native soil, and in the ideal of socialized self-realization
which always implies gentle superintendence by the political power.
They can make them much more idolatrous . This is latent in all four
ideals because they all welcome closure and certainty and set narrow
limits on the restlessness of consciousness. But if people become even
more barbarous, infantile, and idolatrous than they-we-already
are, then think how yet more virulent many of the worst tendencies
of modern life become: war, systemic cruelty, religious zeal, bigotry,
nationalism, xenophobia, and fascism. The priority of the good over
the right is the priority of the wrong over the right.

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I see in all these ideals nothing so much as an inadvertent collusion

with everything in modern life that leads to the growth of the power
of the state. In that growth even anti-individualist ideals would wither
or grow cancerous. If we cannot even ask any theorist to consider
that the Emersonian writers may have something to teach, and if we
cannot even ask anti-rights theorists to reconsider the idea of human
dignity lodged in the theory and practice of individual rights, we can
at least ask the critics of individualism to think again about the dangers
of statism and the way in which their ideals may contribute to it.
Statism must grow with the growth of belief in the prestige of
political life, even if that belief is centered in participation in the act
of legislative deliberation rather than in holding administrative office.
The results of deliberation need to be carried out, and can be carried
out, only administratively. Statism must grow with the belief in the
tight community, because a tight community cannot be dissociated
from a pervasive censorial authority needed to insure adherence and
to inhibit deviance. Statism must grow with the growth of belief in
the supremacy of group identity because the societywide group is the
armed group possessed of fantasy proj ects of assertion and expression,
of domination, of permanent enmity, of war and its waste. Statism
must grow with the growth of belief in socialized self-realization
because this sort of self-realization is almost indistinguishable from
therapeutic and paternalist condescension to ordinary persons who
are secretly thou ght by theorists to be no better than a plebs . Who
but the state can ultimately administer, or at least supervise, thera
peutic and paternalist disciplines to a whole society, even though these
disciplines are decentralized? I think that rights-based individualism
provides the best perspective from which to condemn statism, and
also to detect in seemingly nonstatist or even overtly antistatist ideals
a terrible statist latency. Yet not only does statism imperil human
dignity as conceived in rights-based individualism, and altogether
block the Emersonian conception of democratic individuality, it im
perils everything minimally decent or tolerable.
One attractive aspect of democratic individuality is that it is not a
continuous and societywide ideal in the usual sense. Not only may
it be in any of its components an episodic achievement, it is also not
striven for by state action, by the content of laws and social policies.
It happens as it happens because of the impersonally educative force
of political and legal procedures and processes, and because of the
general spirit that emerges over time from an individual and govern-

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mental commitment to rights that mostly need only forbearance,

restraint, and caution to exist.
I do not mean to be intransigent. I concede that the terrible features
of modern life are not what they are because of recent anti
individualist idealisms. Rather, the anti-individualist theorists have
been insufficiently attentive to the possibility that their studied anti
individualism lessens their ability to protest and resist these features,
or to do so consistently. I also concede that it is plausible to hold that
some terrible features of modern life seem to come from some type
of individualism, whether economic individualism or another. We
witness and experience such things as moronic selfishness ; social ne
glect; varieties of alienation such as disquiet, rage, loneliness, all of
which may come from the need or the opportunity to make things
up (including an identity) as one goes along in an individualist culture;
and anomie (that is, moral confusion amid unprecedented powers that
often become new sources of fragility, and unprecedented choices
that often become dilemmas or aporias) . Anti-individualist ideals are
meant to mitigate or end these troubles . But the potential cost is
intolerably high. Nothing is worse than the horrors that do or would
come from the unqualified prestige of participation in sovereign pol
itics, the societywide bond of community, the solidarity of the armed
group, and the proj ect of socialized self-realization. They are horrors
in themselves and are auxiliaries to the further horrors of statism.
The remedies for the troubles must be found, at least in any demo
cratic setting, within rights-based individualism and the aspiration to
democratic individuality.
Despite all the troubles, and whatever their sources, we should
perceive the evidences of democratic individuality, especially in the
United States . Some were seen by the Emersonians and can still be
seen by us; others we see a century and a half later. In them may be
found help for the troubles-unless one thinks, as some do, that these
evidences are themselves evidences of troubles . They are also good
as such. Democratic individuality would be utopianism rather than
an aspiration, unless the lives lived in the democratic culture of rights
already showed evidences of individualist assertion or expression,
individualist resistance in behalf of others , and individualist receptiv
ity or responsiveness. It is a matter of our noticing. What can be
noticed?
Concerning assertion or expression . There are the characteristic Amer
ican explorations of nature, on the one hand, and the psyche, on the

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other. Of course European culture in general sponsors these explo

rations, but, as Tocqueville and D. H. Lawrence have said, there is
a peculiar American intensity in dealing with the obduracy and splen
dor of nature and psyche that derives from a culture that is funda
mentally not social in the Old World sense and that therefore drives
many to explore the nonhuman other outside oneself and the non
social other inside oneself. 26 The human is not other, but nature and
psyche are. Democratic individuality, as an actual though incomplete
condition, expects the nonhuman or nonsocial to be strange and wres
tles with it as an equal. Destructiveness and self-destructiveness may
inhere in such extremism; but so does heroism. And if there is strug
gle, there is always the appetite for reconciliation. Other evidences
of the assertive or expressive life include the stylistic innovation and
creative social adaptability of ordinary persons; an easy ability to
improvise temporary structures of governance when a new and un
governed situation calls for them; and the growth of movements that
try to democratize or make constitutional all human relations, with
the engendering of claims for equal recognition of the rights of women,
ethnic and racial minorities, homosexuals, handicapped people, pris
oners, and so on, and not j ust for privileges or leniency. The group
tendency aspires to the dissolution of the group, of ascribed categorical
identity, not merely to the effacement of stigma. There is also prin
cipled miscegenation; there are many "melting-pot" phenomena.
Concerning resistance. Constant evidences of the suspicion of polit
ical, and other, authority permeate A merican manners and reflexes.
There is widespread attentiveness to official lawlessness and impa
tience with official secrecy, withholding, and distortion of the truth.
There are the great movements of protest and civil disobedience,
either in behalf of rights denied others or in behalf of the integrity of
the Constitution itself.
Concerning receptivity or responsiveness . There are numerous evi
dences of the ethic of the open road (to use Whitman's phrase) , of
openness to experience. Intermittently displayed is a readiness to con
vert tolerance into recognition; to admire and appreciate, especially
that which may be overlooked or despised; to acknowledge that one
is not the only real thing in the world, and that others are j ust as real
to themselves . If an individual's knowledge can only go a little way
into others , the sense of their equal reality can nevertheless be very
deep . The effort to live outside oneself, to lend oneself to the ac
knowledgment of other persons, to creatures, and things, exists and
is underwritten by the sense that one is multiple, various, full of

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

206

contradictions, full of moods that "do not believe in each other. "27
The steadiness of such an effort may then crystallize in moments of
wonder at the mere fact of the abundance of phenomena. American
life shows evidences of such a poetical or philosophical relation to
reality in its indefatigable capacity to detach a particular from the flow
and accord it solicitude or celebrity or admiration and appreciation,
if only for an instant.
It seems to me that the democratic individualist life of assertion or
expression, resistance, and receptivity or responsiveness is more likely
to avoid some of the most terrible possibilities of modern life and to
exploit some of the good ones . This life is the best preparation for
learning to endure both the shocks and pleasures of modernity-and
of postmodernity, if there is such a condition. The more the aspiration
to democratic individuality is realized, the better the preparation. It
is, and can become even more, a life of pleasures and occasional
ecstasies . But, let us admit, it is probably not a life of happiness, and
the pains eventually outweigh the pleasures . Perhaps, anyway, hap
piness has always been a foolish and dishonest ideal, a guarantee of
a theorist's bad faith and espousal of the wrong sort of aestheticism.
Perhaps anti-individualist idealisms are not purged of an attachment
to the standard of happiness. Perhaps the honor of the Emersonians
consists in reminding us that a happy life can only be an all too human
life, a herd life, a life of diminished inwardness, and therefore a life
of diminished dignity .

 E L E V E N

Pluralism and Self-Defense

NANCY L. ROSENBLUM

Liberal political thought has evolved in reaction to the harsh realities

of political arbitrariness and constraint; it has also been positively
inspired by visions of enlightenment, autonomy, and self-realization.
But political theory sometimes finds additional resources in our purely
intuitive responses to political life and to the ideas that j ustify it.
Among our most p owerful intuitive responses are romantic aversions
to everything cold and instrumental, impersonal and unlovely.
Today, these aversions are widespread. We have come to expect them,
especially in critics of liberalism.

Familiar A versions
The relation between liberalism and romanticism is a family one,
intimate and tense. When liberalism imposes its severe discipline of
legalism , it excites a romantic reaction. Romanticism is the return of
the repressed. For its part, romantic expressivism is only expansive
and provocative where there is resistance of a particular kind. It erupts
in opposition to prosaic utilitarianism; its nemesis is generality and
regularity, security of expectation. It is doubtful whether romanticism
can survive in any truly repressive medium or produce a constructive
politics of its own. Liberalism excites romantic aversions and then
asks us to disavow them, leaving other political theories to exploit
these discontents.
Mutual repulsion is not the whole story, though. I have argued
that liberalism can enlist romantic inclinations, if only it would attend
to them. 1 In generating a consensus about essential political principles
and institutions, liberalism can win the assent not only of irreconcil-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

208

able interests and moral opinions but also of conflicting tastes and
dispositions, including romantic ones . It can offer romantic sensibil
ities who feel that individuality and spontaneity have no place in
conventional liberal thought reasons to temper their most extravagant
claims, and to make their peace. There are good reasons to attend to
these claims , not least the fact that romanticism's familiar tendencies
individualist, aesthetic, and affective-can provide motivation and
fresh justifications for supporting liberal institutions in practice.
Nothing is more common among North American political the
orists today than an edgy, impatient attitude toward liberalism that
reflects this dynamic of romantic aversion and reconciliation. In this
chapter I want to draw attention to the romantic impulses at work
in recent communitarian and individualist thought . Contemporary
communitarianism, precisely because of its romantic sources, is more
tentative and less wholehearted in its antiliberalism than is often be
lieved. It constitutes a criticism from within. Moreover, both com
munitarian and individualist responses to liberalism suffer the same,
peculiar vulnerability: inclined to emphasize and exploit romantic
aversion, they overlook the element of liberalism that remains at
tractive, even compelling, for romantic sensibilities . They miss the
affinity between romanticism and liberal pluralism. In diagnosing
liberalism's deficiencies and in formulating their prescriptions , polit
ical theorists consistently ignore pluralism. They do not admit the
messy reality of pluralism-of shifting involvements among diverse
spheres-into their thinking about political freedom or into their
theories of the self.
The tendency of communitarians and individualists to disregard
pluralism is remarkable since two current themes in political
thought-methodological and moral contextualism, and propositions
about the "situated" or "constituted" self-could reasonably be ex
pected to draw attention to it as an inescapable reality. After all, the
context of moral and political practices is, on any description, plu
ralist; on any account of personal development, the self is formed
from an array of relations in diverse spheres. Ignoring pluralism cre
ates a weakness at the center of communitarian thought in particular,
since it promises to provide the strong dose of sociological realism
that liberal theory, with its fondness for abstract and universal prin
ciples, allegedly lacks. But the crucial vulnerability is that by
discounting pluralism it is impossible for individualists and com
munitarians to fulfill an essential part of their purpose-to speak

Pluralism and Self Defense

209

constructively to romantic discontents . For the romantic self finds its

chief self-defense in shifting involvements among plural spheres.
Is it a frivolous distraction, attending to romantic aversions to
liberalism? It has been said that these aversions are the luxury of the
politically privileged and that political theorists in the grip of romantic
longing carelessly disregard the elementary lessons of liberalism's
troubled history. Communitarians in particular are preoccupied with
what they see as liberalism's intolerable coldness and impersonality.
Because of this they have been charged with flirting heedlessly with
political danger: the politics that attract them, a politics of solidarity,
of belonging to a community that appears incomparably lovely to its
members, are threats to personal liberty. But in North America,
where both communitarian and individualist theories flourish today,
it is hard to see the peril, which is why my obj ections to contemporary
communitarianism and my milder differences with its individualist
counterpart are not grimly cautionary. Neither a radical reorientation
of commitment to public life, with its attendant threats to personal
liberty, nor antipolitical privatization appear imminent . Nor does
fascism, or religious civil war, or the awful anarchism of legalism in
disarray, which should cause political theorists to retrench and focus
on essentials : institutional securities against official power and the rule
of law.
Romantic aversion, in contrast, is not remote, certainly not for the
generation of theorists whose formative political experiences occurred
in North A merica in the 1 960s and 70s . It is perfectly appropriate to
want to recast political theory to meet the changing political reality
of some (admittedly few) societies as well as the changing needs
(including psychological needs) of successive generations . My argu
ment with communitarian and individualist critics ofliberalism is that
they do not understand present needs well enough or recognize the
resources liberalism can bring to them.
There should be nothing for orthodox liberals to object to in at
tempts to reconstruct liberal theory in a fashion sympathetic to ro
mantic sensibilities . Liberalism has always aimed at inclusiveness and
rested on eclectic foundations. The urgent problem has never been
choosing among justifications for limited government: fear, or natural
ri ghts, or the promise of self-realization . The challenge has been to
motivate people to pay attention to the political institutions and social
conditions without which none of these are conceivable. We do not
have to adopt romantic j ustifications for liberalism to acknowledge

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

210

characteristic romantic aversions and affinities a s potential resources

in support of one essential, pluralism, in particular, defined by di
versity, social openness, and the experience of shifting involvements
among separate public and private spheres .

The Conventional Accommodation of Liberalism and Romanticism :

Negative Liberty
Liberalism's dread of arbitrariness , its commitment to impersonal
government and the impartial rule of law, make self-expression and
arrant emotionalism anathema in public life. (That is the most obvious
reason for romantic antipathy to the public ethos of liberalism . ) But
in limiting the force and range of public power, liberalism secures a
free sphere of private life where romantic impulses and expressions
of personality reemerge. Historically, attempts to accommodate ro
manticism and liberalism have centered on negative liberty and the
separation of public and private spheres.
The most sanguine accounts see legalistic public life and expressive
private life as mutual insurance. On this view, romantic inclinations
and aversions are protected by the right to privacy, by being left
alone. For its part, romanticism is suspicious of public power, es
pecially of the demands of government presuming to inspire us or
call up s trong feelings-the most intolerable intrusion is the official
mobilization of emotions . In this way, romantic resistance is a force
for preserving the boundary between spheres . At the same time,
retirement from public life to cultivate one's own emotional and
aesthetic garden is said to provide a vital refreshment from the rig
orous discipline of tolerance and from utilitarian calculations . It re
stores us so that we can return again to the good but prosaic business
of maximizing public happiness . This picture of a mutually advan
tageous balance between public and private life (J. S . Mill's picture)
draws romanticism into the framework of classical liberal thought as
both beneficiary and guarantor of negative liberty and the boundary
between spheres . Richard Rorty' s reaffirmation of this division of
labor and spheres is the most recent: the intellectual's need for the
ineffable and sublime, a need to go beyond limits, is met on his own
time and in private life within the limits set by Mill's On Liberty. Its
complement, for Rorty, is pragmatic action to harmonize social pur
poses, carried on in the public arenas of liberal democracy. 2
Negative liberty has provided the framework for reconciling lib
eralism and romanticism, even apart from hopeful visions of har-

Pluralism and Seif-Defense

21 1

monious spheres and idealistic views of what goes on within their

respective boundaries. For Isaiah Berlin, privacy is "sacrosanct, " the
private sphere "inviolable. "3 Berlin's language is heightened, but his
reasons are depressed. Left alone, we are not obliged to attain the
moral status of autonomy in matters of ethics or faith, or to realize
our potential for enlightenment. Nor does liberty set us the romantic
task of authenticity, or imaginative creativity, or cultivating intense
feelings within an intimate circle of friends. Private liberty can mean
unimpeded avowal of religious and moral conscience or unimpeded
expressivism, but for Berlin it does not have to be an "opportunity
concept, " which makes being free a matter of what we can do. 4 It
can mean freedom not to avow, or do, anything . Berlin's negative
liberty has little appeal for rational, autonomous Lockean individuals
or for their assertive romantic counterparts . It speaks most forcefully
to fearful, exquisitely self-conscious selves who feel fatally diminished
by external demands, especially coercive official ones.
Some accounts of the accommodation between liberalism and ro
manticism j udge this division of labor and spheres compromising to
liberalism and inherently unstable. Shrill and anxious liberals warn
that romanticism is so seductive it fatally undermines the public dis
cipline of legalism, or capitalism, altogether. We are liable to spin off
and away into mysticism, eroticism, or the wilds of artistic imagi
nation. Romanticized private life leads to radical detachment, on this
view, to the pose of unhappiness and anti political retreat. 5 In fact,
liberty does create enclaves for withdrawal and for even the darkest
sorts of expression in private life. But the plain fact is that in this
century the worst assaults on legalism and economic liberty have been
the result of organized violence and not spontaneity, of grimly un
romantic longings, not romantic ones .
For many theorists today, the most striking limitation of the con
ventional accommodation is not that it is unstable or subversive but
that it is unsatisfyingly dry and pragmatic. Romanticism appears as
just one life-style among others; it is tolerated, like "spilt religion, "
but carefully contained. Political theorists attuned to romantic incli
nations j udge this arrangement uninspired. Like Charles Taylor, they
disparage "a ' Romantik' of p rivate life, which is meant to fit into a
smoothly running consumer society. "6 Individuality and expressivism
are what every feature of political arrangements should be for-pub
lic, private, and the vast realm of the social as well.
Contemporary communitarians and individualists who share ro
mantic discontents are less interested in defining the public-private

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

212

divide than in giving each an infusion of affect and aesthetic delight.

Typically, communitarians focus on renewed public life where people
are gripped by feelings of commitment and relate to one another as
friends rather than adversaries . Still, the implication is that every
dimension of existence (even the self itself) should be transformed.
Communitarians are slow to ask where powerful emotional com
mitments should be constrained in the interest of fairness and where
they can be safely expressed, but this is more likely the result of
disinterest in the institutional mechanisms oflimited government than
wholesale opposition to them. Overtly hostile to some elements of
liberalism, neither communitarians nor individualists have actually
proposed erasing the boundary between public and private life. They
appear to take its existence for granted.
This distinguishes communitarian theorists from radical critics of
negative liberty and separate spheres . Michel Foucault aggressively
denies that public authority is a unique source of surveillance and
control. The technology of subj ection is everywhere in modern states,
and his devaluation of formal limits on officials follows directly from
the curious belief that institutional differences are illusory. 7 Indeed,
the most subtle disciplinary contrivance is the idea of subj ectivity.
What we take to be the self is really an effect of power. So is the
dream of freedom and self-determination in private life. They are all
figments of "governmentality. " The task of social theory, for Fou
cault, is to gain "strategic knowledge" of the forces of normalization
(presu mably with a view to anarchic insurrection) . In contrast, neither
communitarians nor individualists see liberal democracy as j ust an
other case of overweaning power. Nor do they aim at aloofness and
disengagement. The communitarian ambition for the reformation of
both political theory and political life is deeper immersion and more
intense connection, not liberation .

Recent Expressions of Romantic Aversion

Viewing contemporary communitarian and individualist theory as
expressions of romantic aversion to liberalism is only one of several
approaches. 8 It is useful because it underscores a powerful motivating
force behind much contemporary theory and reminds us that common
impulses and a common diagnosis can have widely divergent impli
cations for political action and thought. Moreover, when commu
nitarianism is approached from the perspective of its romantic roots,
we see that both at the level of ontology and of political prescription

Pluralism and Self-Defense

213

its opposition t o liberalism i s compromised. Finally, i t draws attention

to the strange tendency of both comm unitarians and individualists to
float high above the motley surface of pluralist society, thus missing
the very element of liberalism that makes romantic reconciliation
possible.
In the case of individualist theory there are distinguished anteced
ents for overcoming aversion to the banality of liberalism and its
ethos of commercialism and cold impersonality. Reconciliation in
volves recasting liberal democracy dramatically, so that its proper,
legalistic face recedes and a picture of democracy as an invitation to
exhibitionism and striving emerges . Democracy becomes an invita
tion, in Thoreau's words, to "give a strong dose of myself. " Con
ventional institutions such as electoral politics, markets, and the
division of labor are enchanted. They appear as sublime spectacles of
variety and self-display, as they did to Walt Whitman. The familiar
is made new by " freshness of sensation, moments of illumination. "9
Today this business of redescribing liberal democracy in radically
individualist terms has been taken up by George Kateb. No one is
more sensitive to the drive for self-assertion and self-reliance, the way
the individualist feels incomparable and identifies expressiveness with
the demonstration of some exemplary personal difference. One con
sequence is a reflexive opposition to authority and to every form of
docility and invisibility. Kateb prefers to call this resistance democratic
rather than liberal (in part to indicate that, in contrast to its privileged
counterparts in European culture, American individualism is inclu
sive, and in larger part to attach to democracy an idealism about
individuality that goes beyond the individualism of rights) . Still, he
shows clearly that individuality is consistent with and could not exist
without the institutionalized limits on government associated with
liberalism, chief among them "a system of rights housed in demo
cratic political institutions. " 1 0 In a similar vein, William Connolly
envisions a strain of democracy that makes room for turbulence,
recalcitrance, and exhibition of " otherness. " He would "infuse 'in
strumentalities' with space for the open self, " creating an order "that
can afford to let some forms of conduct be. " 1 1 This is the best we
can do, he thinks, once we recognize that every social form realizes
some things in the self by subordinating others. Like Kateb, Connolly
wants to see a shift from the democratic definition of ends to an ironic
stance toward all communal ends. His attempt in Politics and Ambiguity
is to underscore the ingredients of democratic practice that resist
commonality . But unlike Kateb, he is unaccountably reluctant to

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

214

appeal directly t o historic liberal institutions, personal rights among

them, to insure "slack . "
Kateb does not stop with this portrait of liberal democracy as a
scene of self-expression and antiauthoritarian self-defense. He is con
fident that democratic individualists are responsive to others, benignly
accepting, ultimately generous and just-at least in the new stage of
character he envisions as a possibility. I am less confident. Perhaps,
as Kateb believes, individualists do not suffer the ordinary egoism of
material self-interest. Clearly, though, they have their own mode of
self-absorption and irresponsibility. Misanthropy on the part of rad
ical individualists is not a lapse; it is, as Kateb acknowledges, the
secret worm that gnaws at the Emersonians. It comes with the sense
of being incomparable. " Casting one's whole influence" has an elitist
ethos, a masculine and combative ethos, embodied not only in the
alien Stimer but also close to home in the unlovable Thoreau-which
is why I prefer to call this variation of individualism "heroic. "
The individualist picture of connection to others, when one exists ,
is not of justice or principled mutual respect. It is a vision of an
unplanned complementarity of excellences . Only an exotic picture of
infinite difference, successive scenes of spontaneous interaction, is
attractive; Walt Whitman's America shares more with the aesthetic
sublime than with any institutional arrangement. Kateb gives sound
reasons why individualists ought to be committed to liberal democ
racy and why democratic structures produce individualists in the first
place. But he also recognizes that, from the individualist's perspective,
institutions often lose their solidity . They dissolve into the charm of
contrasts, into Whitman's "independent separatism. " The individu
alist's reconciliation to liberal democracy is always tenuous because
it depends on a state of heightened receptivity and aesthetic appre
ciation that is fleeting and cannot be maintained . When individualists
are forced to grapple with principles and involve themselves in every
day practices, the glow of infinite variety disappears. Not surpris
ingly, heroic individualism rarely escapes its anarchic, isolationist
logic.
Kateb is right, though, that the logic of self-assertion and resistance
makes the enemies of liberal democracy the individualist's enemies,
and that today these seem to include communitarians. Yet romantic
longing is at work in contemporary communitarian thought, too .
When communitarians invoke the ideal of a self capable of affect,
empathy, and depth over against a person capable of bearing rights
and pursuing advantages, or when they promote a contextualist meth-

Pluralism and Seif-Defense

2 15

odology that attends to what is unique and expressive in our public

culture over against what is universally j ustifiable, their work is more
resonant of romanticism than of Aristotle or any identifiable tradition
of democratic thought.
What is less clear is the consequence this has for liberalism. We
know what communitarians find loathsome: preoccupation with
rights, most of all, and a dreary, adversarial system of j ustice; also,
rampant commercialism and arid utilitarianism. Their aversions are
plain. But they are disinclined to propose alternatives. Community
is more often an invocation than a reference to specific political forms.
It is not j ust that the parameters of community are vague, its character
at the most general level is undefined.
D oes community signify corporate pluralism, where ethnic, reli
gious, or cultural groups have formal political standing and territorial
claims? That is the most likely referent, given communitarians' dis
gruntlement with liberal cosmopolitanism and their interest in the
kind of collective identity that cannot be taken up and shed like
membership in a voluntary association. It is the meaning of com
munity that comes first to mind in light of the worldwide, postim
perial experience of retribalization ; and it has been the most common
source of political convulsion, official violence, and deliberate cruelty
of groups to one another in the second half of this century, too. "With
all the beauty goes all the blood. " 1 2 In the United States in the 1 960s
some blacks provided a taste of militant cultural assertion and its
separatist tendencies . In fact, corporate pluralism is probably not what
contemporary communitarians prefer. When they aggregate examples
of parochial separatism- tribes, Puritan communities, Medieval Jew
ish ghettos-their intention seems to be to show that a sharply
bounded social identity is possible, not to prescribe one. They appeal
to this sort of communal self-definition to illustrate moral and psy
chological propositions about "belonging, " not political ones .
Even so, using parochial group identity-whether to illustrate a
preferred moral psychology or to indicate that the fundamental start
ing point of social analysis is not individualism (certainly not "atom
istic individualism")-is troubling. Even if they do not advocate some
version of corporate pluralism-even if they are determinedly post
liberal-approving references to collective identity suggests that com
munitarians have chosen to ignore the fact that "belonging" is not
always positive and that the desire of members to remain entwined or
to escape (through assimilation or some other means) depends in part
on the group's particular political, social, and economic circumstances.

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

216

W e know too much about negative identity and its effects o n self
esteem, its outcome in shame and submission or in self-destructive
violence, to find these appeals to belonging in the abstract attractive.
When it comes to statements of political preference, most com
munitarians seem to have in mind a political order as inclusive as
present-day liberal democracy . Here too the parameters are unclear:
whether community is actual or promised (or "latent"); whether it
is based on the stern stuff of civic virtue or on "the social face of
love. " 1 3 A mong proponents of republicanism, it is unclear whether
participatory community refers to neighborhoods and local control or
extends to the state as a whole, or some unspecified division of powers
between them. In light of the unstemmed profusion of examples of
community that have made their appearance in recent political
thought, it is ironic that one is missing altogether: the short-lived
experimental community that sprouts up regularly in American cul
ture in response to feelings of personal disconnection and whose
whole purpose is to consciously embody some notion of collective
identity based on a common good.
Political theory is very often stronger at criticism than at sugges
tions for reform, so what is more surprising is that communitarians
are typically shy about indicating just what liberal institutions, if any,
they would dispense with or curtail . 14 They exhibit their aversions,
impatiently attack, and then pull back. It is almost impossible to get
at the nature and limits of communitarian antiliberalism from what
is said directly . A better approach is indirect, by looking at com
munitarians' characteristic methods of argument and at the arguments
they do not employ. From this it emerges that their antiliberalism is
ambivalent, as it must be since romantic aversions to liberalism simply
do not translate into any of the conventional political alternatives .
Until recently, critics of atomistic individualism and legal formal
ism typically appealed to the idea of alienation . An essential part of
the Marxian critical apparatus, alienation is not the exclusive property
of the left; it is a moral reproach adopted by nostalgic conservatives
as well. But alienation is absent from the communitarian vocabulary
precisely because it means falling off from some original or possible
unity. Communitarians do not propose a philosophy of essential
unity-and not because they are incapable of providing one. They
seem to accept that being strangers does not necessarily signify es
trangement. Nor do they consider any of the available psychological
theories that gives identification with some greater whole central
place-as security against primitive anxiety, say-again, not because

Pluralism and Seif-Defense

217

they are unfamiliar with psychoanalytic explanations of the drive to

group identity. Alienation is a useful concept for political theo rists
who are comfortable, as contemporary communitarians are not, with
the idea of original or essential unity and with some holistic alternative
to liberalism stronger than the current, modest notion of "shared
values . "
The alternative approach many communitarian theorists employ is
to discover (or articulate) a latent tradition of shared meanings beneath
the surface fragmentation of liberalism. It is hard to tell what tradition
means here, besides the obvious fact that every language or system
of cultural meanings has developed over time; they are not things we
personally invent or apply to conditions that are wholly new. 1 5 And
despite the fact that communitarians j uxtapose concrete traditions to
universalist liberal principles, nothing in the idea of a tradition of
shared meanings or values is logically antiliberal. The "assumed giv
ens " of moral and political life that suffuse our political culture and
that are found "inside us " could plausibly include norms of toleration,
or habitual respect for rights and commitment to the justifications
for them.
Uncovering hidden or forgotten elements of the past is a classic
device for delegitimating what exists, but communitarians shy away
from the full critical import of the thought that there is a disj uncture
between latent and surface understanding. As it is used today the
implications of discovery are benign. Communitarians discuss dis
covering a "latent " tradition of shared meanings in such a way as to
suggest that nothing uncovered is likely to be incompatible with the
public values of liberalism . The whole approach is reassuring . Insofar
as what is latent is never altogether alien to us, and insofar as we can
painlessly reclaim what we have forgotten or repressed, then bringing
a latent tradition to light should not be wildly disruptive or weirdly
dissonant with the conscious , liberal aspects of public culture and
identity. Communitarian discoverers of latent shared meaning do not
seem to worry (or to hope, as Foucault might) that repression serves
a crucial need and that what is unconscious is repressed because it is
dark, dirty, or dangerous .
The most interesting thing about the methodology o f discovering
latent shared meanings has not been any substantive find made so
far, but the political import of the method itself. Its implicit politics
emerge if we see discovery in contrast to radical utopian design on
the one hand and to traditionalism on the other. Antiutopian, dis
covery avoids the deliberate invention of new values . Anti traditional,

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

218

discovery does not look for prej udice, favor dumb habit, o r think
that age confers legitimacy. These contrasts are significant because
radical utopianism and traditionalism are important sources of anti
liberalism and of j ustifications for censorial authority. Communitar
ians are careful not to invoke either, and they separate themselves in
this way from historic antiliberalism of the left and right.
The injuries communitarians do inflict openly on liberalism are
passive: withholding the title public morality form the discipline of
impartiality and the title virtue from personal habits of being law
abiding and respectful toward others; ignoring the origin of rights
(termed "instrumental") in some form of idealism about enlighten
ment or independence or in some vision of natural harmony. But
withholding and ignoring are mild abuses; they hardly figure in the
battery of attacks launched by unambivalent antiliberals in the past.
Still, George Kateb worries that the logical consequence of com
munitarian arguments is to give prestige to political life, thereby
encouraging statist threats to individualism . Taken by itself, the most
common line of argument does appear to point in that direction.
Starting from the idea of the desirability of a " thick" self, the next
step is to say that "thick" selves are situated in or constituted by their
moral and cultural environments ; then, in a final move, communi
tarians claim that " thickness" (identity, really) is inseparable from
belonging to a community-meaning not simply a tradition of shared
meanings but a political community where these elements of identity
are consciously shared and enforced. Even if these steps added up to
a compelling argument (and they do not, the largest unsubstantiated
leap being from s tep two to three; there is no reason why a thick self
could not develop in a pluralist medium) , analysis of the logical con
sequences of this line of thought misses the psychological disparity
between contemporary communitarianism and conventional propo
nents of statism. Again, it misses communitarianism's romantic roots .
For the communitarian purpose in opposing community to atom
istic individualism is not the traditional one of transcending the self
through identification with a group or nation. On the contrary, the
obj ect is to recover strong expressive selves, to make "thin" selves
"thick. " The political arguments we expect to find in theories of
community- such as that "belonging" serves political cohesion or
that cohesion has some independent value-are missing, which is
why contemporary communitarians have so little to say to (or to take
from) either socialists or communal anarchists for whom community
is a substantive ideal . This is not surprising . The principal commu-

Pluralism and Seif-Defense

219

nitarian charges, certainly the most frequent ones, are romantic. The
argument is not that liberalism is so lacking in a public ethos that it
is unviable, unable to produce collective action where necessary. The
argument is not even that liberalism is unjust. Ethical indignance is
eclipsed by revulsion at the fact that liberalism is impersonal and
emotionally barren, or unlovely, or insufficiently "gripping. " Lib
eralism produces " thin" selves, pathetic narcissists without purpose
or center. In fact, the much-discussed moral capacity to identify with
others in a common enterprise is only part of what the self is said to
lack, and it is not communitarians' sole concern. A much more ex
pansive notion of selfhood is at stake. It includes the capacity for
articulating other purposes besides communal ones and, perhaps most
important, the capacity for forming intense personal attachments,
friendship and love, where men and women are transparent to one
another. 16 Community is designed to repair decentered, disempow
ered, narcissistic selves diagnosed as incapable of sustaining either a
public or private life. 17
Preoccupation with the self has resulted in a careless tendency
among communitarian theorists to swing between two conflicting
formulations of formative connections . One pictures the self embed
ded in community, the other community "penetrating" the self. The
two are logically distinct. Their psychological implications are dra
matically different. And embeddedness has cozy political implica
tions, while the idea of a self constituted by communal forces can
point, as it does for Foucault, to severe social conditioning and control
that is all the more efficient if it operates through self-discipline. In
treating these formulations as if they were interchangeable, political
theorists exhibit a stunning disregard for the actual dynamics of self
formation. "Embeddedness" is a static condition which, if it points
to process at all, suggests older theories of socialization; the idea of
the constituted self opens out to a more sophisticated developmental
view-to processes of internalization, for example, of which iden
tification is j ust one. Apparently these differences pale beside the
constructive resonance they have in common. Both the embedded
and the constituted self evoke formative attachments, which is enough
to make them equally useful to theorists whose concern is the repa
ration of weak, empty, detached, and unexpressive selves. In either
case, community is therapy.
The trouble is not that a therapeutic politics is necessarily manip
ulative or condescending . (It is not . ) The trouble is, this therapy is
misconceived. Communitarians are motivated by romantic longings

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Fa ilings

220

and invoke them at every step, but they misapprehend their nature
and force. The romantic self is inseparable from complexity and flu
idity; the will to preserve a sense of infinite possibility is its essence.
Communitarian prescriptions, whether embeddedness in community
or penetration by community, are regressive. At best they speak to
a single aspect of romantic longing; they are simplistic. And this
absence of psychological realism is inseparable from the tendency to
fl.oat above the messy reality of pluralism and to overlook its centrality
to self-development. For the formation and preservation of identity
through communal membership is not the only alternative to disas
sociation and the weak self.
When it comes to neglecting pluralism, communitarians and heroic
individualists converge: individualists by imagining an imperial self
that is a whole world, and communitarians by imagining they can
discover a unified political world within the firmly constituted self.
Pluralism gives the lie to both. It brings a measure of sociological
realism to bear against both. And it points to a surer path home from
romantic aversion. For if liberalism provokes romantic reaction, it
also has a powerful claim on romantic sensibilities . Pluralism is the
heart of liberalism, and the antidote to common aversions .

Pluralism and the Psychology of Self Defense

Historically pluralism-the existence of diverse centers of social in
fluence and political power-has always been at the heart of liber
alism. It is the political condition for limiting government and
insuring personal freedom, and the occasion for doing so. Madison
saw pluralism as the best protection against accumulated power. Plu
ralism means the dispersion of power. It necessitates bargaining and
negotiating and inhibits the formation of permanent political major
ities . By multiplying the kinds and degrees of social influence and
control, it mitigates some of the humiliating and corrupting effects
of inequality . The political advantages of pluralist checks on power
are fully acknowledged in liberal thought-at least they are when
theorists have absolutism in mind or totalitarian leveling .
For the past two decades or so, this understanding has been sub
merged beneath a mountain of normative and analytical claims for
pluralist politics as a way of making public policy. Political scientists
dispute whether countervailing political forces are self-regulating,
whether officials are "captured" by special interests, whether infor
mation is increased through pluralist bargaining or whether political

Pluralism and Self-Defense

22 1

outcomes are irrational, whether "potential groups" really can or

ganize, and so on. By now pluralism has been discredited as an ad
equate description of contemporary politics and as a sufficient
guarantee of fair political outcomes. Still, in its original meaning it
continues to provide a good measure of distortions in the distribution
of power, and it remains the chief deterrent against its accumulation. i s
Other perspectives that recognize pluralism as the heart of liber
alism have come to the fore meanwhile, looking beyond social struc
tures to the actual experience of diversity . The experience of pluralism
figures prominently in discussions of moral agency, since, in the
absence of a genuinely open pluralist society, autonomy and choice
are empty. And the experience of pluralism is essential to what is
most positive in the romantic perception of liberalism. It appears as
the condition for preserving the sense of individuality, spontaneity,
and infinite possibility. The personal use of diversity requires of
course that pluralism be liberal. What is essential is not only the fact
of social differentiation but also making the experience of diversity
real by enabling people to enter and exit associations and spheres.
This, in turn, requires open groups which are denied guaranteed
populations, with the result that a wide range of rights and claims
are individual and not attached to collective identity. Liberal pluralism
has two aspects, then: social structure and personal movement, the
dispersion of power and "shifting involvements, " to borrow Albert
Hirschmann's dynamic phrase. 19
For some, any picture of the personal use of shifting involvements
brings to mind the bright, euphoric experimentation of the 1 960s,
with its promise of liberation and self-realization . It evokes a positive
romanticism-Humboldt's cultivation of "beautiful souls, " Schiller's
play, or the quest for authenticity or erotic excitement. But a gen
eration emerged from the period of the 1 960s chastened. Its hopes
for individuality and spontaneity are less perfectionist and fantastic
than soberly self-protective. It sees pluralism and shifting involve
ments less as a maximal facilitating condition than as a necessity for
self-defense. From a chastened romantic perspective, pluralism is self
protection. It is protection against dreaded identification with one
role and confinement to one place, against tedium, satiation, defini
tion, and ennui. The exploitation of pluralism is motivated by distress:
by the suffering of selves that are too much constituted by attachments
or by the paralysis and self-loathing associated with suffocating close
ness and exhaustion of possibility.
Dread of finitude and definition is a common enough condition,

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

222

some say characteristic pathology, of contemporary American cul

ture. It is neither exotic nor rare. It is not confined to the confined .
Nor is it the exclusive property of adolescence. Romantic longings
persist throughout life. Psychologists now describe middle age as a
life stage with its own dramas of hope, crises of identity, and at
tempted transformations. Francis Fitzgerald has described retirement
communities as the inventions of people exploring old age as if it
were a new frontier. 20 And dread of definition-along with its ac
companiment, fear of a lack of distinctiveness-may be especially
acute for selves that feel weak, whose hope from shifting involve
ments among plural spheres is less to fulfill potential than to ward
off one-sidedness and preserve some sense of potentiality. Exuberant
romanticism, the stuff of Werther, Adolfe, or Julien Sorel, is always
unsatisfied because no activity, relationship, or feeling corresponds
to the sweet dream of a limitless self with infinitely expansive powers .
Not even the experience of pluralism can ward off its inevitable frus
tration . In contrast, defensive romanticism is threatened by identi
fying actions and associations because they illuminate a weak,
uncertain self. This is the dark side of the romantic sensibility, which
recognizes in pluralism insurance against painful finitude or one
sidedness .
"Embeddedness" and "belonging" have their origin, and doubtless
their appeal, as attempts to respond sympathetically to this psychol
ogy of uncertainty, limitation, and longing. But community is not
the appropriate response. Where it exists at all, the hunger for com
munally structured life is felt only by some sensibilities, and by them
only sometimes; and even then desire may not attach to historically
shaped political communities . It is the experience of pluralism and
not the communitarian grip of civic culture (nor the heroic individ
ualist's ephemeral aesthetic state) that effectively limits vulnerability,
so that personal failure and humiliation in one arena are more apt to
be contained there. The most powerful romantic self-defense is shift
ing involvements among pluralist spheres .
In his account of shifting involvements, Hirschmann concentrated
on a single pendular movement between the pole of altruistic political
involvement and the pole of private economic life. He pointed to
painful satiation as the motive that explains our inability to sustain
political fervor (whether revolutionary mobilization or participation
in some active "issue public") , so that we return our attention from
public to private concerns. We know that the experience of pluralism
involves a far greater diversity of spheres, and that shifting involve-

Pluralism and Self Defense

223

ments reflects a greater range of motivation than Hirschmann de

scribed. We shift involvements, moving from home to work (if we
have employment outside the home) , and in response to the pragmatic
imperatives of interest and opinion. To this extent shifting involve
ments is in part a structually imposed necessity wherever there is
social differentiation . But we also shift involvements in response to
complicated, often unconscious personal inclinations to identify with
or escape from one or another kind of authority or empathy, solidarity
or solitude. 21
The everyday experience of shifting involvements as self-defense
is familiar. Formal contractual dealings with others is relief from
overheated personal relations (as everyone knows who has gratefully
returned to business as usual after a family seder. ) Excited member
ship in a voluntary association is relief from the stem calculations
required by managing our budgets, or our careers. The cost, when
shifting involvements is impossible, is also familiar: for example, to
women conscripted into the position of caretaker by a culture that
makes them exclusively responsible for children. The inhibitions on
their lives are unremitting. Total absorption in a single role eclipses
any individual purpose. The situation of many women reinforces the
perception of pluralism as our defense not only against public au
thority but also against all the private despotisms that make personal
expansiveness unthinkable.
The best entree to the two faces of liberal pluralism-diverse
spheres and the personal dynamics of shifting involvements-prob
ably is via the literature of escape. Fictional or autobiographical, the
story is the same: emergence from some group tradition in which the
subj ect does not feel at home, despite insistent ascriptions of "be
longing" by other members of the group and by outsiders . The story
may be one of successful assimilation, but just as often the narrative's
message is the limits of social mobility or disappointment with the
dominant culture; the subtheme is loss of innocence or identity, con
firming communitarian diagnoses of atomism and anomie. A recent
account tells the story from a different angle. Richard Rodriguez' s
Hunger of Memory does not subscribe t o the dichotomy o f belonging
versus independence-isolation, nor does it give an accounting of gains
and losses . Instead, it describes the inevitableness of complexity and
its consequences for one personality. The autobiography is an ex
tended appreciation of the complementarity between personal longing
and shifting involvements among separate spheres.
Rodriguez is educated out of his California, Spanish-speaking fam-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

224

ily into the public world of academic culture. His story of learning
the English language and losing fluency in Spanish in part is a met
aphor for maturation in general and for the move away from intimacy
at home. But Rodriguez is not nostalgic. This story should not be
sentimentalized. Rodriguez's personal history of warm and intimate
family voices is not rare, but neither is brutality at home or perpetual,
mutual misunderstanding. Cold-eyed, Rodriguez describes his ex
perience of religious community. He finds certain changes in the
Catholic liturgy regrettable, like folk singing and altars draped in
appliqued banners with the slogan, "God is Love. " But his attitude
toward changes in the English mass is more complicated . On the
shift from the priest's "Credo" to the congregation's "we believe, "
he writes: "By translating credo into the English first person plu
ral . . . the Church no longer reminds the listener that he is alone.
'We believe, ' the congregation is encouraged to say, celebrating com
munity-but only that fact . . . This assurance is necessary because,
in a sense, it is no longer true. " Catholics no longer live in a Catholic
world, and Rodriguez warns against attempts to recover it by con
fining onself to some religious enclave. Even worse is the pretense
that public life can be made intimate in compensation. He warns
sharply against the seductions of political communities that use "fam
ily words " like friends, comrades, or brothers . 22
For Rodriguez the result is not alienation. He makes other attach
ments, real and ideal. They are partial and limited, and some of them
can be described as self-created-all of which communitarians resist.
But falling off from original unity, whether family or some more
inclusive collective identity, does not mean atomism or total discon
nection. Rodriguez captures what it feels like to live out Georg Sim
mel' s thought that devoting "only the substantively relevant parts of
their personalities" to bonds with some whole is differentiation, not
detachment. Simmel insists on the necessary connection between the
experience of social differentiation and individuality: "it is precisely
through the alternation of sensations, thoughts, and activities that per
sonality documents itself. " For Simmel, the very definition of indi
viduality is " specificity of needs whose correlate is availability of the
largest possible circle of possible selections. " 23 As if to echo this
thought, Rodriguez calls his education " the achievement of desire. "
He does not mean the satisfaction of desire but "the ability to shape
into desire what would otherwise have remained indefinite meaning
less longing. " 24 Hunger of Memory traces the author's sober reconcil
iation to shifting involvements among plural spheres.

Pluralism and Self Defense

225

Nothing in this acknowledgment of the personal significance of

pluralism suggests a resolution of political issues such as bilingualism,
nor does it suggest that shifting involvements eliminates the uneas
iness of marginality . What it offers is a psychologically sophisticated
view of one common experience of liberal pluralism . External variety
is often characterized as fragmentation, its reflection in identity as
dissonance. But from the romantic perspective, pluralism has a unique
coherence: it mirrors the familiar sense of a luxuriously complex self
that resists finitude and definition. 25 Certainly, Rodriguez's account
recommends the substitution of a plurality of concrete relations and
spheres for "community" in Taylor's assertion that community is
constitutive of the individual. It works against the usefulness of choos
ing between atomistic-holistic models for structuring possibilities for
the self or society. If ontologic models of the self go a long way
toward defining choices, as Taylor suggests, that is all the more reason
to be dissatisfied with dichotomies that do not correspond well either
to experience or to sophisticated philosophical psychology. 26
Theorists of the self reject existential views of pure self-creation
and Kantian attributions of autonomy, proposing instead that the self
is embedded or constituted, intersubjective, or, in hostile versions,
that the self is an effect of power. If political theorists are determined
to take some view of the self as the ultimate starting point for social
explanation, and even more if they are determined to translate some
view of the self into j udgments about political arrangements (as both
communitarians and individualists plainly are) they need to take a
strong dose of social and psychological realism. 27 At least they do if,
like communitarians, they characterize themselves as contextualists
concerned to represent us realistically to ourselves . The romantic
sensibility, especially seen defending itself by means of the experience
of pluralism, provides a corrective. Together, romanticism and plu
ralism point beyond the unexceptional observation that "the self is
embedded in a social context" to the more complicated dynamics of
self-fashioning and self-expression within an open multiplicity of con
texts.
Only an aesthetic vision, a novel most likely, could bring us close
to every contingency of personal experience, especially formative
ones. Political theorists are not psychoanalysts, either, and the ex
haustive, idiosyncratic details of relations and responses are not avail
able to them. Even so, this is the direction political theory must take
if it is to say anything very interesting about the vicissitudes of the
self. And even if political theorists go back to bracketing the self an d

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

226

stick to more conventional moral and political assessments of liber

alism, romantic aversions and affinities will still be of interest. The
reasons are clear. The distinctive romantic dread of definition and
attraction to diversity brings pluralism to mind at a time when po
litical theorists are inclined to pay it less attention than ever before.
It gives pluralism fresh j ustification as a special kind of self-defense.
And it enlists powerful inclinations in its support.

 T W E L V E

The Permanent Structure of

Antiliberal Thought
STEPHEN HOLMES

Of all the strands of European social theory, few have proven so

enticing and, above all, so enduring as antiliberalism. The political
arm of the Counter-Enlightenment, as it might be called, has enj oyed
a long and, by most standards, immensely successful career. It drew
inspiration-and borrowed indignation-from Rousseau; the list of
its nineteenth-century adherents, from Joseph de Maistre to Friedrich
Nietzsche, could not have been more illustrious; on the Continent,
during the 1 920s and 1 930s, it achieved something close to cultural
dominance; and it continues to spawn articulate and influential pro
ponents even today .
This unbroken continuity deserves stressing because contemporary
antiliberals, such as Alasdair Macintyre, Roberto Unger, and Michael
Sandel, frequently neglect it. 1 They typically furnish a stylized, even
sanitized, genealogy for their central ideas. Macintyre, for instance,
gladly invokes Aristotle. But he makes no mention of the bitter attacks
on liberal theory and institutions that have loomed so large in nine
teenth- and twentieth-century political thought. This omission is no
accident. For one thing, antiliberals like to present themselves as
iconoclasts . For another, every antiliberal argument influential today
was vigorously advanced in the writings of European fascists . Brilliant
but retrospectively discredited theorists, such as Giovanni Gentile and
Carl Schmitt, violently assailed the liberal tradition. 2 They excoriated
liberalism for its atomistic individualism, 3 its myth of the presocial
individual, its scanting of the organic, its indifference to community,
its denial that man belongs to a larger whole, its belief in the primacy
of rights, its flight from " the political, " its uncritical embrace of
economic categories, its moral skepticism (or even nihilism) , its de-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

228

cision to give abstract procedures and rules priority over substantive

values and commitments, and its hypocritical reliance on the sham
ofjudicial neutrality. 4 These are much the same arguments one hears
today.
By mentioning the fascist interlude in the history of antiliberalism,
I do not mean to convict today 's antiliberals of harboring dangerous
thoughts . (They benefit from historical circumstances that make them
politically harmless. ) I want to draw attention, instead, to the fun
damentally ahistorical character of their thinking. Antiliberals talk
endlessly about rootedness and tradition, but they nonchalantly dis
regard their own intellectual descent. They could easily distinguish
themselves from their most unsavory precursors, I suppose. Yet they
make no effort to do so-leaving readers perplexed. They blithely
deplore what they consider the liberal individual's lack of " consti
tutive attachments, "5 for example, but they never mention that this
complaint was long the centerpiece of anti-Semitic propaganda, of
political attacks on "uprooted" and cosmopolitan Jews. 6 They ap
parently want to rehabilitate fascist rhetoric without fascist conno
tations . Their failure to consider the grim history of antiliberalism is
therefore a serious mistake. Silence about disagreeable antecedents
makes it difficult to provide a balanced and fair assessment of their
thought.
By depicting liberal morality as in "a state of grave disorder, "
Macintyre casts himself in a clinical role. 7 He appears as a doctor of
disorder, a therapist for sick theories and hapless societies infected by
unwholeso me ideas. Because antiliberals are focused so single
mindedly on the ailments before them, in fact, they almost always
neglect themselves. I intend to compensate for this self-neglect-to
right the balance, return the favor, and supply for them what they
have bountifully provided for liberal thought: a diagnosis of antilib
eralism's own inner pathologies . The appropriateness of a diagnostic
approach is suggested by, among other things , their implausible as
sumption that, in the century of Hitler and Stalin, liberalism remains
the Great Enemy of mankind.
Antiliberalism is more a mind-set than a theory . It is more a "cul
ture" or cluster of shared prejudices than a closely argued system of
thought. For an analysis of the most popular contemporary A merican
versions of this omnipresent and inveterate outlook, questions of
intellectual influence are relatively unimportant. I will focus, instead,
on recurrent patterns-on the basic conceptual confusions and his
torical distortions that invariably becloud the antiliberal mind. I shall

The Permanent Stru cture of Antiliberal Thought

229

try to catalogue and dissect the enduring fallacies of antiliberalism.

Economy of presentation requires the construction of an ideal type. s
No single theorist, not even Macintyre, is a perfect antiliberal. Lib
eralism's cleverest critics often qualify their attacks, making important
concessions to the enemy . Many of them supplement their criticisms
of liberal thinkers with criticisms of rival antiliberal thinkers as well.
Despite these complexities , antiliberalism retains the shape of a co
herent attitude, if not of a cogent doctrine. Above all, an identical
set of mistakes and misdescriptions surfaces, with astonishing regu
larity, in almost every antiliberal work.
After a fairly exhaustive survey, I have managed to identify twenty
fundamental fallacies or intellectual failings of antiliberalism: six the
oretical confusions and fourteen historical errors . These fallacies have
been a permanent feature of Western political theory since the French
Revolution. No criticism or expose will make them disappear. We
may shame them into hiding temporarily, but they will soon resurface
in a slightly altered guise. The best we can aspire to achieve is not a
cure but a list of symptoms. Such an identity kit may nevertheless
be of some value. Those who want to think seriously about the
problems and deficiencies of the liberal tradition risk being pointlessly
sidetracked by antiliberalism's confused and confusing barrage of
charges. A survey of the misunderstandings and blunders of our most
prominent antiliberals should, however briefly, help keep spurious
accusations at bay.

Theoretical Weaknesses
The antiliberal mentality is plagued by various conceptual confusions .
( 1 ) Antiliberals typically invoke a n indescribable community, em
ploying a double standard to evaluate liberal and nonliberal social
orders and conveniently eluding criticism of their own political ideals.
(2) They treat " the social" as a moral category, drawing controversial
assumptions from noncontroversial assumptions by a conceptual
sleight-of-hand. (3) They assume that when a person transcends self
interest, he is necessarily behaving in a morally admirable way. (4)
They oscillate deviously between community as an alternative to
liberal rights and community as a mere supplement. (5) They fall into
a self-contradiction when they criticize both liberal theory and liberal
society. And (6) they erroneously conclude, from the premise that
ideas shape behavior, that a critique of ideas will dramatically reshape
behavior.

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

230

The Phantom Community . No society is as liberal as liberals would

like. None fully realizes the principles and aspirations of liberalism.
Thus, liberals regularly criticize societies that are liberal in principle
but illiberal in practice-those that fail, for example, to protect rights
and satisfy basic needs . Antiliberals lodge a different complaint. They
blame "liberal society" not for failing to achieve liberal goals but for
aiming so low. The " crisis" of our society is not that we have achieved
j ustice only imperfectly, but that we have become fixated on such a
colorless ideal. We cannot be satisfied, for example, with an expansion
of welfare rights; something more should be achieved by the state.
Politics must aim higher, at something more uplifting than j ustice
more inspiring, more comforting, more spiritual, more erotic.
That something is community. According to Roberto Unger, and
this is a remark to be fished from almost any antiliberal text, "the
political doctrine of liberalism does not acknowledge communal val
ues . "9 This liberal failure is not surprising, because modern society
as a whole is characterized by " the disintegration of community. " 1 0
Macintyre agrees that the "notion of the political community as a
common proj ect is alien to the modern liberal individualist world. " 1 1
Under the influence of liberalism, from Sheldon Wolin's perspective,
"the sense of community" has been "lost, " and we all have begun
to inhabit a "society of disconnected particulars . " 1 2 For Sandel, citi
zens of a liberal state are doomed to the miserable isolation of
" strangers . " 1 3 And summarizing his reading of antiliberal literature,
Robert Paul Wolff accurately writes : "The severest criticisms ofliberal
society, both from the left and the right, focus on the absence of
community in even the most efficient and affluent liberal capitalist
state . . . What is it that conservatives and radicals alike miss in liberal
society?
. the social values of community. " 14 Liberalism is dissatisfying because it fails to provide what we yearn for most: fraternity,
solidarity, harmony, and, most magically, community . Antiliberals
invest this word with redemptive significance. When we hear it, all
our critical faculties are meant to fall asleep . In the vocabulary of
antiliberals " community" is used as an anesthetic, an amnesiac, an
aphrodisiac. Unger actually calls it, apparently without irony, "the
political equivalent of love. "15 There is nothing it will not do for you
once you expose yourself to its redeeming powers.
But what is community? What does it look like? What are its prob
lems? Antiliberals are divided on these questions. Some locate com
munity in the past, others espy it in the future. The former write
deprivation history, wringing their hands about the world we
.

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

23 1

have lost. Their trademark is that melancholy cluster of words :

"decay, " "breakdown, " "decline, " "erosion, " "impoverishment, "
and "eclipse. " 16 The latter compose promissory history, in which
anticipation and hope provide consolation for the dreariness or the
meaninglessness of the present. For all their differences, commem
orative and expectant communitarians share many singular habits of
mind. While antiliberals of either stripe repeatedly inform us that we
have mislaid or not yet discovered community, neither tells us any
thing specific about the community we lack. And this is not an in
cidental feature of antiliberalism; it is an essential one. Antiliberals
rhapsodize about neighborhoods, churches, school boards, and so
forth; but they never provide sufficient detail about the institutions
they favor to allow us to compare the advantages and disadvantages
of illiberal community with the vices and virtues of the liberal societies
we know. 17
All political arrangements involve the use of physical force. Thus,
at a minimum, antiliberals should be specific about the conditions
under which, in their ideal order, sanctions would be applied. Does
moral revulsion at " radical separation" among citizens require making
divorce and emigration illegal? What does a commitment to "soli
darity" imply about the authority of maj orities over dissident mi
norities? Should children of Jehovah's Witnesses be compelled to
submit to the community-binding powers of the Pledge of Allegiance?
Would present-day antiliberals advocate making incivisme into a pun
ishable crime-as it was in France during the Terror? Presumably
they would not. But they are reluctant to say so openly, perhaps to
avoid being observed defending civil liberties and individual rights.
The Myth of "the Social. " On the face of it, the category "social"
should refer to the entire gamut of human motives, actions, and
institutions. " Social" is (or should be) a descriptive term. To say that
an action or motive is "social" is not to imply that it is necessarily
good. Although some "social purposes" are morally praiseworthy,
others (such as racial purity) are morally repugnant. 18 That an aspi
ration is "shared" does not imply that it is intrinsically admirable.
Conversely, immoral behavior is not defined by any lack of a social
dimension. No asocial atom would strive to humiliate others publicly
or consume the envy of inferiors. The blood feud is not an absence
of sociality but a form of sociality. The relation between master and
slave is no less "social" (though it is less desirable) than the relation
between intimate friends.
Antiliberals, however, transcend such common sense. They sur-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Fa ilings

232

reptitiously smuggle moral approval into ostensibly descriptive cat

egories such as " group loyalty, " "collective aims, " "constitutive
attachments, " and "social bonds . " Wolin, along the same lines, seems
to apply the label "the political" solely to political activity that he
admires. It is as if "the dental" referred exclusively to healthy teeth.
Unfortunately, as history reveals, collective action can be monstrous
and "group aims" may include genocide. And the personal identity
of a racist or religious bigot may be-indeed, it is-" socially con
stituted" without being morally laudable.
In plain words, "the social nature of man" is too trite to count as
an insight. The social constitution of the individual is worthless as
an argument either for or against existing institutional arrangements .
If all individuals are socially constituted, then the social self cannot
serve as a critical standard to praise some societies and revile others .
Faulty logic alone invests such a banality with important political
consequences. 19 From the uncontroversial premise that " man is a
social animal, " antiliberals draw the highly controversial conclusion
that a warm and solidaristic social order is morally obligatory. But
the inference is bogus. They deduce a value from a fact only by sliding
surreptitiously from a generic (and morally neutral) concept to a
specific (and morally loaded) concept of "the social. " The assurance
of antiliberals that certain social relations are superior to others cannot
be derived from their trivial observation that individuals acquire fun
damental characteristics through socialization.
The seventeenth-century founders of liberalism, we are told, fool
ishly believed that "men are self-sufficient outside society. " 20 Because
" man is a social animal, " liberalism is theoretically false and politically
bankrupt. 21 What concerns me at this point is not the inaccuracy of
such an argument but its ineptness. Antiliberals typically boast that
they have transcended the fact-value distinction by invoking char
acteristically human potentials . Man alone is naturally endowed with
capacities that can be exercised only in society. 22 Therefore, man is
"obliged to belong" to society. 23 People are morally required to sus
tain the conditions without which they cannot realize their inborn
potentials.
The weakness of this reasoning lies in the tacit assumption that the
characteristically human capacities that cannot be exercised except in
society are necessarily praiseworthy. What Macintyre, Taylor, and
others forget is that society is a dangerous place in which to grow
up. It is only through intense social interaction that human beings
acquire their worst follies and fanaticisms. The human capacity for

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

233

intolerance or racism would never flourish in presocial isolation. 24 To

repeat: the fact that human potentials develop only in social settings
is morally neutral . In itself, it has no implications at all for what
peop le are morally obliged to do. 25
Either/Or. The third basic infirmity of antiliberal thought is an
addiction to simplifying dichotomies, notably to the contrasts of private
interest versus public virtue and base individualism versus noble com
munity. These alternatives are unsatisfactory, first of all, because they
obscure the possibility of private virtue. They also suggest that in
dividualism is necessarily antisocial. This fails to account for the fact
that individualism can involve a heightened concern for others as
individuals, rather than as members of ascriptive groups . 26 The great
est threat to social cohesion, moreover, arises not from individualism
but from collective passions, ideological conflict, and inherited ri
valries between hostile factions . 27 In factional settings, solidarity is a
problem not a solution. 28
Antiliberals invariably suggest that when people overcome their
self-interest, they are necessarily acting in an admirable and public
spirited way. They assume, in other words, that the selfless-selfish
scheme maps smoothly onto the good-bad scheme. But this leaves
out of account the prominent place of selfless cruelty in human affairs.
It is much easier to be cruel if you act for the sake of others or for a
cause than if you act for your own sake. Those who have homosexuals
shot in the name of the Islamic Revolution are morally abhorrent,
but they cannot be accused of antisocial individualism or base self
interest. And there would be no terrorism or ethnic warfare without
selfless devotion to social groupings. The bloody events we read about
every day contain a pertinent refutation of one of the crucial premises
of antiliberalism. Those who overcome self-interest are not automat
ically benevolent or humane.
To and Fro. While trumpeting their own audacity, antiliberals are not
quite exempt from ordinary inhibitions. Striving to catch our atten
tion, they routinely present their indescribable community as an al
ternative to liberal society. Once they succeed in attracting a sufficient
number of critical onlookers, however, they tend to retreat to the
more modest position that such community is merely a supplement
to liberal society. The first claim is absurd and the second is trivial.
The double strategy of thrust and parry, however, should not be
underestimated. It has rhetorical advantages. The built-in option be
tween two claims-one newsworthy but implausible and the other
convincing but bland-gives antiliberalism enormous resilience and

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

234

a capacity for survival . By artfully shifting weight from one foot to

another, antiliberals can claim both originality and sobriety, taking
maximum advantage of whatever audience is at hand. The naive are
promised something extraordinary and the doubters are appeased.
But these gains are purchased by the sacrifice of stylistic unity.
Unlike the bold fascist tracts of the 1 920s and 1 930s, contemporary
antiliberal works are typically marred by a schizophrenic tone. A
high-pitched j eremiad is disconcertingly followed by a tiptoed retreat.
After fiercely attacking liberalism, antiliberals inevitably flip-flop into
last-minute concessions, erasing their initial protests, assuring us that
they can continue to benefit, without hypocrisy, from the principles
and the institutions that they otherwise heroically oppose. 29
The Shifting Target. Antiliberals tend to oscillate woozily between
criticism of liberal theory and criticism ofliberal society. 30 Sometimes
they say that liberalism is simply wrong: liberals are making a factual
mistake when they suggest that individuals are preexistent atomic
units, and that all social relations are as instrumental as voluntary
contracts struck in the market. These "typically liberal" claims are
false, runs the argument, because individuals are socially constituted,
because wholes are prior to parts, and because what they like to call
"constitutive" social relations exist. At other times, however, anti
liberals advance a contrary line of argument. Liberalism, they mourn
fully confess, is descriptively correct: modern society has become
atomized, social bonds have snapped, instrumental relations are uni
versal, and group membership has become optional, that is, derivative
from human wills and subservient to private interests. Mirroring that
bleak truth, liberal theory is doomed to be a dismal but not inaccurate
science.
This waffle is disorienting, but characteristic. (Macintyre both de
nies that Aristotle's theory of the social self applies to "atomized"
modem societies and insists that it does apply, although neo
Aristotelians alone have grasped the elusive fact. Sandel confusingly
asserts that our lives are bad because they enact a theory that misdescribes
our lives . 3 1 ) It is obviously contradictory to say that liberal individuals
do not exist and that the ones who exist are excruciatingly unhappy.
Yet this entertaining contradiction is something like the official hand
shake of the antiliberal movement. On the one hand, social bonds
exist even though liberals do not see them . On the other hand, social
bonds do not exist, and liberals who report their nonexistence must
suffer the fate of all those who bring the bad news-that is, they

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

235

must be condemned for failing to denounce what they have discov

ere d.
Theory as Therapy. Not surprisingly, some antiliberals feels uneasy
about zigzagging between such patently incompatible claims . To rec
oncile the existence ofliberal individuals with their nonexistence, they
note that a person's self-understanding decisively affects his behavior.
If a person thinks he is a croque-monsieur, this will not make him
into a croque-monsieur, but it will cause him to act in unusual ways.
Analogously, if he thinks he is an atomistic individual, this will not
turn him into an atomistic individual; but it will lead him to behave
oddly, as a liberal citizen, as an economic man. In other words: liberal
ideology is simultaneously false and true. Our theory guides and hides
our practice. Our impoverished language of radical individualism
both distorts our behavior and denies us "access" to our communal
selves. 32 Members of liberal societies have come to believe that in
dividuals exist prior to and independently of social attachments and
that all social relations resemble contracts in a market. Strictly speak
ing, this self-understanding is erroneous: some noninstrumental and
constitutive social relations still or already exist. But liberal ideology
is also correct: our moral and affective bonds are buried, either for
gotten or never given a chance to flower. Because, we read over and
over again, liberals disparage "the social, " they not only misdescribe
human action but also allow the best part of life to wither on the
vine. By redescribing human existence accurately, as thoroughly de
pendent on a nourishing social milieu, antiliberals can make it worth
while once again-or perhaps for the first time.
Antiliberals conceive of themselves, then, not only as diagnosti
cians, but also as midwives. They promise to unearth the buried
treasure, to make explicit the implicit, to release the warm human
potential half-frozen beneath the ice ofliberal ideology. They advocate
a transformative politics that is reassuringly benign. Merely by cor
recting the delusions of liberal theory, the hermeneutical sage will
accomplish the reform ofliberal society . He will "improve" us against
our will, but therapeutically, not coercively-helping us to become
explicitly what we already are latently. He will articulate the shared
understandings that the rest of us have half-forgotten, thereby abol
ishing loneliness and rendering our lives, at last, joyfully communal. 33
But intellectual criticism and social transformation cannot be so
effortlessly combined. A theoretical cause in the past does not guar
antee a theoretical cure in the present, because earlier ideas may have

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

236

set irreversible social processes in motion. (Antiliberals never provide

a causal account of how a philosopher-instigated transfiguration of
humanity and society might actually come about. ) In any case, the
belief that a criticism of theory, by itself, entails a remaking of society
speaks volumes about the self-image of antiliberals . The professional
myth-demolisher is not just another desk-bound professor. He is, at
least potentially, the founder of a beautiful new (or old?) world of
togetherness and belonging .
Historical Distortions

Within antiliberal works, these six basic conceptual confusions, eva

sions, or errors are invariably supplemented by an array of historical
mistakes. For one thing, antiliberals typically identify liberalism with
"modernity, " as if there were no significant illiberal strands in modern
culture and no significant illiberal movements within modern politics.
They uniformly underestimate the fragility and beleagueredness of
the liberal tradition. Their polemical attitude leads them into serious
distortions of classical texts as well. Consider Maclntyre's intemperate
attack on David Hume-a fair and representative example. As the
mouthpiece for a property-obsessed culture, we read, Hume violently
repudiated the traditional natural-law teaching, affirmed by Thomas
Aquinas, that theft is permitted in case of dire necessity. 34 Turning
his back on starving children, except for some casual remarks about
charity, he rej ected immemorial taboos against excessive inequalities
of wealth . That this shrill denunciation is misleading is the least that
might be said. Hume accepted inequality of property because, on
considering the conditions for a productive agricultural economy, he
concluded that a free market in grain could better satisfy the needs
of the poor than any other system. Moreover, the Enquiries contain
one of the clearest eighteenth-century restatements of the traditional
doctrine that all property rights lapse in case of dire necessity. 35
We can demonstrate the inaccuracy of the portrait antiliberals draw
of liberalism in this manner, simply by pointing to doctrines clearly
advanced in a series of indisputably liberal works. We do not have
to provide an alternative portrait of liberalism ourselves-however
desirable that might be. 36 In what follows I have proceeded in a fairly
nominalist manner, applying "liberal" to a select number of maj or
modern theorists. When I write of "liberalism, " I do not mean a
vague Zeitgeist or the outlook of modern man but a clearly identifiable
cluster of political principles and positions defended by, among oth-

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

23 7

ers, Milton, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, Smith,

Kant, Madison, and J. S. Mill. (The foremost contemporary heir to
this loose "tradition " is John Rawls. ) Although they differed in many
important respects, these theorists shared a good deal in common.
Most of them were anticlerical and antimilitaristic. Most favored
religious toleration, an independent judiciary, abolition of torture,
liberty of thought and expression, and government by public dis
cussion among elected and accountable representatives. And most
tended to have a relatively welcoming attitude toward commercial
society . " Liberalism" is as good a term as any for this shared body
of political purpose and moral principle.
But what about the " typically liberal" doctrines ridiculed by con
temporary antiliberals? Not a single one was espoused by any major
liberal thinker. 3 7 Indeed, the huge discrepancy between the legends
promulgated by antiliberals and the positions actually defended by
liberal theorists is what originally suggested a need for this anatomy
of antiliberalism. There is room for legitimate disagreement about
how a concept such as "liberalism" should be handled. But one thing
is certain: no description of liberalism can be accurate if, like the
storybook account popularized by antiliberals, it applies to none of
the representative thinkers I have listed.
Antiliberals routinely distort liberal texts by reading them apolit
ically, by taking them out of their historical context and ignoring
their political and polemical aims. In most cases , as a result, we can
correct antiliberal falsifications by showing that liberalism was a po
litical platform, not a philosophy of man. 38 Here, then, are the four
teen most common misrepresentations perpetrated and popularized
by today's antiliberals.
The Myth of the Presocial Individual. The most pernicious liberal myth,
according to the majority of antiliberals, is the fiction of the presocial
individual. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liberals purportedly
conceived of society as a voluntary compact between preexistent per
sons. They assumed that a socially uninfluenced individual could,
before learning a language or being socialized into a culture, identify
his pregiven needs and negotiate contracts to ensure their satisfac
tion. 39 As all antiliberals dispassionately explain, such robinsonades
are highly implausible. Social relations are not secondary and optional,
but primary and necessary. Since presocial individuals do not exist,
Locke was simply dreaming.
The most annoying insinuation of antiliberal writers is that the
great European liberals were not only unintelligent but also com-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

238

pletely incapable of common sense. Taylor does not exactly assert

that Locke believed an individual could develop his ability to speak
English in the absence of social interaction with English-speakers .
But what else does his analysis of "atomistic" social theory imply?
To put his sort of accusation in perspective, we should recall that
Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel-to mention only the weightiest of
modern sociologists-devoted their careers to studying the social basis
of modern individualism. Significantly, those who actually knew
something about the social constitution of the individual never imag
ined that their findings would in any way revolutionize the self
understanding of liberal citizens or bring liberal polities crashing
down.
As Hume's example shows, commitment to liberal institutions is
wholly independent of a naive attitude toward the myth of a social
contract. 40 But not even the liberals who consistently invoked the
state of nature were so unrealistic as to deny the social nature of man.
Locke, for one, never suggested that fully formed adults entered the
world without any need for primary socialization. 41 The social con
tract myth should be read politically, not descriptively. An emphasis
on the voluntariness of social "bonds" was meant to discredit a specific
set of involuntary relations characteristic of traditional European so
cieties. To "atomize" human self-understanding was to attack "or
ganic" chains of dependence and subordination as well as to
undermine dangerous clan and sectarian groupings. Significantly, in
habitants of the state of nature gave little thought to God. 42 Theorists
struggling to justify the basic institutions of religiously divided so
cieties were thus naturally attracted to the social contract myth.
Implicitly, all liberal writers acknowledged the social constitution
of the individual. The fundamental human passions of pride and envy,
for example, are discussed at length in almost every liberal work.
Such passions obviously presuppose social awareness and are incom
patible with the mutual indifference of windowless monads . Like all
political programs, liberalism was "antisocial" in a trivial sense: it
proposed that certain widely accepted social institutions be abolished
and replaced by others . Liberalism can only be considered antisocial
in a more serious sense if society itselfis identified with its hierarchical,
parochial, and oppressive subforms . Antiliberals typically argue that
"eighteenth-century rationalism tried to envision humanity stripped
of such supposed inessential attributes as cultural, ethnic, and class
particularities. "43 This claim admittedly contains a faint and distorted
echo of the truth. But the accusation that liberals believed the self to

The Permanent Structure of A ntiliberal Thought

239

be factually "disencumbered" of such particularities is baseless. Lib

eral institutions may ask a judge to ignore the race or religion of a
defendant before the bench. But the attempt to desensitize legal in
stitutions to ethnic traits does not imply (how could it?) that being
black or Catholic has no importance for a person's life. The liberal
conception of the person as neither black nor white, neither Catholic
nor Jew, has an obvious political function. It was never intended to
deny the obvious reality of primordial attachments. 44
In the same unfriendly spirit, antiliberals frequently identify liberal
individualism with epistemological solipsism. Wolin writes: "The
basic [liberal] assertion, that each was the best j udge of his own
interests and hence no outside agency could properly dictate his hap
piness, rested squarely on the belief that no individual could truly
understand another. "45 That liberals had a somewhat more nuanced
view is easy to prove. For one thing, they all subscribed to the legal
principle that "no man should be judge in his own case, " suggesting
the political irrelevance of solipsism . 46 Liberals did make certain de
scriptive claims, for example, that a privy councilor probably knew
less about a peasant's interest than did the peasant himself. But their
basic point-again-was political or normative, and not descriptive
at all. The claim that others can sometimes know what is good for
us better than we know it ourselves may be dangerous even when it
is not always false . No matter how well-founded in some cases, it
cannot be safely elevated into a maxim of government. In sum, to
deny that others can define our profoundest interests is not to affirm
the ultimate privacy of self-knowledge. It is simply to remove a
certain perilous strategy of j ustification from the arsenal of public
officials.
Hostility toward the "Common Good. " Liberals, we are repeatedly told,
deny the existence of any " genuine shared common good. " 47 This
accusation too is largely unfounded. It flies in the face, for example,
of Locke's assertion that "the public good is the rule and measure of
all lawmaking. " Locke worried, it is true, that the government's
appeal to the common good might be "a specious show of deceitful
words, " that is, a lie useful for the wielders of power. But would
liberals have denounced "the pretense of public good" and the "pre
tense of care for the public weal" if they had not believed that such
a common good existed arid was being violated by abusers of au
thority?48
In general, liberal ambivalence toward the common good cannot
be understood without recalling how that concept had been tradi-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

240

tionally misused. In the Politics, Aristotle distinguished the master from

the slave by contending that the master has privileged insight into
the common good. 49 With his own unaided vision, a slave cannot
grasp the rational principle upon which joint advantage depends; he
must be instructed and coerced by his superiors. The common good
can only be known directly by a few-the wise, the virtuous, and
the holy. Far from being innocent, the idea of the common good was
traditionally implicated in the justification of privilege, hierarchy, and
deference. This political background goes far toward explaining the
deflationary approach liberals took toward the rhetoric of the common
good.
Liberals wholeheartedly endorsed the common good of collective
welfare. They distrusted the idea of the common good to the extent
that " the good" was identified with certain dangerous and oppressive
values . Religious orthodoxy was a "common good" liberals hoped
to live without. If religion is set aside, the most obvious thing citizens
share is a desire for military success. As antimilitarists as well as
anticlerics, liberals often distrusted the idea of the common good
because of its traditional associations with dynastic war and perse
cution. Sometimes the idea of the common good also contained an
implicit or explicit denial that different opinions about the common
good had a legitimate place within the state. Tolerance for honest
differences about the nature of the common good implies the political
unreliability or inadequacy of virtue. In a pluralistic society, willing
ness to subordinate private interest to what one considers " the" com
mon good, does not, by itself, solve our most urgent political
controversies and problems.
Hostility toward Politics . It is misleading to suggest that liberals
were fundamentally antistatist, hostile to both political authority and
political participation. This common antiliberal thesis is implausible
on its face because antistatism was the ideology of ecclesiastics (and
anticlericalism was a crucial element in liberal thinking) . 50 In fact, all
liberals subscribed to Montesquieu's assertion that "without govern
ment, no society can subsist. "51 An important chapter in the Wealth
of Nations shows that the emergence of individual freedom was inex
tricably connected to the process of state-building and the strength
ening of centralized institutions . 52 The first chapter of Mill's
Considerations of Representative Government and the last chapter of his
Principles ofPolitical Economy are both devoted to extensive discussions
of the positive contribution of state power to liberal freedom. In truth,
liberals opposed arbitrary authority, but not authority in general.

The Permanent Stru cture of Antiliberal Thought

24 1

Similarly, they opposed obligatory participation, but not participation

in general . 53 To violate rights in a liberal society is to defy the authority
of the state. This alone suggests that political power and individual
liberty are not necessarily antithetical from a liberal point of view. 54
The Sacrifice of the Public to the Private. The commonplace that liberals
wanted the private sector to expand and the public sphere to contract
is also patently one-sided. 55 No liberal ever expressed sympathy for
private courts, private taxation, private armies, or the private right
to declare war. A s etymology reveals, the liberal attack on inherited
privilege was actually an attack on "private" laws. Dueling was a
voluntary exchange between consenting adults; but liberals never hes
itated, in this case, to enforce state prohibitions against individual
choice. Earlier, kings could sell political rights to the nobility in
exchange for money or service. Liberals did not conceive of citizen
ship in this privatistic way, but rather as a potentially universal right,
certainly not as a transferable piece of property. 56 (Eventually all liberal
societies instituted a powerful taboo against the buying and selling
of votes. )
A good case could be made, on the other hand, for the primacy
of publicity in liberal thought. By "publicity " I mean, first of all, the
principle that criminal trials, legislative sessions, and government
budgets should be open to public inspection. Montesquieu mounted
a fierce attack on secret accusations, unsigned denunciations of fellow
courtiers delivered by stealth to the king . 57 Accusations, liberals stan
dardly argued, must be made publicly, with full opportunity for
explanation and rebuttal. But they conceived of publicity as a stim
ulant as well as a depressant. Besides curbing abuses and corruption,
it could supply new suggestions, counterarguments, and useful in
formation. If policies are set publicly and public criticism is encour
aged, a government can avoid self-contradictory legislation, discern
problems before they get out of hand, and correct its own mistakes.
Liberals conceived the central institution of liberal politics to be the
opposition-not least of all because the back-and-forth of public dis
agreement was thought to sharpen the minds of all parties and produce
de cisions more intelligent than any proposals presented at the outset. 58
The Primacy of Economic Man . According to antiliberal mythology,
"most liberals followed the view that man affirmed his existence
through economic activity. " The primary concern of liberal reform
ers, we read, was to assure freedom for economic exchange. "Lib
eralism . . . began as a doctrine for liberating economic egoism. "
R. H. Tawney, who pined for "the social harmonies of a vanished age, "

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

242

claimed that liberals supported religious toleration only because it was

good for trade. 59 Liberal man is an economic animal.
The desire for religious freedom was no mere by-product of the
desire for economic freedom. Similarly, the liberal campaign against
judicial cruelty, discussed by Judith Shklar in Chapter 1 of this vol
ume, cannot be reduced to a bourgeois strategy for maximizing prof
its . The attempt to free science from ecclesiastical interference was
another liberal cause that by no means derived from the spirit of
capitalism. For Locke, toleration (within politically defined limits)
came first. And the unlimited accumulation of knowledge was con
siderably more important to him than the unlimited accumulation of
property.
It is true that liberals tended to have a welcoming attitude toward
commercial society. They did not think that commerce was the worse
thing one person could do to another. (Anyone who views commerce
this way seriously underestimates mankind's capacity for cruelty. )
While antiliberals endlessly berate liberals for "instrumental think
ing, " they never mention liberalism's obviously instrumental attitude
toward market relations and economic growth. Montesquieu, for
example, argued that "commerce cures destructive prej udices . " 60
Trade teaches people that agreement about rules is compatible with
disagreement about the meaning of life. A life of business devalues
wild impulsiveness, instills habits of foresight and methodical cal
culation, and undermines the economic interests and values of the
aristocracy . Because it brings citizens into everyday contact with for
eigners, commerce also destroys parochialism and promotes tolerance
for diversity.
There is probably no better illustration of the completely instru
mental attitude liberals displayed toward commercialism than the
following passage from Voltaire's Philosophical Letters: "Enter the Ex
change of London, that place more respectable than many a court,
and you will see there agents from all nations assembled for the utility
of mankind. There the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the Christian
deal with one another as if they were of the same religion, and give
the name of infidel only to those who go bankrupt. " 6 1 The sociological
insight underlying this passage is marvelously simple. In sect-riven
societies, social cooperation requires an element of mutual indiffer
ence. If I consider murdering you because of your religious beliefs,
our ability to cooperate or learn from one another will be ruinously
small. Liberals valued commerce not only because it allowed i ;.. di
viduals to satisfy their interests, but also because it was a social cool-

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

243

ant. Commerce deeroticizes social bonds. Arm's-length transactions

in the marketplace give members of hostile groupings an apprentice
ship in coexistence, preparing the ground for cooperation of a non
economic sort.
The Subjectivity of Values . For Macintyre, one of liberalism's most
destructive ideas is that "the desires of every individual are equally
to be taken into account in deciding what is right to do. "62 From the
assumption that values are purely subjective, we are told, liberals
concluded that all human desires were of equal worth . 63 How accurate
is this claim? It is true that liberals wanted to decentralize the authority
to define personal happiness , dispersing it into the hands of unsu
pervised individuals. 64 Mill also deliberately tried to redescribe reli
gious commitments as subj ective preferences on the grounds that
people would be unwilling to persecute others for a " mere" point of
view, while atrocities might always be j ustified by invoking suppos
edly obj ective values. 65
But liberal skepticism was primarily political, not moral. (Antilib
erals slide over this distinction because they systematically ignore
questions of legal compulsion. ) Liberals assumed that public officials
cannot always be trusted to codify and enforce the distinction between
the moral and immoral. From this premise, however, we cannot
logically conclude that liberals denied the reality or importance of a
substantive moral-immoral distinction. The opening sentence of
Locke's Treatise, asserting that slavery is a "vile and miserable" con
dition, suggests a commitment to a nonarbitrary distinction between
good and bad. And the entire myth of the social contract rests on a
substantive principle of fairness that cannot be reduced to a maxim
of prudence. The individual is morally required to give up his own
right to enforce the law of nature if everyone else does so too. From
a self-interested standpoint, it would be preferable to benefit from
the self-restraint of others while benefiting from one's own lack of
self-restraint. But that kind of arrangement is explicitly ruled out by
the self-exemption taboo at the heart of liberal morality. The rule
that you cannot make an exception of yourself is not a subj ective
preference. It is not a value which we can choose or not, as we please.
The self-exception taboo is a standard by which liberal citizens are
required to j udge and curb their own first-order desires.
The real starting point for liberal morality was not the subjectivity
of values, but the historical intractability of moral conflict. 66 Antilib
erals like to align themselves with morality itself against the supposed
value-neutrality they ascribed to liberals . 67 The " morality" they extol,

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

244

however, remains conveniently void of content. Their pose as ad

vocates of social harmony would be threatened if they admitted that
they were contemplating the victory of one specific morality, be it
radical or conservative, over its rivals.
The Thinness of "Rights. " According to Macintyre, rights do not
exist, "and belief in them is one with belief in unicorns and witches. "
While liberals deplore our failure to enforce rights, antiliberals lament
our obsessive concern for rights-for these "fictions" that are designed
only to foster untrammeled egoism. 68 Antiliberals scorn rights for
several reasons . They sometimes paint the protection of rights as an
alternative to the exercise of capacities and as an obstacle to meaningful
involvement with fellow citizens . 69 These are implausible contrasts.
Some rights, such as the right to vote and freedom of speech and the
press , are designed to make possible the exercise of important human
capacities. 7 Freedom of religion protects group activities as well as
private conscience. In any case, allowing the police to abuse the cit
izenry is not likely to maximize civic involvement. Even Rousseau
recognized that citizens will avoid the public square if government
officials can violate private lives at will. 71 In general, rights are valued
as preconditions for all manner of worthwhile human endeavor.
(Obligatory and full-time civic involvement, on the other hand,
would definitely condemn many valuable human potentials to go to
waste. ) But antiliberals, echoing a folly of the young Marx, continue
to assert that rights destroy community and drive citizens into mean
spirited isolation. 72
Another complaint about rights is their abstractness. 73 By the ab
stractness of rights, antiliberals mean chiefly this: if I am concerned
solely about your rights, I will treat you like a generic person, not
as a unique individual caught up in a tight web of social relations.
This complaint about the unrealism of liberalism's "disencumbered
self" was classically expressed in Maistre's attack on the Declaration
of the Rights of Man: " there is no such thing as man in the world.
In my lifetime I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc. . . . But
as for man, I declare that I have never in my life met him; if he exists,
he is unknown to me. "74 The abstractness of rights, however, is a nec
essary condition for their universality . This universality, in turn, is
based upon an ethical commitment to the equal treatment of persons,
a commitment that liberalism does not view as an arbitrary or sub
jective preference. In criminal law, moreover, abstractness has sig
nificant advantages . It allows us to respect Charles Manson's rights
even though we obviously cannot respect him as a person.

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

245

The Sham ofNeutrality . On this question antiliberals frequently cobble

together two contradictory claims . They argue that liberal neutrality
toward conceptions of the good life is impossible: liberal regimes
favor some alternatives and disadvantage others. Then they add, in
consistently, that liberal neutrality is pernicious, an ignominious col
lapse into wishy-washiness, fence-sitting, and moral disorientation.
Liberals fail to be morally neutral (they take a stand) , and they fail
to be morally engaged (they do not take a stand) . 75 Antiliberals rec
oncile these two seemingly inconsistent claims in the usual way: liberal
regimes are bad because they fail to understand their non-neutrality
and thus fail to enforce it vigorously enough. They fail to understand
themselves and thus fail to be themselves in a healthy sense. But this
acrobatic afterthought does not lead antiliberals any closer to common
sense. Yes, perfect neutrality is impossible; but relative neutrality is
well within human powers. The umpire at a baseball game, to take
a trivial example, is not perfectly neutral: he enforces the rules of
baseball, not of badminton or golf. But would anyone want to claim
that he cannot be impartial between rival teams? A Protestant cele
brating the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes would not have been
impressed by a "proof" that neutrality is philosophically impossible. 76
Attacks on the idea of neutrality contain a sordid message. They
imply that one form of "intolerance" is worth another. There is no
difference between my imposing my beliefs on others by force and
a democratic government's forcibly preventing me from imposing
my beliefs on others by force. We may not want to say that the latter
is perfectly "neutral. " But then we will simply have to find some
other word to capture the important distinction at stake.
The Discarding of Self-Restraint. Both Tawney and Leo Strauss asso
ciate liberal principles with the loosing of acquisitive instincts onto the
world. 77 The abolition of the usury taboo symbolized the collapse of
archaic ethical inhibitions on the possessive individual. Joseph Schum
peter answered this sort of claim with admirable succinctness: "Pre
capitalist man is in fact no less 'grabbing' than capitalist man. Peasant
serfs for instance or warrior lords assert their self-interest with a brutal
energy all their own. "78 The usury taboo itself had been an instrument
of greed, allowing princes to confiscate the wealth ofJews whenever
it proved convenient. 79
More generally, liberalism did not involve an imprudent uncorking
of base passions or a collapse of self-restraint. Oddly enough,
Nietzsche, who attacked liberalism from the opposite direction, seems
to have been right on this matter. He abhorred liberalism because of

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

246

the straitj acket it imposed upon the individual's will to power. He

denounced liberalism for having erected "restraint from mutual in
jury" into the fundamental moral principle of modern society . 80 In
his typical anemic way, Locke had written that "no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. " 8 1 Liberalism
asked people to give up one of their most ardent desires : the yearning
to inflict physical pain on people they hate-a yearning independent
of any calculation of personal advantage. But to refrain from harming
others is to stifle the spontaneous expression of human instinct.
Life is essentially a matter of rapaciousness , violence, and the vic
tory of the strong over the weak. Thus, liberalism is a clever but
craven repudiation of human vitality . 82 Though morally perverse,
Nietzsche's emphasis on liberal self-restraint is intellectually prefer
able to the fiction of liberal restraintlessness propagated by con
servative-minded antiliberals. 83 Finally, in a comparative, and still
Nietzschean, vein, we should recall that preliberal politics was not
exactly untainted by the basest of human passions.
Instrumental Reason. Martin Heidegger's influence on contemporary
American antiliberals, though subterranean and indirect, is all
pervasive. Hannah Arendt and Strauss made a decisive contribution
here, adapting Heidegger' s harsh diagnosis of modernity to the mental
horizon of their new American audience. Having immigrated to this
country, they could not plausibly say that the " decline" of modern
times resulted from a forgetfulness of Being. That would have been
wholly unintelligible to their culturally backward readers . They re
sponded to this marketing problem by Americanizing Heidegger's
basic idea. Decadent modernity, they said, resulted from a forget
fulness of x-of the Greek polis, on the one hand, of classical natural
law, on the other. Marcuse, Adorno, and fellow members of the
Frankfurt school, for their part, helped pop larize the Heideggerian
idea that " modern man" has lost his reverence for nature and adopted
a basically instrumental attitude toward the world. A penchant for
instrumental thinking is the principal sign of our fallen condition. 84
Habituated to thinking instrumentally about nature, we tend to think
instrumentally about each other as well. That is obviously what
Macintyre has in mind when he denounces the "dominance of the
manipulative mode in our culture. "85
The association of liberalism with the glorification of instrumental
or manipulative relations is bizarre from several points of view. Slav
ery, the most instrumental of all human relations, was neither in
vented by liberal societies nor condoned by liberal principles. Locke's

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

24 7

entire theory was based on a denial that "we were made for one
another's uses . " No reader of Montesquieu's Persian Letters would
gather that liberals admired instrumental relations. Smith argued ex
plicitly that you cannot treat people like "pieces upon a chess-board. "
Similarly, Kant's inj unction t() view others always also as ends in
themselves never caused him to repudiate liberal institutions . Ac
cording to Mill too, "no men are mere instruments or materials in
the hands of their rulers. ' '86 It is not easy to reconcile attacks on liberal
rights and liberal skepticism with a sincere abhorrence of manipula
tion. Rights, for one thing, were designed to prevent unwanted and
oppressive manipulation. Similarly, skepticism about "mankind's
true good " was meant to inhibit attempts of superiors to manage and
control their inferiors.
A Static View of Preferences . Liberal writers are said to have had no
idea of the social processes through which individual preferences are
shaped and reshaped. 87 Since the French Revolution, it is true, liberals
have tended to distrust self-appointed moral legislators bent on "im
proving" citizens against their will. Transformative politics is not
always benign. But the charge of liberal naivete about this matter is
without foundation. Liberal emphasis on the cordializing effects of
commerce, already mentioned, is a case in point. The liberal virtues
extolled by Kant are obviously acquired by training not by birth or
religious inspiration . And consider one of Madison's main arguments
for an extended republic. If all citizens find themselves aligned with
electoral minorities on some issues, their characters and aspirations
will be changed for the better. Civilized into the virtues of tolerance
and forbearance, they are less likely, when they happen to be in the
majority, to advance extreme demands or behave in bullying ways.
The socially uninfluenced individual also makes no appearance in The
Wealth of Nations. Instead, S mith is consistently concerned with the
social causes of emergence of different types of personality. A phi
losopher differs from a street porter chiefly because he was socialized
in a different milieu . Similarly, having grown up in a bustling en
vironment, a city-dweller has a different "temper and disposition"
than those raised in the countryside. One of Europe's main contri
butions to the prosperity of the colonies was the moral character it
bequeathed to the colonists. 8 8 In other words, the common notion
that liberals completely ignored elementary processes of character
formation and preference transformation bespeaks considerable in
attention to what liberal writers actually wrote.
Man as a Pleasure-Pain Machine. Another page in the antiliberal sto-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

248

rybook explains that liberalism gave government "the commission

to increase pleasure and decrease pain. " 8 9 To indict liberalism for
having debased mankind, antiliberals frequently contrast the liberal
concern for " mere life" with the Aristotelian concern for "the good
life. " 90 Some antiliberals (echoing Arendt) like to assert that liberalism
lowered the goals to be pursued by human beings. Base-minded
theorists convinced citizens to turn away from noble aspirations such
as honor and focus instead on ignoble concerns such as survival. 9 1 In
this way, liberals demeaned their fellow men-perhaps reducing them
to the moral status of dogs . This claim raises many questions . We
could inquire, for example, if it applies to Kant. But we should also
ask if the desire to live is really "low. " And how about the desire for
our children to live?
The state-society distinction, in any case, provides another impor
tant rej oinder to complaints about the "lowering" of human aspira
tions. Liberal theorists may have refused to idealize the goals of the
state, but that does not imply that they debased the aspirations of
society as a whole. The political goals of peace, security , welfare, and
justice were the preconditions for the pursuit of other goals in various
nonpolitical but nevertheless social domains . On the basis of a polit
ically achieved order, individuals or subgroups could pursue any num
ber of loftier aims: knowledge, bliss, friendship, salvation, oneness
with nature, or personal development. Antiliberals, in fact, trip over
their own feet when they both accuse liberals of having transformed
the state into a mere instrument of individuals and adduce the lower
goals of the state as evidence that liberals have lowered the goals of
individuals . Liberal citizens have an instrumental relation toward the
state. Thus, when they lowered the goals of politics, they did not
lower the goals of human life.
Antiliberals speak glowingly about willingness to die for one's
country. Historically, a martial ethos has been the most effective way
to discipline citizens and lead them "up" from individualism. Con
frontations with a deadly enemy certainly help reinforce communal
bonds. 92 This is the context in which Macintyre mentions "the hon
orable resort to war. " 93 But the desire to die for one's group has
always been subordinate to the desire to kill for one's group. (Killing
is a more sportive way to "soar above mere life" than being killed. )
A t any rate, liberals who identified good and bad with bodily pleasure
and pain were, to a large extent, engaged in an antimilitaristic polemic,
an attack on the shin-guard ethics of the battlefield. 94 As a descriptive
matter, liberals recognized that experiences of pleasure and pain often

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

249

depended on opinion. 95 They certainly knew that human beings tend

to feel pleasure at the death of their enemies and pain at the death of
their friends-although such delights and agonies are not strictly
physical in origin.
Overconfidence in Reas(ln. Antiliberals often suggest that modern sci
ence is basically immoral, even though it helps 99 percent of the
human race alive. 96 Science is denigrated as objectifying and cold. It
is accused of having denuded nature of moral purpose, thereby leaving
practical reason dangerously unmoored. By inculcating an instru
mental attitude toward the world, apparently, it encourages us to
view each other as obj ects ripe for manipulation. Conservative
minded antiliberals add that science is a prime example of human
arrogance-as if our feeble minds could solve all problems without
the aid of religion! Liberals are denounced for converting Reason into
a God and expecting it to answer all their prayers .
In point of fact, the Enlightenment was a limits-of-reason tradition.
Arrogance is more j ustly ascribed to religious authorities presuming
to tell individuals how to save their souls than to doctors experi
menting with inoculations against s mallpox. The main theme of a
liberal work such as Voltaire' s Philosophical Dictionary is the inability
of reason to answer certain large questions. The nature of matter and
the soul are inscrutable to the human mind. Scholastic attempts to
penetrate to the essence of things failed because they overtaxed human
cognitive capacities. en
Maistre and Louis de Bonald, however, were effective propagan
dists. They successfully promulgated the myth of a direct causal link
between the activity of the eighteenth-century philosophes and the
Reign of Terror. 98 Once this idea of a "dialectic of Enlightenment"
was launched, it was able to sustain itself by an air of paradoxical
profundity . As an heir to this nineteenth-century Catholic tradition,
Unger can write coolly that "legalism and terrorism, the commitment
to rules and the seduction of violence, are rival brothers, but brothers
nonetheless . "99 This assertion of an underlying kinship between ra
tionality and brutality takes many forms . Michel Foucault's sugges
tion that the physical and psychological mistreatment of the mentally
ill was a logical consequence of the modern idea of reason is only the
most notorious example of this amazingly common claim. 100 On the
American scene, arguments for a "dialectic of Enlightenment" take
many forms. According to one version, progress leads to speciali
zation; specialization leads to a neglect of fundamentals; a neglect of
fundamentals leads to an erosion of civilization, and thus to an end

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

250

of progress. Another version runs: liberalism destroys religion, chan

neling man's innate idealism into political utopianism, that is, into
the kind of revolutionary violence which destroys liberal institu
tions . 10 1
How should we respond to these claims? Is it true that when we
take the Enlightenment tradition too far something terrible will occur?
This conclusion is not quite so obvious as antiliberals pretend. First
of all, French liberal writing in the 1 790s had little trouble criticizing
Robespierre with purely Enlightenment categories : he was a secular
priest, a fanatic, a zealot, an enthusiast. Moreover, the leading Jac
obins exhibited few signs of excessive rationality . Viewed clearly, the
counterrevolutionary assimilation of freedom and terror, of reason
and barbarism , amounts to a rather crude post hoc, ergo propter hoc
fallacy. Although the Terror came after the Enlightenment, it had
other causes than the Enlightenment's success. It may even have re
sulted from the failure of the Enlightenment to take root.
And consider the assertion that religious skepticism destroys social
trust. During the Middle Ages, when people really "believed, " they
nevertheless went on rampages. It is thus impossible to map the faith
doubt scheme neatly onto the moderation-immoderation scheme.
Few people, in any case, have ever met a dangerous skeptic. 102 Most
of us (most of the time) are incapable of withholding judgment.
Psychologically, skepticism is such a difficult attitude to maintain that
mass skepticism can never be a major social problem. Blind credulity
will always remain more dangerous to mankind than doubt.
Antonym Substitution . Antiliberals do not just decontextualize liberal
thought. They also provide a false context of their own making, one
that lends a very different meaning to the principles being attacked.
A characteristic feature of antiliberal thought is the fallacy of antonym
substitution. Theorists with a bias against liberal thought regularly
distort the significance of central liberal ideas by replacing the counter
concepts that originally bestowed political significance on the prin
ciples in question with antonyms either ignored or explicitly rej ected
by liberals themselves. The liberal idea of competition, for example,
is routinely subjected to a denigrating contrast with brotherly love.
The principal antonym of competition, however, was not love but
monopoly. And monopoly has nothing to do with love-as anyone
knows who has studied, say, the relation of the higher clergy to the
peasantry in the old regime. By antonym substitution, antiliberals
have concealed the moral and political motivation for the original
liberal embrace of the principle of competition. By such a conceptual

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

251

sleight-of-hand, one might say, the nineteenth century made the

eighteenth century unintelligible.
Other examples of antonym substitution are legion and well worth
pondering. Antiliberals misleadingly counterpose skepticism to moral
wisdom. The original antonyms of liberal doubt, however, were false
certainty and enthusiasm. Private property is unfavorably compared
to charity; while liberals saw it as an alternative to princely confis
cation. Instrumental attitudes, as I said, are disparagingly contrasted
with moral attitudes; but they seem more attractive when opposed,
as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to waste
fulness and status display. Similarly, rights are prejudicially contrasted
with duties, an opposition that makes the former seem mean-spirited
and selfish. The original opposites of rights, however, were tyranny,
slavery, and cruelty. Why the liberal crusade against oppression
should be considered selfish has never been clear. 1 03
In an attempt to discredit liberal theory, antiliberals unfairly con
trast the adj ustment of interests to rational consensus . Such a contrast
makes it mysterious why anyone of good will could ever have ad
vocated the former alternative. The original antonym of interest
based compromise, however, was not rational agreement but civil
war. Viewed as an alternative to ideal-driven slaughter, interest
driven accommodation seems much less ignoble than antiliberals
would have us believe. That is precisely how it seemed, to European
liberals in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries .
Antiliberals expose the purportedly liberal maxim " I can do what
ever I want" as nihilistic self-indulgence by contrasting it misleadingly
with the reassuring precept "I shall do whatever morality requires. "
But the original antonym of " I will do what I want" was " I must do
whatever my master or my social rank demands . " Antiliberals con
trast liberal freedom with authority in general. But liberals were hos
tile only to arbitrary authority. Rule-governed authority they
assumed to be essential for the creation and maintenance of a j ust
social order. Finally, as I also mentioned, antiliberals always contrast
liberal individualism with community tout court. Individualism was
never counterposed to all forms of community, however, only to
stifling and authoritarian kinds-sects, clans, caste systems, and pa ro
chial village life. Far from being anticommunal, liberals strove to
create a specific kind of community, a community in which citizens
enj oyed the cooperation and mutuality made possible by a system of
liberal rights . 1 04
By antonym substitution, antiliberals make it difficult to under-

Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings

252

stand why intelligent and reform-minded theorists embraced the doc

trines they did . By decontextualizing liberalism, they deradicalize it
and obscure its original appeal . The most noteworthy victims of
antonym substitution have probably been the categories of self
interest and self-preservation. To discredit these concepts, antiliberals
contrast them with benevolent concern for others, public
spiritedness, and devotion to moral ideals. Almost universally ne
glected are the antonyms which suggest themselves to common sense:
self-hatred, self-destruction, self-mortification, self-effacement, and
a failure to take an interest in oneself These too are "habits of the
heart . " Subj ect to a combined assault by religious, authoritarian, ro
mantic, militaristic, and socialist traditions, the concept of self-interest
acquired, by the end of the nineteenth century, a totally unmerited
infamy. Most outlandishly, self-interest is now routinely depicted as
the opposite of the public interest, as if doing something for yourself
were necessarily a failure of patriotism or a betrayal of one's fellow
man.
Despite the prevailing mythology, no liberal ever affirmed self
interest as an alternative to the public interest. All liberals expressed
deep concern about "sinister interests . " They prized self-interest only
so long as it was regulated by a norm ofj ustice and, even then, only
because-as Albert Hirschman has shown-they conceived it as a
practical alternative to various malevolent passions and conceits as well
as to the fraudulent display of benevolent motives. 105 To understand
the relatively friendly attitude liberals displayed toward self-interest,
we need only contemplate the original and provocative antonyms of
the idea: privilege, paternalism, blood revenge, envy, military glory,
religious zealotry, the grandeur of the state, and self-effacing obe
dience to God's inscrutable will. 1 06

Conclusion
Antiliberals characteristically commit other mistakes that I have left
undiscussed. Think only of the odd view that liberalism somehow
heightened personal anxiety . According to Wolin, "anxious man
emerges as the creation ofliberalism . " 107 Actually, tolerance for public
disagreement and political contestation suggests that liberal societies
are relatively free from primal anxiety. But the twenty fallacies I have
set forth here seem to be the most common and important antiliberal
errors .
In an abstract diagnosis of this sort, of course, there lurks the danger

The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

253

of caricature. If you are friendly to antiliberalism, you will doubtless

say that I have focused solely on one side of antiliberal thought,
wresting it out of context and exaggerating its importance to discredit
the tradition as a whole. Even those who feel treated unfairly, how
ever, should welcome reflections such as these. If I have cast light
only on a single tendency or strand-rather than, as I claim, the
enduring core-of antiliberalism, the exercise could still prove useful.
At the very least it will provide antiliberals with a checklist of possible
misinterpretations. In that case, they can begin to help the rest of us,
their curious but baffled readers, understand what they "really" want
to say.

Notes

One . The Liberalism of Fear

I would like to thank my friend George Kateb for good advice and encouragement
in writing this paper.

1. ]. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London:

Methuen, 1 9 4 1 ) , pp. 89-97, 370-377. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of
Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) ,
II, 241 -254.
2. See Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1 984) .
3. See, for instance, Laurence Berns, "Thomas Hobbes, " in Leo Strauss and
Joseph Cropsey, eds . , A History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: Rand
McNally, 1972) , pp. 370-394. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1 962) . These interpretations
depend on seeing Locke as very similar to Hobbes, as Leo Strauss did in
Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 953) , pp.
202-25 1 .
4. Alexander Hamilton et al. , The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New
York: New American Library, 196 1 ) , nos. 10, 5 1 .
5 . Georges Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1 977) , pp. 81 -87.
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Conservative, " Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel
Porte (New York: Library of America, 1 983) , p. 173.
7. Edward Peters, Torture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1 985) , pp. 103- 1 40.
8. Isaiah Berlin, "Introduction" and "Two Concepts of Liberty, " Four Essays
on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 982) , pp. xxxvii-lxiii, 1 1 8172. Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli, " Against the Current
(New York: Viking, 1 980) , pp. 25-79.

Notes to Pages

30-40

256

9. The Metaphysical Elements ofJustice, ed. and trans . John Ladd (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1965) .
10. For the best account of the notion of instrumental rationality and its im
plications, see Seyla Behabib, Critique, Norm and Utop ia (New York: Co
lumbia University Press, 1986) .
1 1 . George Kateb, "Remarks on the Procedures of Constitutional Democracy, "
Nomos, xx, Constitutionalism, ed. J. Roland Pennock and John Chapman,
pp. 21 5-237.
1 2. Michael L. Walzer, Spheres ofJustice (New York: Basic Books, 1983) , pp.
26-28, 3 1 2-3 16.
13. See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1 986), for the philosophical panorama from that nonposition.
14. This is a critical response to Michael Walzer, "The Moral Standing of
States," in Charles R. Beitz et al. , eds. , International Ethics: A Philosophy and
Public Affairs Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) , pp. 217-238.
1 5 . N ancy L. Rosenblum, Another Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1 987) , for romantic liberalism, and Michael J. Sandel, Lib
eralism and the Limits ofjustice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 982), for co mmunitarianism, respectively.
16. Charles Taylor, "The Nature and Scope of Distributive Justice, " in Frank
S. Lucash, ed. , Justice and Equality Here and Now (Ithaca, N . Y . : Cornell
University Press, 1 986) , pp. 34-67.
17. Alan Ritter, A narchism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 980) .

Two . Humanist Liberalism

I would like to thank Jeffrey Abramson, Robert Keohane, Cass Sunstein, and
especially Nancy Rosenblum for their helpful comments on the work out of
which this chapter developed.

1. See, for example, Teresa Brennan and Carole Pateman, " 'Mere Auxiliaries
to the Commonwealth' : Women and the Origins of Liberalism, " Political
Studies 27 ( 1 979) : 1 83 200 ; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 98 1 ) , esp . chap . 3; Genevieve
Lloyd, The Man of Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1 984) , esp . chap. 5; Susan Moller Okin, "Women and the Making of the
Sentimental Family, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 1 (1 982) : 65-88; Carole
Pateman, " Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy, " in Stanley
Benn and Gerald Gaus, eds . , Public and Private in Social Life (London: Croom
Helm, 1 983) , pp. 281 -303.
2. I discuss this issue at greater length and give some examples of false gender
neutrality in contemporary political theories in Susan Moller Okin, "Gen
der, the Public and the Private, " in David Held, ed. , Political Theory Today
(Oxford: Polity, forthcoming) ; also in justice, Gender and the Family (New
York: Basic B ooks, 1989) .
-

Notes to Pages 40-42

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

257

For example, Zillah R. Eisenstein, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism

(New York: Longman, 1980) ; Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human
Nature (Totowa, N .J . : Rowman and Allanheld, 1983) , esp. chap . 7.
For discussions of the importance of this fact to liberalism, see John Rawls,
"Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, " The Journal of Philosophy 77
( 1 980) : 5 1 5-572, esp . 5 17-5 19, and "Justice as Fairness: Political not Me
taphysical, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 ( 1 985) : 223-25 1 ; also Charles
E . Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press, 1 987) , esp . chaps . 3, 4.
For arguments for such a position, see, for example, Michael Walzer's
Spheres ofJustice (New York: Basic Books, 1983) . Though Walzer is some
times classified as a communitarian because of his emphasis on "shared
understandings" as the necessary foundations for a theory ofjustice, he is,
on balance, more accurately described as a liberal socialist. Philip Green,
in Retrieving Democracy (Totowa, N.J . : Rowman and Allanheld, 1 985) , also
bases his egalitarian democracy on a combination of liberal and socialist
traditions and agenda. Rawls, though typically regarded as a defender of
welfare-state capitalism, both specifically says that "a liberal socialist regime
can . . . answer to the two principles ofjustice, " and, when envisaging the
private property alternative, aims toward a regime, "in which land and
capital are widely though not presumably equally held" (A Theory ofJustice
[Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1 97 1 ] . p. 280) . See Richard
Krouse and Michael McPherson, "Capitalism, 'Property-Owning Democ
racy, ' and the Welfare State, " in Amy Gutmann, ed. , Democracy and the
Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 988) . Many varieties
of liberalism, especially the libertarianism of Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State
and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1 974) , are completely antipathetic to
socialism.
Thomas Hobbes, "Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and
Society, " in Sir William Molesworth, ed. , The English Works of Thomas
Hobbes, 1 1 vols. (London: John Bohn, 166) , II, 109. Though Hobbes was
no liberal in his conclusions, advocating an absolute rather than restrained
state, many of his most important ideas-including original individual
equality and freedom-became central tenets of liberal theory.
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1 974) , and " Family Structure and Feminine Personality, "
in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds. , Woman, Culture, and Society
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1 974) . See also Dorothy Dinnerstein,
The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper and Row, 1 977) .
See, for example, Kenneth M. Davidson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Herma
Hill Kay, Sex-Based Discrimination (St. Paul, Minn . : West, 1 974; also 1 978
supplement by Wendy Williams) ; Carol Smart, The Ties that Bind: Law,
Marriage and the Reproduction ofPatriarchal Relations (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1 984) .
For example, Linda J . Nicholson, Gender and History (New York: Columbia

Notes to Pages

10.

11.

12.

13.

1 4.

15.

16.

17.

42-45

258

University Press, 1 986) ; Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of

Historical Analysis, " American Historical Review 91 (December 1 986) : 1 0531 075.
Herma Hill Kay, " Equality and Difference: A Perspective on No-fault
Divorce and its Aftermath, " University of Cincinnati Law Review 56 (1 987) :
1 -90; James B . McLindon, "Separate but Unequal: The Economic Disaster
of Divorce for Women and Children, " Family Law Quarterly 2 1 (Fall 1 987) :
35 1 -409; Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender and the Fam ily, chap. 7; Lenore
J. Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic
Consequences for Women and Children in America (New York: Free Press,
1 985); Heather Ruth Wishik, "Economics of Divorce: An Exploratory
Study, " Family Law Quarterly 20 (Spring 1 986) : 79- 1 07.
For a recent and succinct analysis of this situation, see Barbara Bergmann,
The Economic Emergence of Women (New York: Basic Books, 1 986) , esp.
chaps. 9- 1 1 . For a summary of findings of more recent research, see
"Women: Out of the House, But Not Out of the Kitchen , " New York
Times, Feb. 24, 1 988, p. A t .
"Women in the Law Say Path Is Limited by 'Mommy Track, ' " New York
Times, Aug. 8, 1 988, p. A l ; "Curbs for Minors Seeking Abortion Upheld
on Appeal, " New York Times, Aug. 9, 1988, p. A l .
There i s a high incidence o f recruitment o f judges from those who have
risen to partnership in the most prestigious law firms. Others are often
drawn from the equally highly competitive field of academic law, which
also places its greatest demands-those of the tenure hurdle-on lawyers
in the child-rearing years, and therefore discriminates against those who
participate in parenting.
David Ellwood, Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family (New York:
Basic Books, 1988) , p. 1 33. Sixty-two percent of the women cited house
hold or family responsibilities as their reason for either working only part
time or not having a job . Only 5 percent of the men cited such reasons for
not working full-time. (The standard definition of year-round, full-time
work is 35 hours per week for 50 weeks, including vacations. )
Walzer, Spheres ofJustice, p . 304 (italics in original) . Compare Benj amin
Barber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1 984) ,
pp. 1 73- 1 78. Though he starts with the statement that "at the heart of
strong democracy is talk, " Barber's discussion is unusual in its emphasis
that listening is just as important a part of "talk" as speaking, and that the
"potential for empathy and affective expression" is as crucial to it as is
eloquence or creativity. Thus his approach is less biased in favor of tradi
tionally masculine and away from traditionally feminine qualities than is
usual in such discussions of political speech.
"On Authority: or, Why Women are not Entitled to Speak, " in J. Roland
Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds. , Authority Revisited (New York and
London: New York University Press, 1 987) .
I experienced a particularly graphic example of this a number of years ago
when a male colleague started to scream at me in a meeting for no discernible

Notes to Pages

18.
19.

20 .
21.

22.
23 .

24.
25 .
26.
27 .
28.

29 .
30 .

45-49

259

reason. When, after some time, the chairman attempted to intervene, the
enraged man turned to him, only to explode: "I can't help it. She reminds
me of my mother! "
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill,
1950) , pp. 28-29.
I discuss this at greater length in Okin, "Gender, the Public and the Private. "
See also Martha Minow, "We the Family: Constitutional Right and Amer
ican Families, " The American Journal of History 74 (1987) : 959-983; Nikolas
Rose, "Beyond the Public/Private Division: Law, Power and the Family, "
Journal of Law and Society 14 (1987) : 61-76.
Rawls, Theory ofJustice, p. 7 1 .
Ibid . , pp. 128- 129, 300-30 1 , 462-472, 490-49 1 , 5 1 1-5 12. It seems signif
icant that in "The Basic Structure as Subj ect, " American Philosophical Quar
terly 1 4 ( 1977) : 159- 1 65 , Rawls does not specify the family as part of the
basic structure of society, though his statements about the importance of
this structure for how individuals "get to be what they are" (p. 1 60) are at
least as strong as those in A Theory ofJustice. For commentary on Rawls's
treatment of the family, see Jane English, "Justice Between Generations, "
Philosophical Studies 3 1 ( 1 977) : 1 - 1 04; Karen Green, "Rawls, Women and
the Priority of Liberty, " Australasian journal ofPhilosophy, supp. to 64 Qune
1986) : 26-36; Deborah Kearns, "A Theory ofJustice-and Love: Rawls on
the Family, " Politics Qournal of the Australasian Political Studies Associa
tion) , 18 ( 1 983) : 36-42; Susan Moller Okin, "Justice and Gender, " Philos
ophy and Public Affairs 16 ( 1 987) : 42-72, and "Reason and Feeling in
Thinking about Justice, " Ethics 99 ( 1 989) : 229-249.
Rawls, Theory ofJustice, pp. 463, 490.
B ruce Ackerman, Social justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale Uni
versity Press, 1 980) , Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge,
Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1 977) , William Galston, justice and the
Human Good (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 980) , Robert Nozick,
Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1 974) .
Walzer, Spheres ofJustice; Okin, "Justice v. Gender. "
Alasdair Macintyre, A.fier Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1 981) , chap . 12, pp. 222-226, 201 .
Alasdair Macintyre, Whose justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Uni
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1 988) , pp. 10, 105, 401 -403.
Ibid. , p. 326. I expand on these points in justice, Gender and the Family .
Even feminists who are attracted by the communitarian notion of the con
stituted self sometimes do not mention this. For some who do, see Seyla
Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, "Introduction: Beyond the Politics of Gen
der, " in Feminism as Critique (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1987) , pp. 1 2- 1 3 , and Marilyn Friedman, "Feminism and Modern Friend
ship: Dislocating the Community, " Ethics 99 ( 1 989) : 275-290.
R awls, Theory ofjustice, pp. 1 26- 1 30 .
Michael ] . S andel, Liberalism and the Limits ofjustice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 982) , p . 23.

Notes to Pages 50-53

260

31 . Ibid. , pp. 30-31 .

32. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, p. 31 , quoting David Hume, An
Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals (La Salle, Ill. : Open Court, 1 966) ,
pp. 1 7- 1 8.
33. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 1 2 1 - 1 30, esp. 1 26.
34. Will K ymlicka, "Liberalism and Co mm unitarianism, " Canadian journal of
Philosophy 1 8 ( 1 988) , pp. 1 8 1 -204, at p. 1 90 (italics in original) .
35 . Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, p. 1 23. It is not clear to me how
Larmore reconciles this anti-Kantian position with his earlier discussion of
the need in "rational dialogue" to be able to retreat to neutral ground . There
he says: "abstracting from a controversial belief does not imply that one
believes it any the less, that one has had reason to become skeptical toward
it. One can remain as convinced of its truth as before, but for the purposes
of the conversation one sets it aside" (p. 53) . This suggests, as a critic of
Sandei's conception of the self might, that we may be tied to our ends and
attachments in living the good life, but still able to abstract from them for
the purpose of thinking about justice. Sandel, by contrast, takes the view
that certain beliefs may be so constitutive of our identity that we are unable
without violating our selves to set them aside for any purpose.
36. Ibid . , esp . chaps. 3, 4.
37. Larmore says: "The public has to do with what belongs within the political
system, whereas the private covers whatever belongs outside it" (ibid. , p.
42) . For evidence of Rawls's more explicit recent adherence to the dichot
omy, he cites Rawls's "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" and
"Justice as Fairness : Political not Metaphysical. " See also John Rawls, "The
Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 7
(1 988) , where Rawls explicitly endorses Larmore's reliance o n the distinc
tion between the political and the nonpolitical, and his reading of Rawls's
theory as a theory ofpolitical j ustice (for example, pp. 253-254, n. 2) . Rawls
discusses some ambiguities of and difficulties with the requirement that the
state be "neutral" (pp . 260-264) .
38. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Comp lexity, p. 1 06 (italics mine) .
39. Rawls, "Justice as Fairnes s, " p. 245, n. 27, and "Priority of Right, " p. 263.
40. See Susan Kingsley Kent, Sex and Suffrage in England: 1 850- 1 9 1 4 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1 987) , and Mary L. Shanley, Feminism, Marriage
and the Law in Victorian England (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
forthcoming) .
41 . Larmore specifies that a political decision "can count as neutral only if it
can be justified without appealing to the presumed intrinsic superiority of
any particular conception of the good life" (Patterns of Moral Complexity,
p . 44) .
42. In October 1 988 the U . S . Congress failed to pass a bill mandating large
scale employers to provide unpaid parental leave for their employees. This
leaves the United States with the dubious distinction of being the only
Western industrialized country other than South Africa without such a
policy.

Notes to Pages

54-56

261

Three. Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent

1 . This is a now familiar criticism put forward in its classical form by Comte,
Marx, and the nineteenth-century sociological tradition, and given modern
philosophical expression by Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, William Sul
livan, Alasdair Macintyre, and many others-for example, Michael Sandel,
who in his critique of Rawls 's liberal conception of the self writes: "But a
self so thoroughly independent as [Rawls's] rules out any conception of the
good (or the bad) . . . It rules out the possibility of any attachment (or
obsession) able to reach beyond our values and sentiments to engage our
identity itself. It rules out the possibility of a public life . . . And it rules
out the possibility that common purposes and ends could inspire more or
less expansive self-understandings and so define a community. " Michael ] .
Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press, 1 982) , p. 62.
2. "Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much
more necessary in the republic . . . than in the monarchy . . . it is more
needed in democratic republics than in any others . How is it possible that
society should escape destruction if the moral tie is relaxed?" Alexis de
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, 2 vols. (New York:
Vintage, 1 960) , II, 3 1 8 .
3. William E. Connolly, Politics and Ambiguity (Madison: University o f Wis
consin Press, 1 987) , p. 3.
4. Thus, when in State and Revolution, Lenin (what irony!) writes that "while
the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom there will be
no state, " he is speaking quintessentially liberal language.
5. Liberals rightly pall at the idea of Hobbes as a liberal predecessor because
his fear of anarchy leads him to embrace an authoritarian conception of the
state incompatible with limited government. Yet inasmuch as the state
serves a liberty the natural condition imperils, Hobbes does share a crucial
liberal premise: that the legitimating political principle is in the service of
individual self-preservation, which is the sine qua non of liberty. For a
recent, subtly argued construction of Hobbes as a defender of the individual
and his fragile body, see George Kateb, "Hobbes and the Irrationality of
Politics, " paper presented to the American Political Science Association
convention, September 1 988.
6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, bk. I, chap . 6.
7. Will Kymlicka defends liberals against communitarian charges that their
conception of the individual is abstract and atomistic. But, in addition to
turning every liberal from Rawls to Dworkin and Nozick into John Stuart
Mill, he misses the essence of the criticism, which is not simply that liberals
neglect community or the constraints of encumbered selves, but that they
consistently treat both as secondary to and logically and morally dependent
on prior conceptions of unencumbered individuals. See Will Kymlicka,
"Liberalism and Comunitarianism, " Canadian journal of Philosophy 1 8 Uune
1 988) : 1 8 1 -204.
8. See Marshall Berman's splendid essay on modernity and disorder, which

Notes to Pages

9.

1 0.

11.
1 2.

13.

14.

15.

16.
17.
1 8.

19.

56-62

262

uses Marx's phrase in its title: All That ls Solid Melts Into Air (New York :
Simon and Schuster, 1 982) .
Judith Shklar's Chapter 1 in this volume is representative. Both Richard
Flathman and, from a very different point of view, George Kateb champion
freedom without entering into a full discussion of its costs to community
and identity, although Kateb acknowledges the debt liberty owes to citi
zenship in "The Moral Distinctiveness of Representative Democracy, " Eth
ics 91 (April 1 98 1 ) : 357-374.
This argument was first advanced after World War II by Theodor Adorno
and his colleagues in The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper,
1 950) , and by psychologists such as Erich Fromm, Robert Jay Lifton, and
Viktor Frankl.
Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, p. 54.
John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University
Press, 1 97 1 ) . As I have argued elsewhere ( The Conquest ofPolitics [ Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1 988), pp. 54-55)-Kymlicka, "Liberalism and
Communitarianism" notwithstanding-Rawls's logical prioritization of
liberty entails a psychological and political prioritization that defeats the
attempt at mediation.
Robert N ozick is the most vociferous recent advocate of this brand of strong
liberalism . See his Anarchy, the State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books,
1 974) .
C. B . Macpherson's account of possessive individualism (in The Political
Theory of Possessive Individualism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 961 )),
may not always be creditable as intellectual history, but it remains a per
suasive vision of the liberal democratic conception of the self, and how the
self-possessing individual becomes the acquisitive (property-owning) in
dividual.
The social contract theorists tried to have it both ways, surrounding their
ruminations about the possible historicity of the social contract with caveats
about the hypothetical character of the state of nature. Rousseau is typical
here, offering an anthropology of natural man in the Second Discourse that
he studiously avoids in The Social Contract, where he makes it clear not
on! y that the state of nature is hypothetical, but that man's actual condition
is one of dependency (man is "everywhere in chains").
See Shklar's powerful defense of the liberalism of fear in Chapter 1 .
The familiar portrait o f man's life in the state of nature in Leviathan, chap.
13.
"Liberty, or freedom, signifieth, properly, the absence of opposition; by
opposition, I mean external impediments of motion . . . a freeman, is he,
that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not
hindered to do what he has a will to. " Leviathan, chap. 21 .
The lexical ordering of the principles of j ustice "means that a departure
from the institutions of equal liberty required by the first principle cannot
be j ustified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic ad
vantages" (Rawls, Theory ofJustice, p. 6 1 ) .

Notes to Pages 62-65

263

20. Benjamin R. Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) .
21 . Reversing the polarity and giving community the priority that, for liberal
individualists, the individual enjoys, only reverses the imbalance and creates
a different set of problems well known to critics of communitarian (total
itarian) collectivism. Most recent communitarians respect the dialectical
interplay of individual and community, however, and do not dispute the
ultim ate concern for individuals. The question is not the normative priority
.
of the individual, but how the individual is morally and politically consti
tuted. This is the essence of Michael Sandel's critique in Liberalism and the
Limits ofJustice, and is a position that Rawls himself moves toward in his
recent work (see note 23) .
22. The collaborative character of participatory politics does not, as liberal
critics sometimes seem to suppose, require that conflict be wished away or
denied. On the contrary, as Rousseau observed, without conflict there
would be no politics and thus no need for government at all (the anarchist
premise, which is closer to libertarian liberalism than democratic com
munitarianism) . Connolly typically exaggerates the democratic penchant
for conflict-free harmony; see also note 27.
23. Philosophers have come to appreciate that the rigid conception of the person
demanded by the fiction of the legal person or the free agent needs to be
supplemented by a richer conception of the moral and social person. This
is particularly apparent in John Rawls's recent work, which, as it pushes a
morally constructed person toward its center, distances itself from hypo
thetical persons bent into abstract Archimedean positions. See, for example,
"Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" (The Dewey Lectures), journal
of Philosophy 77 (September 1 980) : 5 1 5-573; and "Justice as Fairness: Po
litical Not Metaphysical, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (Summer 1 985) :
223-25 1 .

"There can be no right without a consciousness o f common interest on the

part of members of a society . . . Without this recognition or claim to
recognition there can be no right" (T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles
of Political Obligation [London: Longmans, 1 941 ], p. 48) .
25 . "No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.
The earth belongs always to the living generation . . . every constitution
then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years, " Thomas
Jefferson, Letter to Madison, 1 789. Jefferson and John Stuart Mill share
with libertarians like Nozick an affection for perpetual consent, but whereas
for the libertarians this suggests private consent to public acts, to Jefferson
and Mill it suggests the importance of active citizenship and ongoing par
ticipation.
26. This line of criticism has an impressive pedigree. In Political Parties (Glencoe:
University oflllinois Press, 1 9 1 5) , Robert Michaels turns Rousseau's disdain
for representation into a profound critique of the party system.
27. "We need a theory and practice of democracy, " writes Connolly, "that
appreciates [the) element of disharmony. One that understands harmoni24.

Notes to Pages 65- 75

264

zation to be normalization. " Politics and Ambiguity, p. 8. "Normalization"

as used here is highly pejorative, suggesting the kinds of leveling, routin
ization, and noncoercive repression (gleichschaltung) long associated with
both democratic conformism (in Tocqueville's critique) and bourgeois lib
eralism (in Foucault's critique) . But the harmony that issues from the in
terplay of democratic wills has the richness of a seven-tone chord and is
neither unitary nor repressive.
28. See Benjamin R. Barber, "Political Judgment: Philosophy as Practice, " The
Conquest of Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 988) , where I
have tried to spell out a political theory of judgment in greater detail .

Four. Undemocratic Education

1 . Many of the arguments in this chapter are more fully developed in Amy
Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1 987) .
2. This is a nonironic interpretation of The Republic. My aim is not to offer
an interpretation that is faithful to Plato's intentions or to the full range of
his arguments, but rather to use the Republic to illuminate the premises of
a common political understanding of education.
3. The Republic, bk. IX, 590d (italics mine) .
4. Ibid . , bk. VII, 541 a .
5 . Ibid . , b k . I X , 592a.
6. The phrase comes from David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History
ofAmerican Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press,
1 974) .
7. Crito, in The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Harmonds
worth: Penguin, 1 970) , pp. 90-91 (50b-5 1 c) .
8 . Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1 978), p. 1 52.
9. The usage of liberal here is loose because there are many liberal theories
that do not rest upon neutrality in this sense. On a broader understanding
ofliberalism, which includes theories that do not rest upon neutrality among
good lives, democratic education qualifies as liberal.
10. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, chap. 5, para. 1 3 .
1 1 . Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice i n the Liberal State (New York and London:
Yale University Press, 1 980) , pp. 1 4 1 - 1 48. Ackerman applies the principle
of liberal neutrality to all educators, parents as well as professional teachers.
1 2 . Ibid . , p. 1 39.
1 3 . Nor does anyone have a right to act on the belief that any conception of
the good life is better than any other. The claim that some conceptions of
the good are better (or worse) than others is suspect on these liberal grounds
even when it is not self-serving.
14. Rogers M. Smith develops this Lockean understanding in Liberalism and
American Constitutional Law (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press,

Notes to Pages

5.

1 6.

17.
18.
19.

20.
21 .
22.

23,

24.
25.

26.
27.

28.
29.

75-87

265

1 985) . See also Nathan Tarcov's complementary interpretation of Locke's

Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 984) .
William Galston, "Liberal Virtues, " American Political Science Review 82
(December 1 988: 1 287) .
Saying that the alternative should not tyrannize over common sense does
not mean that it should not criticize common sense. Philosophy gives com
mon sense its due by recognizing that first principles are impossible to
prove, that they must be judged in significant part by their practical im
plications, and that this judgment entails the use of common sense ("prac
tical judgment" is the stricter term) . This process of achieving what John
Rawls has called "reflective equilibrium, " a process of philosophical rea
soning that is not uniquely tied to Rawls's theory, leaves ample room for
criticizing common (and uncommon) sense.
Immanuel Kant, Kant on Education (Ueber Padogogik) , trans . Annette Chur
ton (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1 900) , p. 1 7 .
Ping-Ti H o , The Ladder ofSuccess in Imperial China: Aspects ofSocial Mobility,
1 368- 1 91 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 962), p. 262.
Bob Mozert et al. v. Hawkins County Public Schools et al. , U . S . District
Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Northeastern Division, no.
CIV-2-83-401 (Oct. 24, 1 986), p . 1 2.
Mill, On Liberty, chap. 5, para. 1 4.
The right is limited not by virtue of being weak, but by virtue of leaving
room for other educational authorities .
The testimony of two witnesses for the plaintiffs, cited in the decision of
the United States Court of Appeals (Sixth Circuit) that reversed the decision
of the District Court and remanded with directions to dismiss the complaint
(827 F. 2d. 1 058 [6th Cir. 1 987) at 1 062) .
Alan L. Feld, Michael O'Hare, and J. Mark Davidson Schuster, Patrons
Despite Themselves: Taxpayers and Arts Policy (New York: New York Uni
versity Press, 1 983), p. 2 1 5 . For ways in which information concerning
private donations could be made more accessible to the public, see pp. 2 1 5216.
For some of the unethical practices made easy by our present indirect subsidy
system, see ibid. , pp. 1 69-77.
For a summary of the historical record, see Dick Netzer, The Subsidized
Muse: Public Support for Arts in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 978) .
T. M. Scanlon, "Symposium on the Public Benefits of the Arts and Hu
manities, " Art and the Law 9 ( 1 985) : 1 70.
Quoted in "J.-J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva to Monsieur D'Alembert, "
in Jean Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca,
N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1 973) , p. 4.
See Thomas Nagel, " Symposium on the Public Benefits of the Arts and
Humanities, " Art and the Law 9 ( 1 985) : 237.
Richard Rorty and Michael Walzer explicitly defend this priority principle.

Notes to Pages

87- 1 06

266

See Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, " in Merrill D.

Peterson and Robert C . Vaughan, eds. , The Virginia Statute for Religious
Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (New York:
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) ; and Walzer, "Philosophy and
Democracy, " Political Theory 9 (August 1 98 1 ) : 384-394.

Five. Civic Education in the Liberal State

1 . See Robert K. Fullinwider, "Civic Education and Traditional American
Values , " QQ 6 (Summer 1 986) : 5 8.
2. Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton Uni
versity Press, 1 977) .
3. Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace, " in Lewis White Beck, ed. , Kant on
History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1 963) , pp. 1 1 1 - 1 12.
4. See especially Rogers Smith, Liberalism and American Constitutional Law
(Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1 985) ; Nathan Tarcov,
Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 984) ;
Harvey Mansfield, Jr. , "Constitutional Government: The Soul of Modem
Democracy, The Public Interest 86 (Winter 1 987) : 53-64.
5. James Q. Wilson, "The Rediscovery of Character: Private Virtue and Public
Policy, " The Public Interest 8 1 (Fall 1 985) : 3- 16.
6. Charles Glenn, Jr. , The Myth of the Common School (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1 988) .
7. "Education for Democracy: A Statement of Principles, " (Washington,
D . C . : American Federation of Teachers, 1 987) , p. 8.
8. This paragraph summarizes the central argument of my "Liberal Virtues, "
American Political Science Review 82 (December 1 988) : 1 277- 1 290.
9. Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1 987) , p. 39.
10. Ibid . , pp. 44-46.
1 1 . Alphaeus Mason, ed. , Free Government in the Making, 3rd ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1 965) , p . 385.
1 2. See William Galston, "Public Morality and Religion in the Liberal State, "
PS 1 9 (Fall 1 986) : 807-824.
13. Gutmann, Democratic Education, pp. 30-31 .
14. For a very different way of drawing this line, see Bruce Ackerman, So
cial Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1 980) ,
chap. 5 .
-

Six . Class Conflict and Constitutional ism in ]. S . Mill 's Thought

1 . John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (New York: New American Library, 1 965) ,
pp. 1 21 - 1 22.
2. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson, 25 vols .
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1 965- 1 986) , 1 0, 88, 90, 92 ("Ben
tham" ) ; 23, 471 -472.

Notes to Pages

1 06- 1 08

267

3. Mill, Autobiography, p. 1 25; Works, 13, 434; 20, 1 82- 1 84; 23, 403.
4. "The new political philosophy of the present generation in France" which
is "scattered among many minds . . . may be pronounced greatly in ad
vance of all the other political philosophies which [have] yet existed, " Mill,
Works, 20, 1 84; cf. 20, 1 82- 1 83, 3 1 3; 1 3 , 458.
5. Mill, Autobiography, p . 1 24; Works, 10, 1 54 ("Coleridge") ; 1 8, 1 27 ("Civ
ilization"); 19, 380, 423 (Considerations on Representative Government).
6. Mill, Works, 20, 1 83- 1 84.
7. Mill, Works, 8, 906 (A System of Logic) . "The State of every part of the
social whole at any time, is intimately connected with the contemporaneous
state of all others . . . In constructing, therefore, a theory of society, all
the different aspects of the social organization must be taken into consid
eration at once, " Works, 10, 308 (Auguste Comte and Positivism); 1 8, 1 8
("Rationale o f Representation"); 23, 693; John Stuart Mill, Principles of
Political Economy, 7th ed. (Clifton, N .J . : Augustus M. Kelley, 1 973) ,
p. 695 .
8. "I understand by Sociology not a particular class of subjects included within
politics, but a vast field including it-the whole field of enquiry and spec
ulation respecting human society and its arrangements, of which the forms
of government, and the principles of the conduct of governments are but
a part, " Mill, Works, 1 4, 68.
9. Mill, Works, 4, 320. The "change in the premises of my political philosophy"
made it a more complex and "many-sided" political theory (Autobiography,
pp. 1 23, 1 25, 1 29) .
10. Mill, Works, 8, 9 1 1 - 9 1 2 (Logic) .
1 1 . Ibid . , 8, 875; 2 1 , 224.
1 2 . Mill, Works, 1 0, 89-92 ("Bentham") , 307 (Comte) . Man, that "complex
and manifold being, whose properties are not independent of circumstance,
and immovable from age to age . . . but, are infinitely various, indefinitely
modifiable by art or accident, " Works, 21 , 241 ; cf. ibid. , 2 1 , 277 ( The
Subjection of Women); Autobiography, p . 1 93.
13. Mill, Works, 20, 1 84- 1 85 .
14. Mill, Autobiography, p . 1 24.
15. Mill, Works, 1 0, 308 (Comte); 8, 930 (Logic); 20, 262.
16. Mill, Autobiography, p. 1 29 .
17. Mill, Works, 20, 1 87.
18. Mill, Works, 1 0, 323 (Comte); Autobiography, p. 1 24.
19. Mill, Works, 23, 404.
20. Mill, Works, 7, 370-378; 8, 883 (Logic); 10, 326 (Comte); Autobiography,
pp. 1 22- 1 23, 1 7 1 .
21 . Mill, Works, 7, 329 (Logic) .
22. Ibid. , 7, 444-445; 8, 869-870, 898 (Logic); 4, 337; Autobiography, pp. 1 221 23, 1 71 .
23. Mill, Works, 7, 594; 8 , 847-848, 861 (Logic); 4 , 336-337; 1 5 , 846; 1 6, 1 241 ;
21 , 237.
24. Mill, Works, 7, 5 1 9; 8, 791 (Logic) ; 1 9, 396, 398 (Considerations) .

Notes to Pages 1 09- 1 1 5

268

25 . Mill, Works, 1 0, 387.

26. Mill, Works, 1 8, 57 ("DeTocqueville on Democracy in America, 1 "), 1 57
("DeTocqueville on Democracy in America, 1 1 "); 20, 1 84; Autobiography,
p. 1 43 . The task of the political theorist is to offer an "enlightened estimate
of tendencies and consequences, " Works, 21 , 275 (Subjection) .
27. Mill, Works, 7, 603; 8, 875, 890 (Logic) .
28. Mill, Works, , 8, 898 (Logic) .
29. Ibid. , 8, 9 1 2; 4, 320.
30. Mill, Works, 10, 326 (Comte) .
31 . Ibid . , 10, 99 ("Bentham") .
32. Ibid . , 10, 1 09- 1 10 ("Bentham") .
33 . Mill, Works, 6, 1 02.
34. Mill, Works, 1 6, 1 385; 1 8, 1 82 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 "); 19, 448 (Considera
tions) ; Political Economy, pp. 752, 761 , 763.
35. Mill, Works, 1 8, 28 ("Rationale"), 202 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 "); 5, 707 (Chap
ters on Socialism); 19, 354 ("Recent Writers on Reform"), 445 (Considera
tions); Political Economy, 754.
36. Mill, Works, 1 9, 505 (Considerations) .
37. Mill, Works, 1 8, 221 (On Liberty); cf. ibid . , 1 8 , 71 ("DeTocqueville, 1 ") ;
19, 650.
38. Mill, Works, 1 8, 1 97 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 ) .
39 . Mill, Works, 6 , 469 ("Reorganization o f the Reform Party").
40. Mill, Works, 1 8, 200 "DeTocqueville, 1 1 ") .
41 . Ibid . , 1 8, 1 72.
42. Mill, Works, 5, 762.
43. Mill, Works, 4, 369 ("The Claims of Labor"); 6, 478 ("Reorganization") .
44. Mill, Works, 6, 485 ("Reorganization") .
45. Mill, Works, 379 ("Claims") .
46. Mill, Works, 6, 479 ("Reorganization") .
47. Mill, Works, 4, 380 ("Claims"); Political Economy, pp. 761 , 763.
48. Mill, Political Economy, p. 756.
49. Mill, Works, 1 6, 1 0 1 4 .
5 0 . Ibid . , 1 6, 1 1 03. "The contrariety of interests between person and person,
class and class, which pervades the present constitution of society , " Works,
5, 725 (Socialism) .
5 1 . Mill, Works, 5, 650, 666; 1 5, 749; 1 6, 1 442; 1 9, 591 ("Centralization" ) .
5 2 . Mill, Works, 1 7, 1 837- 1 838.
53. Mill, Works, 5, 707-708 (Socialism) .
54. Mill, Works, 4, 293; 1 8 , 2 8 ("Rationale"); Political Economy, p p . 4 1 9 , 460,
693-694, 7 1 0-7 1 1 , 71 9-720.
55. Mill, Works, 5, 656-657.
56. Ibid. , 5, 634.
57. The formation of trade unions and bargaining for wages became matters
of "prudence and social duty, " Works, 5, 646-647, 662.
58. Ibid. , 5, 634.
59. Mill, Works, 1 5 , 749.
"

Notes to Pages 1 1 5- 1 1 6

269

60. Mill, Works, 5, 660; Political Economy, p. 934.

61 . That Mill can be interpreted in this way, I do not deny. He clearly recognizes
that there are two conflicting theories of justice at the core of the conflict
between workers and capitalists ( Works, 5, 650), and he does argue that this
conflict must be decided on the grounds of social utility (ibid. , 5, 655) .
What then? Even if both sides accepted this proposition, we still do not
know which side of the dispute is in accordance with social utility, nor do
we know how this determination is to be made. The same difficulty char
acterizes Mill's essay on Utilitarianism, where he observes that there are
conflicting theories of justice associated with various kinds of social ine
qualities ( Works, 10, 244 ["Utilitarianism"]), or different theories of pun
ishment (ibid . , 1 0, 252) , or, as in the example above, different theories as
to how profits ought to be distributed (ibid. , 1 0, 253-254) . In none of these
instances does Mill offer a specific illustration as to how the general principle
of utility enables us to decide which of the contending theories of justice
is the correct one on utilitarian grounds. Mill's philosophical mistake, if it
can be called that, is his apparent assumption that a controversy between
plausible theories of j ustice could be resolved if only one uncovered "the
principles which lie under justice and are the source of its authority, " that
is, general utility (ibid. , 10, 252) , whereas, if the latter principle is incor
porated into each of the contending theories ofj ustice as part of its argument
for ' justice, " as is commonly the case, it is obvious that the controversy
is not one step closer to a solution than it was before. So much for Mill
the philosopher. The alternative, I am suggesting, is to rely upon the specific
judgment (or rather, an interpretation of the specific j udgment) of Mill the
social observer that, for example, cooperative socialism is more in accor
dance with social utility than the private ownership of the means of pro
duction, although the intermediate philosophical steps by which Mill arrives
at this conclusion remain unclear. (Cf. Works, 1 5, 749 . ) This last point must
not be exaggerated, however, since Mill did rest his conviction upon what
he perceived to be a developing tendency in society toward cooperation.
The "practical principle" of cooperation, he wrote, is "progressively wid
ening . . . as society advances. " Cooperative socialism was one manifes
tation of this broad and "progressive change" in social relations. It is in
this context, in accordance with his social science methodology, that Mill
the political theorist believes that the system of wage labor will be replaced
by cooperative socialism ( Works, 5, 442, 707 [Socialism] ; Political Economy,
pp. 698-699, 763-764, 772-773, 789-792) .
62. Mill, Works, 5, 665 .
63 . "The power of striking tends to bring about something approximating to
what I consider the only right organization of labor, the association of the
workpeople with the employers by a participation of profits, " Mill, Works,
15, 735; Political Economy, p . 938.
64. Mill, Works, 5, 665; 1 0, 341 (Comte) .
65. Mill, Works, 5, 442, 666; 20, 352; Autobiography, p. 1 68.
66. Mill, Works, 1 5, 857, 859.

Notes to Pages

1 1 6- 1 1 7

2 70

67. Mill, Works, 1 6, 1 439; cf. ibid. , 1 6, 1 1 03; 4, 382 ("Claims"); Political Econ
omy, pp. 773, 789.
68. Mill, Works, 5, 738 (Socialism); Political Economy, pp. 203-204, 772-773.
69. Speaking of cooperative socialism, Mill wrote that "it is scarcely possible
to rate too highly this material benefit, which yet is as nothing compared
with the moral revolution in society that would accompany it, " Political
Economy, p. 789; cf. Works, 5, 442; 1 5, 546, 8 1 3; 1 7, 1 535.
70. Mill, Works, 5, 55 1 . "A just principle should be carried out so far as it can
go, that is, to the point at which it is stopped by insurmountable obstacles, "
Works, 5 , 573. "The first object i n every practical discussion should b e to
know what perfection is, " Politfral Economy, p. 804.
71 . Mill, Works, 1 9, 475 (Considerations) .
72. Mill, Works, 5, 444. "No rational person will maintain it to be abstractedly
just, that a small minority of mankind should be born to the enj oyment of
all the external advantages which life can give, without earning them by
any merit or acquiring them by any exertion of their own, while the im
mense majority are condemned from their birth, to a life of never-ending,
never-intermitting toil, required by a bare, and in general a precarious,
subsistence. It is impossible to contend that this is in itselfj ust. It is possible
to contend that it is expedient, " Works, 20, 35 1 .
73. Mill, Works, 5 , 444; 1 4, 85, 87.
74. The economic institutions of society, Mill wrote, may be grounded either
on the principle of private property or on the communal ownership of
property. The former principle states "that what any individuals have caused
by their own labor, and what the law permits them to be given to them
by others, they are allowed to dispose of at pleasure, for their own use. "
This view of property, he declares, is "far inferior to the law of commu
nity" -common ownership. The only reason for not adopting the latter is
that " mankind are not prepared for it"; that is, through the overcoming of
practical obstacles through education ( Works, 14, 50; cf. ibid . , 1 4, 85, 87) .
Cooperative socialism represents "the nearest approach to social j ustice,
and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good,
which it is possible at present to foresee, " Political Economy, p. 792; cf.
Autobiography, p. 1 68. Speaking of Harriet Taylor's ideas, which he claimed
to share, Mill wrote that her "final aim" was "a state of society entirely
communist in practice and spirit, " embodying a standard of "perfect dis
tributive justice" ( Works, 1 5 , 601 ) .
75. Mill, Works, 1 0, 341 (Comte) . "The very idea of distributive j ustice, or of
any proportionality between success and merit, or between success and
exertion, is in the present state of society so manifestly chimerical as to be
relegated to the regions of romance, Works, 5, 7 1 4 (Socialism) .
76. Mill, Works, 1 8, 1 84- 1 85 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 ) . "For my own part, not
believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that
Communism would even now be practical among the elite of mankind,
and may become so among the rest. " 1 9, 405 (Considerations) ; cf. Auto
biography, pp. 1 68-1 69.
"

Notes to Pages 1 1 8- 120

271

7 7 . Mill, Works, 19, 4 44 (Considerations}; cf. ibid. , 1 9, 41 1 -4 1 2 ; Political Econ

omy, p. 206.
78. Mill, Autobiography, pp. 1 68-1 69. "The selfish type of character formed by
the present standard of morality, and fostered by the existing social insti
tutions, " Political Economy, p. 2 1 2 . The fact that because of their alienation
from political and social life the working class had not been corrupted,
relatively speaking, by the selfish habits engendered by the social institutions
of Victorian England was for Mill one of the most positive features of
transferring political power into their hands ( Works, 1 5 , 840; 1 6, 1 1 03, 1 209;
17, 1 870) .
79. Mill, Works, 20, 354; 1 0, 1 09- 1 1 0 ("Bentham"). Accepting "the mass of
physical and moral evils which . . . directly grow out of the facts of com
petition and individual property" does not mean that some of these evils
cannot be removed, nor does it involve a denial that the system as a whole
may persist "for a considerable time to come, " Works, 5, 442, 728 (So
cialism}, 736, 750; Political Economy, p. 2 1 7.
8 0 . Mill, Works, 6, 207.
81 . Mill, Works, 25, 1 1 06.
82. Mill, Works, 1 9, 588 ("Centralization") .
83. Ibid . , 1 9, 446, 448, 505 (Considerations); 18, 1 96 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 ") .
84. Mill, Works, 1 9, 448, 470 (Considerations); 1 6, 1 385 . This proviso, it should
be noted, already proj ects Mill's argument in the Considerations into the
hypothetical and ideal future in relation to the existing institutions in his
society.
85 . Mill, Works, 1 9, 447, 467 (Considerations} .
86. "If ever democratic institutions are to be obtained quietly, a great change
in the sentiments of the two great classes towards one another must precede"
that event, Works, 6, 448; cf. 1 8, p. 1 82 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 ") . The end
of class conflict represented for Mill "the best aspirations of the democratic
spirit, " Political Economy, p. 791 ; cf. p. 752.
87. Mill, Works, 1 9, 447 (Considerations); 1 6, 1 0 1 4.
88. Mill, Works, 1 9, 479, 498 (Considerations) .
89. Mill, Works, 25, 1 106; 1 9, 433 (Considerations) .
90 . Mill, Works, 1 9, 350 ("Recent Writers"), 405 (Considerations); 1 6, 1 452; 1 7 ,
1 759.
9 1 . "I dislike all merely class representation, and I still more disapprove of all
class subordination, " Mill, Works, 1 6, 1 252. "It is not for the sake of class
interests" as such that I support working-class representation, Mill wrote,
but because the working class should not "be without what every other
class has-representatives in Parliament who can speak from their own
knowledge of the wants, the grievances, and the modes of thought and
feeling of their class, " Works, 1 6, 1 485; cf. ibid. , 16, 1 1 30; 1 8, 43-45 ("Ra
tionale") .
92. Mill, Autobiography, p . 2 1 5 ; Works, 1 6, 1 452, 1 534.
93. Mill, Works, 1 7, 1 759; 1 9 , 432, 457-458 (Considerations) .
94. Mill, Works, 1 8, 252-254 (Liberty) . Mill's argument that "in politics" there

Notes to Pages 120- 1 2 1

95 .
96.
97.
98.
99.

1 00.

101 .

1 02.

272

is a division between opinions favorable "to property and to equality, to

cooperation and to competition . . . to sociality and individuality" restates
the point he makes elsewhere in his writings that these beliefs express
competing and class-based principles of j ustice.
Mill, Works, 1 9, 459 (Considerations); 10, 1 08 ("Bentham") , 1 34 ("Cole
ridge") ; 20, 270, 506.
Mill, Works, 20, 269, 358-359; 10, 1 22 ("Coleridge") .
Mill, Works, 1 8, 1 98, 200 ("DeTocqueville, 1 1 "); 1 0, 1 08 ("Bentham"); 25,
1 1 06.
Mill, Works, 1 8, 88 ("DeTocqueville, 1 "), 268-269 (Liberty); 1 5 , 588, 765;
20, 359.
Mill, Works, 1 9, 459 (Considerations) . Nevertheless, even after writing the
Considerations, Mill thought it "essential that the principle of superior ed
ucation is entitled to superior political might should be in some way con
stitutionally recognized, " Works, 1 5 , 843. The question is, in what way?
Mill had no wish to create "an intellectual aristocracy, " nor did he favor a
second House in Parliament composed of an intellectual elite, Works, 1 5,
631 ; Works, 19, 5 1 3-5 1 9 (Considerations) . By 1 865, I believe Mill had given
up the idea of plural voting (see note 1 00 below) , and the best that can be
said is that he held very high-I would say wildly exaggerated-expec
tations that Hare's electoral scheme would produce an intelligentsia among
elected representatives which would wield this "superior political might, "
Works, 1 9, 453-456 (Considerations) .
It is precisely at this point that commentators frequently overlook or set
aside Mill's understanding of the structure of his society in favor of attrib
uting to him a general philosophical commitment to elitism. Mill conceded
that plural voting was probably too closely associated with property qual
ifications, which he opposed, and would have to be given up, Works, 1 6,
998; cf. 1 5 , 905; Autobiography, pp. 1 83- 1 84. Even education was not "a
complete guarantee against being swayed by class interests, " Works, 15,
608. Hence, while Hare's plan of personal representation would allow some
individuals of national reputation to overcome the constraints of "local
influence, " it would not set aside the structural influence of class interests
in constitutional government, Works, 1 5 , 653-654; 1 9, 460 (Considerations) .
Speaking of " party creeds, " which, for most people, "run hand in hand
with their interests or with their class feelings, " Mill observes that reason
is a powerful weapon when it is used to defend "their own side of the
question" by "the best and wisest persons " who share that party and/or
class perspective. But, he adds, "we expect few conversions by the mere
force of reason, from one creed to the other. " With a few exceptions, reason
simply determines "what sort" of a partisan position a person adopts, Works,
6, 469 ("Reorganization") . Still, "a minority" or "the best members of
both classes " might be able to "lay aside their class preferences, and pursue
jointly the path traced by the common interest, " Works, 1 9, 447, 498 (Con
siderations); 1 6 , 1 0 1 4, 1 032.
The reason for this is simply that most forms of socialism in the nineteenth

Notes to Pages 121- 123

103.
1 04.

105.
1 06 .

1 07.
1 08.
1 09.
1 1 0.
111.

1 1 2.

273

century-and all the forms that Mill endorsed-adhered to the principle of

equality for women.
Mill, Political Economy, pp. 2 1 0-21 1 ; Autobiography, p. 168; Works, 5, 745746 (Socialism) ; 1 9, 396 (Considerations) .
Mill, Works, 1 4, 294; 1 8, 261 (Liberty); Autobiography, p. 1 56. Mill preferred
Fourier's system both because it did give greater weight to individuality
and because it p resented the fewest number of practical obstacles to its
realization, Works, 5, 748 (Socialism); Works, 1 4, 34; Political Economy, pp.
2 1 3-21 6.
Mill, Autobiography, p . 1 8 1 ; Works, 18, 227, 274-275, 286-287 (Liberty) .
Mill, Works, 18, 306 (Liberty) . In the Considerations, the example Mill gives
is that of a despot operating within "the rules and restraints of constitutional
government, " which include a free press, the management oflocal interests,
and an elected legislature, Works, 1 9, 402.
Mill, Works, 19, 385, 396 (Considerations) .
Mill, Political Economy, pp. 2 1 1 , 948-950; Autobiography, p . 1 43 ; Works, 19,
400-401 , 4 1 0 (Considerations) .
Mill, Political Economy, p. 2 1 1 .
Mill, Works, 18, 293 (Liberty) .
Ibid . , 18, 305-306. Mill asserts that "there is a circle around every individual
human being which no government . . . ought to be permitted to over
step. ' ' Yet, this area ofliberty and individuality, he believes, can be defended
"whatever theory we adopt respecting the foundation of the social union"
(Political Economy, p. 943 [italics mine]) . In other words, the preservation
of individual liberty is, for Mill, both a question to be considered inde
pendently of the social relations of a capitalist or a socialist society, and an
ideal that is compatible with either " foundation" of the social relations
between individuals.
The foundation and essence of private property, according to Mill, "is the
right of producers to what they themselves have produced, " Political Econ
omy, pp. 208-21 0, 2 1 8 . Since these comments occur in the context of his
description of an ideal system of private property, based upon "the prin
ciples on which the j ustification of private property rests, " it is relevant to
consider what that system looks like, especially since these remarks are
invariably misinterpreted in the secondary literature on Mill. In the first
place, a proper system of private property would never allow the private
ownership of land. Secondly, there must be a broad "diffusion, instead of
the concentration of wealth" in a few hands. Thirdly, there must be a close
and permanently established link between personal exertion, that is, labor
or personal sacrifice, and property. Notwithstanding the fact that none of
these propositions, with the exception of the (unsuccessful) movement for
the nationalization of land, were regarded by Mill as empirical tendencies in
his own society, numerous commentators have blithely cited these remarks
in order to portray Mill as a defender of private property as it presently
exists! For other comments by Mill on the general relation between property
and individual agency, see Works, 5, 450; 1 4, 5 1 .

Notes to Pages 1 23- 1 32

274

1 1 3. Mill, Political Economy, pp. 2 1 0, 373.

1 1 4. Mill, Works, 18, 307-308 (Liberty); 19, 421 -422, 439-440 (Consider
ations) .
1 1 5. Mill, Works, 18, 309-3 1 0 (Liberty); 1 9, 400-401 , 436, 438, 440 (Considerations); Political Economy, p. 950.
1 1 6. Mill, Works, 19, 535 (Considerations); Political Economy, pp. 948-949.
1 1 7. Mill, Works, 1 9 , 41 1 -4 1 2, 469 (Considerations); Political Economy, p. 373.
1 1 8. Mill, Political Economy, pp. 204-205, 373.
1 1 9. Ibid. , pp. 960-96 1 . There are other practical reasons, such as not giving
the government a monopoly of talent and intelligence, which Mill believes
j ustifies not making joint-stock companies part of the government.
1 20. Ibid . , p . 959; Works, 19, 436 (Considerations) .
1 2 1 . Mill, Political Economy, p . 773.
1 22. Mill, Works, 5, 434, 672, 690, 730 (Socialism); Political Economy, p. 1 43.

Seven . Making Sense of Moral Conflict

This chapter was written with Leszek Kolakowski and Allan Bloom in mind. I
am grateful to G. A. Cohen for his incisive criticisms.
1 . See discussion in Charles Larmore, Patterns ofMoral Complexity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1 987) , pp. 10, 37-38, 1 59- 1 60.
2. See Marco Orru, Anomie: History and Meanings (Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1 987) , p. 28. See also Martin Ostwald, Nomos and the Beginnings of the
Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1 969) .
3. Larmore, Patterns, p. 10.
4. Bernard Williams, "Conflicts of Values, " Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1 981 ) , p. 75.
5. J. P. Sartre, L 'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Nagel, 1 959) , pp. 3943.
6. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1 969) , pp. xlix-1.
7. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism , 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press , 1 978) , III, 528.
8. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, V. 294.
9. Leszek Kolakowski, Religion (London: Fontana, 1 982) , pp. 1 87, 1 89 .
10. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1 987) , p. 39.
1 1 . Kolakowski, Religion, p . 1 87.
12. See Michael Walzer, "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands, "
Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (Winter 1 973) : 1 75 .
1 3 . Niccolo Machiavelli, I I Principe, chap . x v .
14. Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Mich
igan Press, 1 95 1 ) , p . 82.
1 5 . Larmore, Patterns, p . 132.
1 6 . Ibid. , pp. 1 4 1 , 1 43.

Notes to Pages

1 33- 1 38

275

17. Notably by the Polish sociologist Maria Ossowska. The following books
by her are available in English: Social Determinants of Moral Ideas (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 97 1 ) ; Bourgeois Morality, trans. G. L. Campbell
(London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 986) , and Moral Norms: A Tentative
Systematisation, trans. Irena Gulowska (Warsaw and Amsterdam: PWN,
1980) .
1 8 . Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana,
1 985) , p. 1 60.
1 9 . Cf. Ronald Dworkin, "Is There Really No Right Answer in Hard Cases, "
A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1 985) .
20. Berlin, Four Essays, p. 1 .
21 . Williams, "Conflicts of Values , " pp. 76, 77.
22. John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness : Political not Metaphysical, " Philosophy and
Public Affairs (Summer 1 985) : 225.
23. Thomas Nagel, " The Fragmentation of Value, " Mortal Questions (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 979) , pp. 1 34, 1 38, 1 34.
24. Larmore, Patterns, p. 10. Larmore clearly uses a broader (and vaguer?) sense
of "moral" than does Nagel. His "proj ects and friendships" would not, it
seems, fall within N agel's definition.
25 . See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford : Oxford University Press,
1 986) , chap. 1 3.
26. David Hume, Essays Moral and Political, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose
(London, 1 875) , II, 68.
27. John Ladd, The Structure of a Moral Code: A Philosophical Analysis of Ethical
Discourse Applied to the Ethics of the Navaho Indians (Cambridge, Mass . :
Harvard University Press, 1 957) , p . 3 1 6 . Cf. Richard Brandt, Hopi Ethics
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1 954) . I have sought to address this
problem in a forthcoming paper on the use of ethnocentricity.
28. R. Grandy, "Reference, Meaning and Truth, " Journal of Philosophy 70
( 1 973) : 445. See my concluding chapter, "Relativism in its Place, " to Martin
Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds . , Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Black
wells, 1 982) .
29. See Larmore, Patterns, chap. 6.
30. Kolakowski, Religion, p . 1 92.
3 1 . See Steven Lukes, Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1 985) .
32. Max Weber, Politik als Beruf, trans. in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, eds. ,
From Max Weber ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 948) . Leszek Ko
lakowski, "Ethics without a Moral Code, " Triquarterly 22 (1 971 ) : esp. 7274.
33. Max Weber, Wissenschafi als Beruf ("Science as Vocation") in Gerth and
Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 148.
34. Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, pp. 1 43, 1 97, 201 , 207, 219.
35. Alasdair Macintyre, Afier Virtue (London: Duckworth, 198 1 ) , p . 1 1 1 .
36. Jurgen Habermas, Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews, ed. P. Dews (London:
Verso, 1 986) , p. 206.

Notes to Pages

1 38- 1 43

2 76

37. Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (London: Heinemann, 1 973) , p p . 1 07,

1 1 1 . See Steven Lukes, "Of Gods and Demons: Habermas and Practical
Reason, " in John Thompson and David Held, eds. , Habermas: Critical De
bates (London: Macmillan, 1 982) .
38. Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, p. 34.
39. Berlin, Four Essays, pp. lv-lvi. Berlin is rather tough on "single-minded
monists, " calling them " ruthless fanatics, men possessed by an all-em
bracing coherent vision, " who "do not know the doubts and agonies of
those who cannot wholly blind themselves to reality. " I tend to agree with
James Griffin, who, in a discussion of incommensurability, observes that
computation on a single scale does not need a substantive "single central
principle. " He suggests plausibly that: "if we assembled all the deplorable
fanatics that history has ever seen and asked them to divide into two lobbies,
labelled ' monists' and 'pluralists , ' my money would be on the pluralists'
winning hands down. " It is hard to think that a happy, productive life
counts for nothing, but unfortunately it seems terribly easy to think that
it counts for nothing up against what is seen as the "incommensurably
higher"! Oames Griffin, Well-Being [Oxford: Clarendon, 1 987] , p. 9 1 ) . Lib
eralism is about fairness between conflicting moral and religious positions,
but it is also about filtering out those that are incompatible with a liberal
order and taming those that remain.
40. Rawls, "Justice as Fairness, " pp. 248-249.
41 . Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, p. 30.
42. John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory . " The John Dewey
Lectures, Journal of Philosophy 77 (September 1 980) : 542.
43. For a sophisticated argument that these exhaust the field, see Alasdair
Macintyre, WhoseJustice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind . : University
of Notre Dame Press, 1 988) , for example, "There is no standing ground,
no place for enquiry, no way to engage in the practice of advancing, eval
uating, accepting, and rej ecting reasoned argument apart from that which
is provided by some particular tradition or other" (p . 350) , and "Progress
in rationality is achieved only from a point of view" (p. 144) .
44. See Thomas N agel, "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy, " Philosophy
and Public Affairs 1 6 ( 1 987) : 21 5-240.

Eight. Liberal Dialogue Versus A Critical Theory of Discursive Legitimation

I wish to thank Nancy Rosenblum for her helpful editorial suggestions on this
chapter.
1 . Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements ofJustice, trans . John Ladd (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1 965), p. 34. "Justice is therefore the aggregate of
those conditions under which the will of one person can be joined with the
will of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom. "
2. Cf. John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory , " The John
Dewey Lectures, Journal of Philosophy 77 (September 1 980) : 5 1 5-572; "Jus-

Notes to Pages

3.

4.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

1 43- 1 4 7

277

tice as Fairness : Political, not Metaphysical, " Philosophy and Public Affa irs
1 4 (Summer, 1 985) : 223-25 1 . In "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus, "
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7 ( 1 987) : 1 -25, Rawls has distanced himself
from a liberalism based upon a comprehensive moral doctrine like that of
Kant and John Stuart Mill. I am skeptical, however, that his theory of
justice can function without such a strong moral basis.
Rawls's contribution to the " Liberalism and the Moral Life" conference
"On the Idea of Free Public Reason" does not change my assessment. As
far as I can tell, in this essay as well the emphasis is on the individual and
not the dialogic use of reason.
See Karl-Otto Apel, "The A Priori of the Communication Community
and the Foundations of Ethics: the Problem of a Rational Foundation of
Ethics in the Scientific Age, " in Towards a Trans.formation of Philosophy,
trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul,
1 980) , pp. 225-30 1 ; Jiirgen Habermas first suggested this model in his essay
"Wahrheitstheorien, " in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, ed. H. Fahrenbach (Pfiil
lingen: Neske, 1 973) , but significantly modified its elements in his most
recent "Diskursethik: Notizen zu einem Begriindungsprogramm, " Mor
albewusstsein und kommunikatives Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 983), pp.
53- 1 27 (an abridged English translation of this essay is forthcoming in Seyla
Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr, eds . , The Communicative Ethics Controversy
(Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1 989) .
Immanuel Kant, " Perpetual Peace, " Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 983) , p. 1 26.
Kant, "Perpetual Peace, " p. 1 13 .
B ruce Ackerman, Social Justice i n the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale Uni
versity Press, 1 980) .
Bruce Ackerman, "Why Dialogue?, "Journal ofPhilosophy 86 Oanuary 1 989) :
5-22.
Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, p. 4.
Ibid. , p. 1 1 .
"Why Dialogue?, " p . 8.
Ibid . , p. 9.
Ibid . , pp. 1 6- 1 7 .
I t i s not inconceivable that there will be situations when restraining public
dialogue in a polity may be morally desirable. The most frequently cited
instances are national security considerations or what the tradition used to
describe as raisons d'etat. I am extremely skeptical even about such prima
facie morally plausible cases which would lead to the imposition of gag
rules in a society. Take the case of the suppression by the State Department
and some media officials of the news of the extermination of the Jews and
the building of concentration camps in Europe during the Second World
War. In order not to create public pressure for the United States to enter
the war, the U . S . government censored such new_s for a while. Is it so
clear, however, which is the better argument in such an instance? Were the
national security considerations of the United States at that point in time

Notes to Pages

1 4 7- 1 50

2 78

so clearly superior to the moral claims of the European Jews to demand

help and an end to their extermination from any source whatever? And
may it not have been desirable on moral grounds for the American public
to be informed right away and as fully as possible of these circumstances
rather than under conditions of a carefully orchestrated war effort? Cf.
David S. Wyman, The Abandonment oftheJews (New York: Pantheon, 1 984) .
I believe that the moral burden of proof in such cases is almost always on
the shoulders of the advocates of gag rules. However, every polity in which
political discourse is an institution respects certain constraints on the use of
free speech. Furthermore, individuals and associations may be guided by a
certain sense of what is appropriate "public speech. " A philosophical and
moral theory of public dialogue that views this as a procedure for moral I
legitimation accepts constitutional guarantees to free speech as well as sug
gesting some norms of public dialogue. But insofar as it is also critical of
existing relations, such a view may challenge both existing legal practices
and cultural codes of speech from the standpoint of a moral norm.
1 5 . For these criticisms, see "Why Dialogue?. "
16. Compare, on the charge of "emptiness, " S teven Lukes, "Of Gods and
Demons: Habermas and Practical Reason, " in Habermas: Critical Debates,
ed. John B. Thompson and David Held (Cambridge, Mass . : MIT Press,
1 982) , pp. 1 36- 1 40.
17. For my criticism of this strong j ustification, see Seyla Benhabib, Critique,
Norm and Utopia . A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1 986) , chap. 8 . Charles Larmore has some
interesting suggestions along similar lines in Patterns of Moral Complexity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 987) , pp. 51-56. I disagree with
Larmore that a "neutral j ustification of political neutrality" is possible.
There is nothing neutral about the norm of "rational dialogue, " which
Larmore also endorses in the Habermasian model. I think there may be
some confusion here between the political and the philosophical sense of
neutrality . Philosophically, a norm of rational dialogue is based on strong
assumptions, which we nonetheless think can be shown to be " reasonable"
from a moral point of view . Politically, the norm of rational dialogue is
neutral to the extent that it does allow a plurality of conceptions of the
good to be pursued in a modern society, while clearly advocating, en
dorsing, or holding up as an ideal a way of life embodying the norm of
egalitarian reciprocity. In this sense the discourse model is utopian, for it
anticipates a future which we do not yet share. However, such a utopian
and philosophically non-neutral position does not j ustify the violation of
political neutrality, that is, the acceptance of all conceptions of the good
that are willing to submit themselves to the test of discursive j ustification.
Nor can we exclude even opponents of the norm of reciprocal equality
from public dialogue as long as they wish to participate in it-or maybe
even reject it altogether for themselves but allow it to continue for others .
The search for a "neutral j ustification of neutrality" may well be the swan
song of a certain brand of liberalism that, in an attempt to make its moral
,

Notes to Pages

1 50- 1 64

2 79

standpoint less and less controversial, ends up hollowing out the political
vision that makes liberalism so challenging as a theory of political insti
tutions.
18. Habermas, "Diskursethik, " p. 1 03 (my translation) .
1 9 . Jurgen Habermas, "Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln, "
Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 983) ,
pp. 1 69-1 82.
20. Cf. Nancy Fraser, "Toward a Discourse Ethic of Solidarity, " Praxis Inter
national 5 Oanuary 1 986) : 425.

Nine. Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate

1 . This chapter applies a distinction which has been defined and explored in
depth by Mimi Bick in her dissertation for Oxford, "The Liberal-Com
munitarian Debate: A Defense of Holistic Individualism" (unpub. diss . ,
Trinity, 1 987) . M y discussion owes a great deal to her work.
2. I am here following Mimi Bick's terminology; "Liberal-Communitarian
Debate, " chap. 1 .
3. Sen's definition, which appears in Amartya Sen, "Utilitarianism and Wel
farism, " The Journal of Philosophy 76 ( 1 979) : 463-489, runs: "Welfarism:
The j udgement of the relative goodness of states of affairs must be based
exclusively on, and taken as an increasing function of, the respective col
lections of individual utilities in these states. " I have discussed the atomist
component of welfarism so defined in "Irreducibly Social Goods" (forth
coming) .
4. See Ronald Dworkin, "Liberalism, " in Stuart Hampshire, ed. , Public and
Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 978) ; and
"What Liberalism Isn't, " The New York Review of Books 20 Oanuary 1 983) :
47-50.
5. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 982) .
6. See, for instance Amy Gutmann, "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism, "
Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 4 (Summer 1 985) : 308-322. Brian Barry offers
a particularly crass example of the confusion. See his review of Michael
Sandel's Liberalism, in Ethics 94 (April 1 984) : 523-525.
7. See Sandel, Liberalism, p. 35.
8. Ibid. , chap. 2.
9. John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University
Press , 1 97 1 ) , p. 1 0 1 .
1 0 . See, for example, Michael Sandel, "Democrats and Community, " The New
Republic, Feb. 22, 1 988, pp. 20-23.
1 1 . Mimi Bick, "Liberal-Communitarian Debate, " pp. 1 64- 1 68, cites the case
of Morelly as another example in this category .
1 2 . See the debate between Amartya Sen, "Equality ofWhat?" in Choice, Welfare
and Measurement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1 982) , and "Capability and Well
Being, " WIDER Research Paper (forthcoming) ; G. A. Cohen, "Equality

Notes to Pages 1 64- 1 75

13.

14.
15.
16.
17.
1 8.
19.

20.
21 .

280

of What? On Welfare, Resources and Capabilities, " WIDER Research Paper

(forthcoming) ; Ronald Dworkin, "What is Equality?: Part 2. Equality of
Resources, " in Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (198 1 ) : 283.
I have tried to sketch the common features that unite the theories of Dwor
kin, "Liberalism, " "What Liberalism Isn't, " and "What is Equality?";
Rawls, Theory ofJustice; Nagel, "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy, "
Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 6 (Summer 1 987) : 21 5-240; and T. M. Scanlon,
"Contractualism and Utilitarianism, " in Amartya Sen and Bernard Wil
liams, eds . Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1 982) .
Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, bk. IV, chap. 5.
See S tephen Schiffer's account of " mutual knowledge" in Meaning (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1 972) , pp. 30 ff
See Greg Urban, "Ceremonial Dialogues in South America, " American
Anthropologist 88 (1 986) : 371 -386.
I have tried to argue this in Charles Taylor, "Theories of Meaning, " Human
Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 985) .
Nicomachean Ethics, 1 1 67b3.
There is another version of the civic humanist tradition, and of what I later
refer to as its republican thesis, which has been articulated by Quentin
Skinner and attributed by him to Machiavelli. See Quentin Skinner, "The
Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, " in
Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner, eds. , Philosophy
in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) . According to
this, the appeal of the theory is purely to instrumental considerations. The
only way to defend any of my freedoms is to sustain a regime of activity
participation, because otherwise I shall be at the mercy of others who are
far from having my interest at heart. On this version, we do without
common goods altogether, and freedom is redefined as a convergent value.
Skinner may be right about Machiavelli, though I am unconvinced. But
this interpretation could not capture, for example, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
Tocqueville, Mill (in On Representative Government) , or Hannah Arendt.
(Skinner does not claim that it does . ) In that sense, the description that I
am offering remains historically very relevant. The issue concerns which
of these variants is relevant to today's politics. I am convinced that mine
is.
For this revisionist, or elite, theory of democracy, see Joseph Schumpeter,
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper, 1 950) .
The United States is peculiarly fortunate in that, from the very beginning,
its patriotism welded together the sense of nationality with a liberal rep
resentative regime. For other Western nations these have been distinct, and
even in tension. Think of France, where until recent decades a strong sense
of national identity went along with a deep rift in the society, where an
important segment rejected liberal democracy, even saw the greatness of
France as entailing its rejection. The stability of contemporary Western
democracies results from a fusion between national identity and free regimes

Notes to Pages 1 75- 1 94

22 .

23.

24.
25.
26.

27.

281

finally having been achieved, so that now Atlantic countries are proud to
share a democratic civilization. But what happened at the beginning in the
United States was achieved late and sometimes painfully in some other
countries, for example, Germany or Spain-and perhaps now in Argentina?
I have discussed this issue in "Alternative Futures, " in Alan Cairns and
Cynthia Williams, eds. , Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada
(Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1 985) .
Of course there have been challenges to the requirement to take the pledge
of allegiance, and the issue of whether it should be imposed was the occasion
of some fairly base demagoguery in the 1 988 presidential election. But this
punctual challenge to a particular ritual on, say, religious grounds, although
it poses a dilemma for a republican regime, does not frontally attack the
central beliefs and attitudes that patriotism lives by, as my constructed
examples were meant to do.
See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1 958) , Robert Bellah et al. , Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1 985) , and William Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Phi
losophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 982) .
Aristotle, Politics, 1 25%5.
See Michael Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered
Self, " Political Theory 12 ( February 1 984) : 8 1 -96.
John Rawls seems to define the American liberal tradition pretty well ex
clusively in terms of the procedural ideal. . See "Justice as Fairness: Political
not Metaphysical, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (Summer 1 985) : 22325 1 . Michael Sandel takes issue with this view of American history, arguing
for the recent hegemony of the procedural republic. See Sandel, "Procedural
Republic, " and also his forthcoming book. The issue is also hotly debated
among American historians.
See Taylor, "Alternative Futures . "

Ten . Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights

1 . George Kateb, "Democratic Individuality and the Claims of Politics, " Po
litical Theory 1 2 (August 1 984) : 33 1 -360.
2. In A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed. , Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1 95 1 ) , p. 53.
3. Henry Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings (New York: Modem Library,
1937) , p. 70.
4. Luke 1 0:30-37 .
5. Matthew 5:45.
6. Compare the discussion in Nancy Rosenblum, Another Liberalism (Cam
bridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1 987) , pp. 1 03- 1 24.
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Politics, " in The Complete Essays and Other Writings
(New York: Modern Library, n . d . ) , p. 423.
8. Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience, " Walden, p. 655.
9 . "Thoreau, " in Emerson, Complete Essays, p. 897.

Notes to Pages 1 94-21 0

282

1 0 . Wallace Stevens, "Esthetique du Mal, " Collected Poems (New York: Vintage,
1 982) , p. 320.
1 1 . "Walden, " in Thoreau, Walden, p . 292.
12. "Nature, " in Emerson, Complete Essays, p. 3.
13. For example, Emerson's words about "crossing a bare common" in Nature,
pp. 6-7.
14. Nature, in Emerson, Complete Works, p. 6.
15. "Art, " in Emerson, Complete Works, p . 307. For a somewhat different
tendency, see Emerson's essay, "Thoughts on Art, " also published in 1 841 ,
in Stephen E. Whicher, Robert E. Spiller, and Wallace E. Williams, eds . ,
The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard
University Press, 1 964) , II, 42-54. However, Emerson called this latter
piece a "poor obsolete essay. " See Robert E. Spiller and Wallace F. Williams,
eds. , The Early Lectures ofRalph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard
University Press, 1 972) , III, 372.
1 6 . William Hazlitt, "On Imitation, " in David Bromwich, ed. , Romantic Critical
Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1 987) , pp. 92-96.
'
17. Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 Nov. 1 8 1 7, in Robert Gittings, ed. , Letters
ofJohn Keats (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 970) , p. 37.
18. Letter to Tom Keats, 25-27 June 1 81 8, in Gittings, Letters ofJohn Keats, p .
1 03.
1 9 . Walt Whitman, "Preface, 1 855, " Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose, ed. John
Kouwenhoven (New York: Modem Library, 1 950) , p. 444.
20. Whitman, "Preface, 1 855, " p. 447.
21 . Thoreau, Walden, p. 283.
22. Henry James: Autobiography, ed. Frederick W. Dupee (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1 983) , p. 563.
23. See, for example, "The Subj ect and Power" in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul
Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 983) , p. 216.
24. See, for example, Foucault's words in Noam Chomsky and Michel Fou
cault, "Human Nature: Justice versus Power, " in Fons Elders, ed. , Reflexive
Water (London: Souvenir Press, 1 974) , pp. 1 49- 1 5 1 .
25. John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty, " The Philosophy ofJohn Stuart Mill, ed.
Marshall Cohen (New York: Modem Library, 1 96 1 ) , p. 289.
26. For his great meditation on this theme, see D. H. Lawrence, American
Literature ( 1 923; New York: Penguin, 1 977) .
27. "Circles, " in Emerson, Complete Essays, p. 282.

Eleven . Pluralism and Self-Defense

1.

Nancy L. Rosenblum, Another Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Uni

versity Press, 1 987) .
2. Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodemity, " in Richard J.
Bernstein, ed. , Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1 985),
pp. 1 74- 1 75 .

Notes to Pages

2 1 1-22 1

283

3. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty, " Four Essays On Liberty (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1 969) , pp. 1 6 1 , 1 26- 1 29, 171 .
4. Charles Taylor, "What's Wrong with Negative Liberty, " in Alan Ryan,
ed. , The Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 979) .
5. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Cap italism (New York: Basic
Books, 1 976) .
6. Charles Taylor, "Language and Human Nature, " Human Agency and Lan
guage: Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 985) , p. 247.
7. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment (New York: Vintage, 1 979) .
8. This approach sets aside important aspects of contemporary political theory,
including methodology and metatheoretical claims.
9. M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism (New York: Norton, 1 971 ) , p . 377.
1 0 . George Kateb, "Democratic Individuality and the Claims of Politics, " Po
litical Theory 1 2 (August 1 984) : 331 -360, and Chapter 10, "Democratic
Individuality and the Meaning of Right. " See in contrast my discussion of
individuality in chaps. 1 and 5 of Another Liberalism .
1 1 . William Connolly, Politics and Ambiguity (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1 987) , pp. 96, 84n.
1 2 . Harold Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe (New York: Harper and Row, 1 975) , p.
216.
1 3 . Roberto Unger, Law and Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1 976) , p .
206.
14. For example, Charles Taylor writes of the goal of identification with the
will of a rational community. Later in the same paragraph he concedes the
possibility that differences will be too great for people to coexist within a
self-governing community, in which case the goal is to create more space
to allow "otherness to be, " Taylor, "Connolly, Foucault and Truth, " Po
litical Theory 13 (August 1 985) : 1 34. See too Taylor's discussion of the
possibility, after all, of liberal patriotism and of a conception of the rule of
right as an important shared good, in Chapter 9 of this volume. One
exception is Michael Sandel's suggestion that communitarians would be
more likely than liberals to allow a local community to ban pornographic
bookstores; see S andel, "Morality and the Liberal Ideal , " The New Republic,
May 7, 1 984, p. 1 7.
1 5 . Thomas Nagel, "Agreeing in Principle, " Times Literary Supplement, July
8- 14, 1 988.
16. Taylor's formulation is inclusive: the personal capacities at issue include all
those involved in "openness to certain matters of significance. " He looks
for nothing less than a new model of human maturity. See Taylor, "The
Concept of a Person, " Human Agency, p. 105 .
1 7. Robert Bellah, e t al. , Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1 985) .
1 8. William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, Ill. : Free Press,
1 959) . For a thorough review of participatory criticisms of pluralism and
a defense of "public pluralism" in which government has a part in both

Notes to Pages

19.
20.
21 .

22.
23.
24.
25.

26.
27.

22 1 -227

284

organizing marginal elements from the bottom up and regulating the give
and-take of interests from the top down, see William Kelso, American Dem
ocratic Theory: Pluralism and Its Critics (Westport, Conn. : Greenwood, 1 978) .
Albert 0. Hirschmann, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 982) .
Francis Fitzgerald, Cities on a Hill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 98 1 ) .
Nancy L . Rosenblum, "Studying Authority: Keeping Pluralism i n Mind, "
in J. Roland Pennock and John Chapman, eds . , Authority Revisited: Nomos
XXIX (New York: New York University Press, 1 987) , pp. 1 02- 1 30.
Richard Rodriguez, Hunger ofMemory (New York: Bantam, 1 983) , pp. 1 06,
35.
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1 971 ) , pp. 291 , 293, 269.
Rodriguez, Hunger, p. 72.
There has been a recent surge of interest in internal and external complexity
and the relation between them. Even more striking than theorists of moral
complexity per se, in this regard, is Thomas Nagel, who sets his argument
for an obj ective morality in the context of a philosophical psychology by
which personalities do not have a unified standpoint on the world. Thomas
Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 986) .
Taylor, "Introduction, " Human Agency and Language, p. 8. See the discus
sion of ontology-advocacy in this volume.
For a discussion of the lack of psychological sophistication in current po
litical theory, see Nancy L. Rosenblum and Sherry Turkle, "Political Phi
losophy's Pyschologized Self, " in Cheryl Welch and Murray Milgate, eds. ,
Critical Issues in Social Theory (Boulder, Colo . : Westview, forthcoming) .

Twelve. The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought

1 . The works I principally have in mind are Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue,
2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 1 984) , and
Whose Justice? Wh ich Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind . : University of Notre
Dame Press, 1 988) ; Roberto Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York: Free
Press , 1 975) , and Politics, A Work in Constructive Social Theory, 3 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1 987); and Michael Sandel, Lib
eralism and the Limits ofJustice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 982) . Various kindred spirits will be cited later.
2. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy
( 1 923- 1 926), (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1 985) ; The Concept of the
Political, trans. George Schwab ( 1 928-1 932) (New Brunswick, N .J . : Rut
gers University Press, 1 976) ; Romischer Katholizismus und politische Form
( 1 923) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1 984); Verfassungslehre (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1 928) ; and Giovanni Gentile, Genesi e struttura de/la societa (Flor
ence: Sansoni, 1 946); Che cosa e il fascismo (Florence: Vallecchi, 1 925 ) .
3. Compare Maclntyre's assertion that liberals see "the social world a s nothing
but a meeting place for individual wills" (After Virtue, p. 25) with Gentile's

Notes to Pages

227-232

5.
6.
7.
8.

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
1 4.
15.
16.

17.

18.
19.

285

claim that "The error of the old liberalism [is] the atomistic conception of
society, understood as the accidental grouping and encounter of abstract
individuals" ( Gen es i e struttura de/la societa p. 65) .
For some useful citations and an utterly implausible analysis, see Herbert
Marcuse, "The Struggle against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the
State, " Negations (Boston: Beacon, 1 968) , pp. 3-42.
Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofjustice, pp. 1 75- 1 83.
Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1 986) .
Macintyre, After Virtue, pp. 2, 256.
Readers sympathetic to antiliberalism will no doubt view my criticisms as
oversimplifications. Are not the thinkers I describe as "antiliberal" much
too diverse to be classified together as a single group espousing a single
viewpoint? Some are religious while others are Marxist. Some pine for the
loss of community, while others regret the eclipse of authority. Some are
full-fledged enemies ofliberalism, others, as I mention, are much less ardent
in their hostility, and not a few incorporate important liberal ideas into
their own thinking. So how can I justify using an omnibus term to lump
together such a heterogeneous set of writers? Despite their important dif
ferences, I answer, today's antiliberals also share enough in common to
justify a unified treatment. The range of perceptions and biases they share
appears even more formidable when viewed against a background of what
divides them.
Unger, Knowledge and Politics p. 76.
Unger, Law in Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1 976) , pp. 6 1 -62.
Macintyre, After Virtue, p. 1 56.
Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1 960) , p. 350;
he also mentions, tantalizingly, a "community tinged with truth" (p. 294) .
Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, p. 1 83; c( George Will, Statecraft
as Sou/craft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 983) , p. 1 43.
Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon, 1 968) , pp.
1 83 , 1 84.
Unger, Knowledge and Politics, p . 261 .
There is nothing novel about critics for whom "disparagement ofliberalism
forms part of a general lamentation over the moral and spiritual degeneration
of modern society, " Francis Coker, " Some Present-Day Critics of Liber
alism, " American Political Science Review 47 (March 1 953) : 1 2 .
I n discussing the basis of their hopelessly vague "community" antiliberals
frequently blur together the following three ideas: consensus, similarity,
and mutual identification. Assenting to common beliefs, however, in no
way implies membership in a common group. And there is a world of
difference between a resemblance and a relationship.
Likewise, empathy with the victimized is laudable; but identification with
the victimizer is not.
Bernard Yack provides a useful analysis of the confusions contained in the
antiliberal postulate that some forms of social life are more social than others:
,

4.

Notes to Pages

20.
21 .

22.
23.
24.
25.

26.

27.

28.

29.
30.

31 .
32.
33.

232-235

286

"Does Liberal Practice 'Live Down' to Liberal Theory: Liberalism and its
Communitarian Critics, " in Charles Reynolds, ed . , Community in America:
The Challenge of 'Habits of the Heart' {Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1 988) , pp. 1 47- 1 69.
Charles Taylor, "Atomism, " Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1 985) , p. 200.
Ibid . , p. 1 89. This "refutation" ofliberalism may have been coined in 1 796,
when the Catholic reactionary Louis de Bonald wrote that "society con
stitutes man . " Because people only acquire recognizably human needs
through socialization and interaction, he argued, "man exists only through
society" ("Thforie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la societe civile, "
Oeuvres completes, 1 5 vols. [Paris: Migne, 1 859), I, 1 23) . The usual sugges
tion is that the social constitution of the individual logically entails that the
edifice of liberal politics be razed and replaced by a system celebrating the
supremacy of society over the individual.
Robert Bellah et al. , Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in
American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1 985), p. 1 44.
Taylor, "Atomism, " pp. 1 98, 200.
Paraphrasing Sandel's lyrical conclusion: "we can know 'a bad' in common
that we cannot know alone" (Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, p . 1 83) .
A troubled child whose identity is "constituted" by socialization in an
emotionally disturbed family does not seem to have the kind of "obligation
to belong" that Taylor assumes. Because my identity is " constituted" by
my enemies and even by the remote past, the entire assumption that causal
influence entails moral duties seems bizarre, to say the least.
This is the fundamental theoretical insight ofLawrence Stone's controversial
The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1 500- 1 800 (New York: Harper
& Row, 1 979) .
More gently : "the real and recognized dilemma of modem liberalism . . . is
not that people are naturally egoistical, but rather that they disagree about
the nature of the good life" (Amy Gutmann, "Communitarian Critics of
Liberalism, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 [ 1 985 ) : 3 1 7) .
The possible tension between citizenship and communal attachments, ig
nored by antiliberals, is helpfully discussed in Clifford Geertz, "The Inte
grative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New
States, " The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1 973) , pp.
255-3 10.
Taylor, "Atomism, " p. 209; Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, p. 80.
This point is stressed by Yack, "Does Liberal Practice 'Live Down' to
Liberal Theory, " and by Michael Walzer, "The Communitarian Critics of
Liberalism, " forthcoming in Political Theory, 1 989.
Michael Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, "
Political Theory 1 2 ( 1 984) : 82.
This is the working premise of Bellah, Habits of the Heart.
The useful phrase "latent community" is suggested by Nancy Rosenblum,

Notes to Pages

34.
35.

36.

37.
38.

39.

40 .

41 .
42.
43.
44.
45 .
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51 .

52.
53.

235-24 1

287

"Moral Membership in a Postliberal State, " World Politics 36 Quly 1 984) :

589.
Macintyre, Whose justice? Which Rationality? , pp. 307-308.
David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding (Oxford: Clar
endon, 1 962) , p . 1 86. Macintyre levels the same charge against Blackstone.
It too is easily refuted-in this case, by the section of subsistence rights at
the beginning of the Commentaries.
Fortunately I do not need to j ustify applying a common label to a loose
assemblage of thinkers who lived in different centuries and wrote in quite
dissimilar national contexts . The enemies of liberalism have set the terms
of the debate. They use the word "liberalism" as if it were historically
noncontroversial; and they will no doubt continue to do so. I could of
course engage them terminologically; but verbal prohibitions and instruc
tions are pointless. Even if the word "liberalism" were intellectually use
less-which it is not-it will not go away.
The evidence adduced here will be a sampling, not an exhaustive survey.
This is the essence of John Rawls's answer to the antiliberal attack on his
work in "Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical, " Philosophy and
Public Affairs 14 ( 1 985) : 223-25 1 .
For example, Bellah, Habits of the Heart, p . 1 43.
Hume, "Of the Original Contract, " Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, pp.
465-487.
See The Educational Writings ofJohn Locke, ed. James Axtell (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press , 1 968) .
Montesquieu, "De )'esprit des lois, " Oeuvres completes, 2 vols. , II, 235 (I,
2) .
Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, p. 1 43; Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Ration
ality?, pp. 334-335.
In some circumstances, in fact, toleration and voluntariness can nourish
such prepolitical "bonds. "
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 341 .
Locke, Two Treatises of Government, p. 3 1 6 (II, 2, 1 3) ; Madison, The Fed
eralist Papers, No. 1 0, p. 79.
Macintyre, After Virtue, p . 1 70.
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis, Ind. : BobbsMerrill, 1 955) , pp. 36, 50, 40, 1 6.
Aristotle, Politics, 1 254b, 20-22.
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 3 1 7; Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, p. 45.
Montesquieu, "De !'esprit des lois, " 39, II, 237 (I, 3) ; "it is impossible for
the human race to subsist, at least in any comfortable and secure state,
without the protection of government" (Hume, "Of the Original Con
tract, " Essays, p. 466) .
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, (New York: Modern Library, 1 937) , book
III, chap . 3.
Eighteenth-century arguments for the restricted suffrage are frequently mis-

Notes to Pages 24 1 -243

54.

55.
56.
57.

58.

59.

60.
61 .

62.

288

interpreted in this regard. Montesquieu, for example, believed that the

British were right to limit the franchise to the propertied classes because
the poor would predictably sell their vote for a meal ("De !'esprit des lois, "
II, 400 (XI, 6]) . The restricted suffrage was, among other things, a technique
for limiting the influence of money in public life.
According to Hume, "liberty is the perfection of society; but still authority
must be acknowledged essential to its very existence" ("Origin of Gov
ernment, " Essays, p. 4 1 ) . This claim contrasts nicely with Maclntyre's
nostalgic remark that liberal modernity is "a culture to which the notion
of authority is alien and repugnant" (After Virtue, p. 42) .
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 291 ; Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, p. 2 1 .
Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston: Beacon,
1 959) , p. 2.
Montesquieu, "De !'esprit des lois, " p. 3 1 7 (VI, 8) .
The liberal idea that public disagreement produces intelligent decisions
(George Sabine, "The Historical Position of Liberalism, " American Scholar
10 ( 1 940-41 ) : 49-58), first formulated in Milton's Areopagitica, should be
contrasted with the romantic and antilibral notion that public participation
produces beautiful citizens.
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 300. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraji, p . 89; the
distinction between economic goals (such as monetary profit) and economic
or calculative thinking (which may serve noneconomic goals) does not
always register clearly with antiliberal writers. R. H. Tawney, Religion and
the Rise of Cap italism ( 1 92 7; Gloucester, Mass. : Peter Smith, 1 962) , pp. 57,
207.
Montesquieu, "De I' esprit des lois, " II, 585.
Voltaire, "Lettres philosophiques, " Melanges (Paris: Pleiade, 1 961 ) , pp. 1 71 8; Voltaire modeled his argument here on a famous passage in Spinoza.
While pouring scorn on "the avaricious . . . who think supreme salvation
consists in filling their stomachs and gloating over their money-bags , "
Spinoza did not allow disdain fo r wealth to obscure his vision o f the in
strumental value of economic relations. Far from weakening the state, he
argued, economic freedom increases the stability and power of a regime:
"The city of Amsterdam reaps the fruit of this freedom in its own great
prosperity and in the admiration of all other people. For in this most flour
ishing state, and most splendid city, men of every nation and religion live
together in the greatest harmony, and ask no questions before trusting their
goods to a fellow citizen, save whether he be rich or poor, and whether he
generally acts honestly or the reverse. His religion and sect is considered
of no importance" ( Theologico-Political Treatise (New York: Dover, 1 95 1 ] ,
p p . 262, 254) .
Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p . 98; it is worth comparing
Maclntyre's attack on Weber (Ajier Virtue, pp. 26-27, 1 1 4- 1 1 5, 1 43-1 44)
with Strauss's claim that Nazism was the logical culmination of Weber's
value-pluralism (Natural Right and History [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1 953] , p. 42) .

Notes to Pages 243-246

289

63. Unger, Knowledge and Politics, pp. 63- 103; Taylor, "Atomism, " p. 201 ;
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p . 332; Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, pp. 69, 90.
64. Shirley Letwin, The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1 965) , pp. 1 27- 1 88 .
65. Mill, " O n Liberty, " Essays on Politics and Society, ed. ]. M . Robson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1 977), p. 230; according to one antiantiliberal,
"Subjectivism . . . functions as a political sedative, robbing evaluative
claims of their inflammatory edge" (Don Herzog, "As Many as Six Possible
Things before Breakfast, " California Law Review 75 [ 1 987] : 613).
66 . See Steven Lukes, "Making Sense of Moral Conflict, " Chapter 7 in this
volume.
67. According to Macintyre, "Morality has to some large degree disappeared"
(After Virtue, p. 22) .
68. Ibid. , pp. 69-70.
69. Taylor, "Atomism. "
70. The right to a j ury trial, incidentally, shows that liberal rights are not merely
negative, not merely aimed at establishing freedom from state interference;
they may also guarantee access to state institutions.
71 . Rousseau, "Sur l'economie politique, " Oeuvres completes (Paris: Pleiade,
1 964) , III, 255-256.
72. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question, " The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert
Tucker (New York: Norton, 1 978) , pp. 26-46.
73. Antiliberals lodge this complaint without mentioning a single specific liberal
right. Taylor's assertion that liberals ignored the institutional preconditions
for rights would seem foolish if he actually discussed the right to a jury
trial or the right to vote.
74. Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France ( 1 797; Montreal: McGill-Queen's
University Press , 1 974) , p . 97.
75 . This putative contradiction is the theme of Maclntyre's chapter on "Lib
eralism Transformed into a Tradition, " Whose Justice? Which Rationality?,
pp. 326-348.
76. For a cogent defense of the liberal idea of neutrality, see Charles Larmore,
Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 987) , pp. 40-68 .
7 7 . The personal ties between Tawney and Strauss are symptoms of a significant
intellectual sympathy; see Ross Terrill, R . H. Tawney and His Times (Cam
bridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press , 1 973) , pp. 83-84.
78. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Har
per and Row, 1 950) , p. 1 23.
79. Montesquieu, "De I ' esprit des lois, " II 639 (XXI, 20) .
80. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Jenseits von Gut und Bose, " sec. 259, Werke (Darm
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1 973) , pp. 728-729.
81 . Locke, Two Treatises of Government, p. 31 1 (II, 2, 6) .
82. The paradoxical nature of this claim is worth stressing: liberalism is the
quintessence of weakness, but it is also (lamentably) victorious. Note that
Roberto Unger, in shifting from the antiliberalism of Knowledge and Politics
,

Notes to Pages 246-249

83.

84.
85.

86.

87.
88 .

89.
90.
91 .

92.
93.
94.

95 .

96.
97.
98.

99.
1 00.

290

to the superliberalism of Politics, has merely exchanged a traditional Catholic

for a Nietzschean criticism of liberal thought and institutions. His current
position can be usefully compared to that of George Bataille, summarized
and criticized persuasively in Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse
of Modernity (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1 987) , pp. 21 1 -237 .
The myths of the state of nature and the social contract were monuments
to the liberal belief in self-renunciation. To live civilly, individuals had to
surrender their primordial right to act as executioners of the law of nature.
Wolff, Poverty of Liberalism, p . 1 72; Taylor, "Atomism, " p. 210.
Macintyre, After Virtue, 107. Macintyre also believes that a shared com
mitment to instrumental reason helps explain the "deep cultural agreement"
(ibid . , p. 35) between capitalist and communist countries. His even-handed
claim that "both ways of life are in the long run intolerable" recalls Hei
degger's stupefying assertion that "America and Russia . . . are metaphys
ically the same" (An Introduction to Metaphysics [ 1 935; New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1 959), p. 45) .
Locke, Two Treatises of Government, p. 31 1 (II, 1 . 6) . Adam Smith, The
Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 976) , p. 234
(VI, ii, 2) .
Taylor, "Atomism, " p. 209.
Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp. 1 5 , 384, 556. The best known illustration of
Smith's pervasive concern for character formation occurs in his discussions
of the division of labor (ibid. , pp. 8-9, 735) .
Will, Statecraft as Sou/craft, p. 72.
Taylor, "Atomism, " p. 201 .
This charge conflicts with the claim that liberals had no steady goals but
were obsessed, instead, solely with the most efficient means to whatever
ends happened to cross their minds.
Schmitt, Concept of the Political.
Macintyre, After Virtue, p. 200.
They were engaged in an anticlerical polemic as well, aimed against the
disregard, say, of physical health implied by the Christian single-mind
edness about otherworldly salvation.
Andrzej Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosoph ies of
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca, N . Y . : Cornell University Press, 1 987) ,
pp. 1 50- 1 70.
Wolin, Politics and Vision, pp. 3 1 6-3 1 7.
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 1 20 (II, ii, 2) .
According to Strauss, Rousseau had already argued that "enlightenment
paves the way for despotism" ("On the Intention of Rousseau, " Hobbes and
Rousseau, ed. Maurice Cranston and Richard Peters [Garden City, N .J . :
Doubleday Anchor, 1 972), p . 267) .
Unger, Knowledge and Politics, p. 75.
For two successful demolitions of this pattern of thought, see Luc Ferry
and Alain Renault, La pensee 68: Essai sur l 'anti-humanisme contemporain (Paris:

Notes to Pages 249-252

101 .

1 02.

1 03.

1 04.

1 05 .
1 06.

1 07.

291

Gallimard, 1 985) , pp. 1 05- 197; and Habermas, Philosophical D iscourse of

Modernity, pp. 238-293.
According to Macintyre, those who criticize inherited group identity and
unquestioned religious beliefs cannot replace what they tear down. Eman
cipation spells uprootedness. Kant and others tried to establish universal
moral principles, addressing all rational human beings, regardless of their
cultural heritage or social group . But their antilocalism was bound to fail.
After the inevitable defeat of universalistic ethics, the average "post-En
lightenment person" was naturally propelled toward skepticism by sheer
disappointment. Universalism breeds nihilism, which is why Nietzsche
followed Kant with such unseemly haste (Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which
Rationality?, p. 353) .
Nietzsche challenges the antiliberal orthodoxy here too, plausibly claiming
that skepticism, far from disturbing, sedates ("Jenseits von Gut und Bose, "
Werke, sec. 208, p. 670) .
Judith Shklar, "Inj ustice, Injury, and Inequality: An Introduction, " in frank
Lucash, ed. , justice and Equality Here and Now (Ithaca, N. Y . : Cornell Uni
versity Press, 1 986) , pp. 1 3-33.
Antonym substitution is a social process, not merely an intellectual fallacy.
Its plausibility can be historically explained. for example, the opposition
of markets to barbarism, of commercialism to rudeness and lack of civi
lization, while almost universally accepted in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, lost its original self-evidence through the upheavals accompa
nying the industrial revolution. The Enlightenment commonplace that
commerce replaces war and tyranny was rudely undermined by subsequent
experience. Although the nineteenth century misinterpreted the eighteenth,
its misinterpretation can be understood as a natural response to shifting
events. Even when convincingly explained, however, historiographical dis
tortions remain distortions.
Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Cap
italism before its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) .
See Stephen Holmes, "The Secret History of Self-Interest, " in Jane Mans
bridge, ed. , Against Self Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1 989) .
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p . 324; Will, Statecrafi as Soulcrafi, p. 45.

Acknowledgments

In 1 988 the Conference for the Study of Political Thought sponsored a conference
on the subject "Liberalism and the Moral Life. " This was CSPT's twentieth
international meeting, and the occasion for the presentation of many of the papers
published here. As program organizer, I was supported by the hard work of
Melvin Richter, chairman of CSPT, in obtaining funding and making local
arrangements. His help was indispensable. I am grateful to him, and to Susan
Tenenbaum, Young Kun Kim, and Mitchell Cohen for their contributions to
the conference's success. The meeting was held at City University of New York,
and thanks are due to Joseph S. Murphy, Chancellor; Dr. Steven Cahn, Provost,
Graduate School CUNY; Dr. Donna Shalala, former President, Hunter College;
and the Hunter College Faculty Delegate Assembly for their generous support.
Finally, I am grateful to Harvard University Press editors Aida Donald and
Elizabeth Suttell for their persistence and patience in the difficult job of syn
chronizing the work of twelve authors, and to Ann Louise McLaughlin for her
excellent work editing the manuscript.
N . L . R.

Contributors

Richard Ashcraft, Professor of Political Science, University of California at Los

Angeles
Benjamin R. Barber, Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science, Rutgers Uni
versity
Seyla Benhabib, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, State
University of New York at Stony Brook
William Galston, Professor, School of Public Affairs, and Senior Research
Scholar, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland
Amy Gutmann, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics, Princeton University
Stephen Holmes, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton University
Steven Lukes, Professor of Political and Social Theory, European University
Institute, Florence
Susan Moller Okin, Professor of Politics, Brandeis University
Nancy L. Rosenblum, Professor of Political Science, Brown University
Judith N. Shklar, John Cowles Professor of Government, Harvard University
Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, McGill University

Index

Accountability, 64, 202

Barber, Benjamin, 1 1

Ackerman, Bruce, 48, 1 44- 1 46, 1 47, 1 48,

Bayle, Pierre, 5 1

1 49
Aestheticism, 1 97- 1 98, 206, 222

Bellah, Robert, 1 78
Benhabib, Seyla, 1 1

Alienation, 2 1 6-217, 224

Bentham , Jeremy, 1 06, 1 07, 1 1 0, 1 66

Althusser, Louis, 1 93- 1 94

Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 8, 1 39; and negative lib-

Altruism, 222-223

erty, 28-29, 2 1 1 ; and values, 1 28, 1 34

Anarchism, 36-37, 55, 6 1

Bill of Rights, 37, 1 49

Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick), 48

Blacks, 22, 2 1 5

Anti-individualism, 1 83-1 86, 1 98- 1 99,

200-203, 204, 206. See also Individual
ism
Antiliberalism, 2, 4, 8-9, 2 1 3, 2 1 5 , 2 1 8,

Bloom, Allan, 130 , 1 37- 1 38, 1 40

Bonald, Louis de, 249
Brandt, Richard, 1 36
Bureaucracy, 1 5, 1 22- 1 23, 1 24, 1 25, 1 80

227-229
Apel, Karl-Otto, 1 44, 1 50- 1 5 1

Castellion, Sebastien, 23

Aquinas, Thomas, 1 27, 1 40, 236

Chartism, 1 1 2- 1 1 3

Arendt, Hannah, 1 55, 1 78, 246

Chodorow, Nancy, 41

Aristotle, 1 , 81 , 227, 248; and communi

Citizenship, 34, 64, 97, 241 ; education

tarianism, 1, 95, 1 69, 2 1 5 , 240; and

women, 48; and moral conflict, 1 35,
1 38, 1 40; and individuality, 1 90, 234
"Art" (Emerson) , 1 %- 1 97

for, 76, 8 1 , 100; continuous, 1 83, 1 87,

1 98, 202

Civic education, 1 6- 1 7, 33, 74-77, 80-81 ,

83, 89, 1 24

Arts, 1 97; and the state, 85-86, 87

Civic humanism, 1 , 83, 85, 1 07, 1 65, 1 75, 1 77

Ashcraft, Richard, 1 5

Civic virtue, 2, 75-76, 79, 88, 9 1 , 93

Assimilation, 2 1 3, 222, 223-224

"Civil Disobedience" (Thoreau), 1 93

Atomism, 1 4, 1 59, 1 60, 1 63- 1 64, 223,

"Claims of Labor, The" ( J . S. Mill) , 1 12

225, 234-235; prej udices in, 1 64, 1 66,

1 67; criticism of, 1 70, 1 73, 1 75, 1 8 1 ,
21 6
Augustine, 1 40, 1 76
Authoritarianism, 4, 24, 54, 56, 6 1
Authority, 6 1 , 8 5 , 97-98, 203, 2 1 8 , 240241 , 251 ; parental, 73; educational, 73,
76, 77-78, 80-81 , 83, 95-96. See also
Power
Autobiography (J. S . Mill) , 1 05, 1 06

Class conflict, 1 05, 1 09- 1 1 2

Class interests, 1 5, 1 09, 1 1 0- 1 1 1 , 1 1 6

Coercion, 29, 3 1 , 37, % , 1 0 1 ; limits to,

24, 29-30. See also Power
Collective action, 4, 33, 65, 1 43-144, 2 1 9,
232
Common good, 1 72- 1 73, 1 75- 1 76, 1 78,
2 1 6; and private good, 71 , 73; and class
interests, 1 1 5, 1 1 6, 1 1 7- 1 1 8; ambiva
lence toward, 239-240

Index

298

Common will, 55-63, 1 70- 1 7 1

Communist Manifesto (Marx) , 123
Communitarianism , 4, 34-36, 94, 192;
and the family, 48-50, 5 1 -52, 79; and
education, 79, 90; ideals of, 183, 1 84,
202, 203, 204, 229; and pluralism, 208209, 21 3-220, 222, 224; criticism of,
230-23 1 , 233
Condorcet, Marie Jean, 5
Conduct of life, 95, 99
Connelly, William, 55, 65, 213-214
Consent, doctrine of, 1 1 , 33, 56-59, 6263, 64-65, 194
Consequentialism, 1 3 1
Conservatism, 3-4

Economic power, 42, 44

Education, 71 -74, 89-9 1 . See also Civic
education
Egalitarian difference principle, 1 62, 164
Egalitarianism, 2, 40, 55, 1 25, 130, 1 53.
See also Inequality
Egalitarian reciprocity, 1 2, 1 50, 1 52-154
Embeddedness, 219, 222, 223-224, 225
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 26, 1 85, 1 86; on
self- assertion, 1 89- 1 90, 1 94, 1 95; on
aesthetics, 1 96, 1 99-200
Emersonians, 23-24, 1 85-187, 1 89-192,
1 95- 1 98, 203, 206, 214
Emotivism, 1 28, 150, 2 1 0, 212
Enlightenment, 5 , 56, 249-250

Considerations on Representative Government

Enquiries Concerning the Human Understand-

(]. S. Mill) , 1 10, 1 1 7, 11 8-119, 123-

124, 240
Constitution (U. S. ) , 37, 59, 1 49
Constitutional government, 5, 1 06, 1 44
Contracts, 7, 223. See also Social contract
Conversational restraint model, 1 48-149
Crito (Plato) , 72
Culture, 1 87; and the state, 85-86, 87, 222

ing (Hume) , 236

Equal rights, 37, 1 90
Equity, 27, 1 1 5, 1 22- 1 23
Essai sur /es moeurs (Voltaire), 1 30
Essay on Government ( ] . S. Mill) , 106

Family, 1 0, 1 2, 40, 41-53, 72-73

Federalist Papers, 25, 9 1 , 92

Feminism, 40-53
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1 90
Fitzgerald, Francis, 222
Foucault, Michel, 1 93-195, 200, 2 1 2, 2 1 7,
219
Frankfurt school, 246
Fraser, Nancy, 1 55
Fried, Charles, 72-73
Fundamentalism, 81 -84

D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 87

Darwinism, 62
Decisionmaking, 78-79, 80-81 , 82-83,
97. See also Public dialogue; Rational
choice
Democracy, and liberalism, 6 1 . See also
Participatory democracy
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 1 06,
1 09
Deontology, 1 3 1 -132
Dependency, 62-63, 66, 80
Despotism, 1 65, 1 7 1
Dignity, citizen, 1 62, 1 65- 1 66, 1 69- 1 71 ,
1 78-1 80, 202
Discourse model, 11- 1 2. 1 49-154, 1 67IoS:'See also Public diai<g_ue
ed
D 140, 1 64; in ucation,
78-79, 85
Distributive justice, 1 , 15, 46-47, 1 1 5,
1 43-1 45
Diversity of morals, 1 33, 1 35-1 36, 1 40141
Division o f labor, 1 1 , 42, 43-45, 52, 53
Doctrine of Virtue (Kant) , 33-34
Dworkin, Ronald, 48, 1 59, 1 60, 184, 1 85

Galston, William, 16, 1 7, 48, 75-76

Geertz, Clifford, 67
Gentile, Giovanni, 227
Good life, 5 1 , 53, 1 48, 1 72, 1 82, 248; role
of education in, 7, 75, 82, 88
Government, 35, 1 86- 1 87, 239; growth
of, 2; weak, 4, 30; limited, 5, 12, 23,
212, 220; and personalfreedom, 5, 39,
54, 218, 240-241 ; function of, 26, 125.
See also Neutrality of government; Rep
resentative government; Republican
government; Self- government; State,
the
Government of Poland (Rousseau) , 72
Green, T. H . , 63
Gutmann, Amy, 16- 17; 93, 94, 98-99

Economic individualism, 1 87, 1 9 1 - 1 92

Economic libertarianism, 4
Economic man, 24 1 -243

Habermas, Jurgen: and moral conflict,

138, 1 50- 1 5 1 ; and public dialogue, 1 44,
145, 1 52

Index
Hamilton, Alexander, 58
Hazlitt, William, 1 96- 1 97
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1 , 1 53,
190

Heidegger, Martin, 246

Hirschman, Albert, 9 1 , 22 1 , 222-223, 252
History, 1 07, 1 20- 1 2 1 , 1 53
Hobbes, Thomas, 41 , 1 85 ; and authority,
24, 55, 58, 61; and communitarianism,
5 7 , 6 3 , 1 66, 1 69

Holism, 1 4 , 1 59, 1 60, 1 63- 1 64, 1 80- 1 8 1 ,

225

Holmes, Stephen, 8-9

Hull, Thomas, 82, 83
Human nature, 60, 1 07 , 1 08, 1 40, 232233, 241 -243 , 247-249

Humboldt, Alexander von, 1 3, 1 63, 221

Hume, David, 1 , 50, 238; and justice, 5 1 ,
1 6 1 ; and moral conflict, 1 35 , 1 39; and
property rights, 236
Hunger of Memory (Rodriguez), 223 , 224225

lncommensurability of morals, 1 34, 1 37,

1 38- 1 39

lncompatability of morals, 1 33-1 34, 1 361 37

Individualism, 60, 63, 1 52, 1 83 - 1 86, 2 1 4,

233, 25 1 . See also Rights-based individ
ualism
Individuality, 40, 1 43, 1 85 , 2 2 1
Individual liberty . See Personal freedom
Individual rights, 26-27, 37, 91 , 94, 97,
1 85- 1 86

lnegalitarianism, 1 53
Inequality, 1 0, 27, 1 1 7, 1 25; of women,
42, 44, 52. See also Egalitarianism
Instrumentalism, 55, 2 1 3 , 2 1 8
Instrumental rationality, 32-33, 246247

James, Henry, 1 99-200

Jefferson, Thomas, 95, 1 85
Jones, Ernest, 1 1 2
Jones, Kathleen, 44
Judicial retrieval, 1 62, 1 77- 1 8 1
Justice, 47-52, 1 1 7, 1 1 8 , 1 1 9- 1 20, 1 4 1 ,
1 43- 1 45 , 1 6 1 - 1 62. See also Distributive
justice
Justice and the Human Good (Galston) , 48
Kant, Immanuel, 1 , 5 1 , 1 4 1 , 248; and j us
tice, 30, 1 43; and civic virtue, 33-34,
9 1 , 1 75; and education, 76; and moral

299
conflict, 1 39; and public dialogue, 1 44;
and individualism, 1 75 , 1 85 , 225, 247
Kantians, 5 1 , 1 27, 1 28, 1 3 1 - 1 32, 1 35
Kateb, George, 1 3- 1 4, 2 1 3-2 1 4, 2 1 8
Keats, John, 1 97
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 1 5 1
Kolakowski, Leszek, 1 29- 1 30, 1 36, 1 37
Ladd, John, 1 36
Larmore, Charles, 50-5 1 , 53, 1 27, 1 32,
1 34

Law, 2, 6, 8, 42, 52, 1 48, 1 78- 1 80. See

also Justice; Rule of law
Lawrence, D. H . , 205
Legitimacy, 62-63, 1 43, 1 49- 1 54; of ma
jorities, 54-55, 77, 94; political, 56-57,
58, 67, 96, 100, 1 01 , 1 44- 1 45 . See also

Authority; Consent, doctrine of

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 1 3 1
Levellers, 1 85 , 1 88- 1 89
Leviathan (Hobbes) , 24
Liberalism: concepts identified with, 2;
criticism of, 6-9, 24, 48; aim of, 2 1 . See
also Antiliberalism
Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice (Sandel),
1 60, 1 6 1 - 1 64

Libertarianism, 4, 57, 58, 62

Liberty, 55, 75, 1 63, 1 65- 1 66. See also
Negative liberty; Personalfreedom; Po
litical freedom
Locke, John, 1 , 27, 30, 45, 246-247; and
toleration, 5 1 , 96, 242; and communi
tarianism, 57, 62, 63, 1 66, 1 69, 239,
243; and civic virtue, 58, 99; and educa
tion, 7 1 ; and individualism, 1 85, 238
Lukes, Steven, 1 5- 1 6
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1 06
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 1 3 1 , 1 65, 1 7 1
Macintyre, Alasdair, 1 38, 1 59, 227, 228,
229, 234; and communitarianism, 48,
49, 230, 232, 246, 248 ; on David
Hume, 236; and values, 243; and rights,
244

Madison, James, 6, 25, 62, 1 85, 220,

247

Maistre, Joseph de, 244, 249

Markets, 3, 1 1 5 , 1 1 7, 234, 235 , 243
Marriage, 42, 52. See also Family
Marx, Karl, 56, 1 23 , 1 25, 1 63, 1 83, 244
Marxism, 3, 4, 1 3 1 , 1 36- 1 37, 2 1 6
Methodological individualism. See Atomism
Middle Years, The (James) , 1 99
Mill, James, 1 06

Index
Mill, J ohn S tuart, 27, 39, 1 39, 2 1 0, 240;

and education, 73, 83, 90; and individu

alism, 1 63, 1 85 , 202; and toleration, 243

300
Periodic consent, 1 1 , 58, 59, 64
Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought,
The (Holmes) , 8-9

Modernity, 2 1 -22

Perpetual consent, 57, 58, 65

Montaigne, Michel, 23

Persian Letters (Montesquieu) , 247

Montesquieu, Charles, baron, 1 65 , 1 85 ,

Personal development. See self-develop-

240, 247

Moral conflict: sources of, 1 29- 1 32; nature of, 1 33- 1 35

ment
Personal freedom, 1, 6, 2 1 , 28, 33, 99,
220; obligations of, 6, 97-98 , 1 89, 1 93-

Moral development, 47

1 95 , 241 , 244; and the common will,

Moral idealism, 5-6

55-63, 1 70- 1 7 1 ; and civic virtue, 76,

Morality, 1 1 7- 1 1 8, 1 47- 1 48, 1 50, 1 94,

218, 243-244

Morality of Freedom , The (Raz) , 1 38

Moral j udgment, 1 37- 1 39, 1 50- 1 52

88; conflicts with equality, 1 29- 1 30. See

also Individualism
Personal identity, 1 43, 1 60- 1 6 1 , 1 83, 223225, 232

Personal rights. See Individual rights

Nagel, Thomas, 1 34, 1 59

Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire) , 249

Naturalism, 1 50

Philosophical Letters (Voltaire) , 242

Natural rights. See Individual rights

Philosophic education, 89-91

Nature (Emerson), 1 95

Plato, 1 9 1 , 1 96; and women, 48; and edu

Negative liberty, 28-29, 59, 78, 1 88- 1 89,

2 1 0-212, 2 1 6

Neutrality, 1 4- 1 5, 5 1 , 52-53, 9 3 ; i n edu

cation, 78, 79, 83
Neutrality of government, 6, 1 0, 1 6, 73,

cation, 7 1 -72; and moral conflict, 1 27 ,

1 3 5 , 1 38 , 1 40

Pluralism, 8, 1 2- 1 3, 1 6 , 28, 37, 40-41 ,

65, 75-76, 207; and Marxism, 3 ; and

education, 33, 77; criticism of, 59, 6 1 -

76, 1 60, 1 76; criticism of, 7-8, 42, 45,

62, 1 38, 2 40 . See also Communitarian

228, 245

ism, and pluralism

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 25, 1 37 ,

1 38, 245-246

Nozick, Robert, 48, 55, 1 84; and individ

ualism , 57, 6 1 , 1 60, 1 63, 1 85

Pocock, John, 22
Political conditions, 2, 4, 5-6, 2 1 , 36
Political freedom, 208

Political philosophy, of J. S. Mill, 1 05 ,

1 06- 1 08

Okin, Susan, 1 0- 1 1

Political power, 27-28, 20 1 , 202, 2 1 0 ,

"On Imitation" (Hazlitt) , 1 96- 1 97

24 1 ; a n d Paine, 6; of women, 44, 45;

On Labor (Thorton), 1 1 4

and J. S. Mill, 1 00, 106, 1 1 0- 1 1 1 , 1 1 2,

On Liberty ( J . S. Mill) , 1 1 1 , 1 20, 1 22,

1 23- 1 24, 2 1 0

Original consent, 56-57, 5 9 , 64

Owenite socialists, 1 1 2

1 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 1 25

Political rights, 5, 1 85, 1 88, 1 93, 1 95 ,

241

Politics (Aristotle) , 240

Politics and Ambiguity (Connolly) , 2 1 3-

Paine, Thomas, 6 , 1 85

214

Parental authority, 72-73, 74-75, 78-79

Popper, Karl, 1 59

Parent and child, 72-73, 98, 1 00- 1 0 1 ,

Popular sovereignty, 54-55, 56, 77, 94

1 76- 1 77

Partiality, principle of, 1 32

Participatory democracy, 63-65, 66, 6768, 1 23- 1 25 , 1 71 - 1 77, 1 79, 241

Pascal, Blaise, 1 30
Patriarchy, 40, 42, 45
Patriotism, 1 65, 1 67, 1 72 , 1 73, 1 74- 1 77,
1 79- 1 80

Patterns of Moral Complexity (Larmore) ,

1 32

Pornography, 1 49
Positive freedom, 28
Power, 1 43, 1 80, 21 2, 225, 246 . See also
Political power; Social power
Principles of Political Economy ( ] . S. Mill) ,
1 23 , 240

Privacy, 53, 21 1 ; right of, 3, 40, 45-46

Private property, 3 1 , 42, 236; protection
of, 5 , 1 23 ; criticism of, 7 , 1 1 3 , 1 1 5,
1 1 7, 1 23, 25 1

Index
Private sphere, 39, 94; boundary with

301
Revisionist democratic theory, 1 73, 1 79

public sphere, 5, 7, 1 5 , 3 1 , 41 -53, 95-

Ricardo, David, 1 1 4

1 0 1 , 1 55 , 2 1 0- 2 1 2 , 222-223, 241

Rights, 5, 39, 96, 244. See also Individual

Proceduralis m, 1 43- 1 45 , 1 48, 1 50, 165,

1 72- 1 77, 1 78, 1 82
Property, 59, 241 . See also Private prop
erty
Public dialos._ue, 1 1 , 35, 65-87, 1 45-1 56,
14 1
Public good. See Common good

rights; Privacy, right of

Rights-based individualism, 1 3-14, 1 851 86, 1 87- 1 88, 1 89- 1 90, 2 1 3
Rodriguez, Richard, 223-225
Romanticism, 36, 207-220, 221 -222, 225,
226
Rorty, Richard, 2 1 0

Public opinion, 2, 1 00, 1 1 1 , 1 2 1

Rosenblum, Nancy L . , 1 2- 1 3

Public policy, 92

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 72, 87, 1 85 , 227;

Public sphere, 39; boundary with private

and communitarianism, 55 , 57, 59

sphere, 5 , 7, 1 5, 31 , 4 1 -53, 6 1 , 95- 1 0 1 ,

Rule of law, 8, 1 4, 33, 37, 50, 1 75, 25 1

1 55, 2 1 0-212, 222-223, 241

Rule of right, 1 75 , 1 76- 1 77, 1 80

Rainborough, Thomas, 1 88
Rational choice, 73-74, 77-78, 88, 90-91 ,
1 0 1 . See also Decisionmaking
Rationality, 32-33, 75, 1 38, 1 47- 1 48, 1 5 1 ,
1 53, 238-239
Rawls, John, 1 , 1 59, 237; and justice, 4647, 49-50, 5 1 -52, 1 34, 1 44, 1 6 1 ; and

Sandel, Michael, 1 59, 227; and concept of

self, 49-50, 5 1 , 57, 1 6 1 - 1 64, 230; and
justice, 50, 1 60
Sartre, Jean Paul, 1 29, 1 33
Scanlon, T. M . , 86, 1 59
Schmitt, Carl, 1 38, 227
Schumpeter, Joseph, 245

individualism, 57, 58, 62, 1 84, 1 85, 1 90;

Science, and liberalism, 25, 249

and moral conflict, 1 30, 1 40- 1 4 1 ; and

Self, 35, 21 9-220, 225-226, 238-239; and

communitarianism, 1 62
Raz, Joseph, 1 38
Reason, 246-247, 249-250. See also Ra
tionality
Receptivity (to experience) , 1 89- 1 90, 205206
Reductionism, 3 1 -32
Relativism, 34, 67, 1 28, 135

Sandel, 49, 50, 1 60; and Berlin, 2 1 1

Self-assertion, 1 90- 1 92, 1 95, 1 98, 204-205, 2 1 0, 2 1 3 , 225
Self-defense, 220-226
Self-development, 23, 27, 220
Self-expression. See Self-assertion
Self-government, 94, 1 77- 1 78, 1 79, 1 88;
collective, 54--55, 62, 65-67, 79-80, 1 25

Religion, 23, 56, 66, 1 40; and pluralism,

Self-interest, 80, 1 39, 233, 245, 252; and

7, 1 7, 1 39; and education, 8 1 -85; and

J. S. Mill, 1 1 0, 1 1 7- 1 1 8 , 1 24; enlight

individualism, 1 92, 1 95- 1 96

Religious toleration, 5, 1 7, 23, 24, 96,
1 39, 242, 244
"Reorganization of the Reform Part y "
( J . S . Mill) , 1 1 1
Representative government, 1 79, 1 87- 1 88;

ened, 1 73, 229

Self-loss, 1 99
Self-realization, 6, 1 3 , 1 83, 1 98, 201 , 203,
209
Self-restraint, 243, 245-246
Self-sufficiency, 232

consent for, 1 1 , 58; and J. S . Mill, 1 5,

Sen, Amartya, 1 59, 1 66

1 1 1 , 1 1 8- 1 20, 1 23- 1 24

Shklar, Judith, 1 2, 61 , 242

Repression, social, 77-79, 84, 86

Simmel, Georg, 224, 238

Republic (Plato) , 7 1

Skepticism, 25

Republican government, 1 66- 1 67, 1 69-

Skinner, B. F. , 1 63

1 7 1 , 1 72, 1 74-- 1 75, 2 1 6

Resistance, 1 98; t o government, 59-60,
66-67, 89, 1 93, 1 94, 205
Respect for others, 6, 23, 34, 75, 82, 9899, 1 52
Responsibility. See Personal freedom, ob
ligations of

"Slavery in Massachusetts" (Thoreau),

1 93
Smith, Adam, 240, 247
"Social, The" (myth of), 229, 23 1 -233
Social-action theory, 1 52, 1 53- 1 54
Social classes, 25-26, 1 1 9. See also Class
conflict; Class interests

Index
Social contract, 58, 6 1 , 65
Socialism, 3, 4, 1 29- 1 30, 1 54; and J. S .
Mill, 1 1 2- 1 1 3, 1 1 5- 1 1 8, 1 2 1 - 1 23
Social justice in the Liberal State (Acker
man), 48, 1 44- 1 45

Social movements, 1 47, 1 54- 1 55

302
Toleration, 8, 240, 242, 247 . See also Religious toleration
Treatise (Locke) , 243
Trotsky, Leon, 132
"Two Concepts of Liberty" (Berlin) ,

Social power, 30, 3 1 , 37, 87, 94, 1 06, 1 50,

1 55
Social relations, 5 1 -52, 1 1 6, 1 25, 1 6 1 -

1 62, 234, 235, 237-239

Social structure, 46-47, 52, 60, 78, 1 64-

Unger, Roberto, 230

Universalism , 1 0, 1 43, 1 44
Utilitarianism, 30, 62, 1 1 6, 1 27- 1 28, 1 3 1 ,

1 35, 1 39, 1 40, 207

165, 1 99-200, 20 1 ; and J . S. Mill, 1 07,

1 09, 1 1 0, 1 1 3- 1 1 4, 1 1 7
Socrates , 7 1 -72, 87, 90

Utopianism, 3, 5, 1 36- 1 37, 1 38, 1 49, 1 52,

Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Values, subjectivity of, 243-244

(Locke) , 7 1
Sovereignty, 59-60, 72, 204. See also Pop
ular sovereignty

2 1 7- 2 1 8

Virtue, 233. See also Civic virtue

Voltaire, 1 30, 242-249
Voluntarism, 26, 57, 200, 223, 238

State, the, 63, 80-81 , 101 , 203, 2 1 8, 240-

241 , 248. See also Culture, and the state

St. Simonians, 1 06
Stimer, Max, 1 90, 2 1 4

Wage fund theory, 1 1 4- 1 1 5

Walden and Other Writings (Thoreau), 1 92,

1 94- 195

Strauss, Leo , 245, 246

Walzer, Michael, 44, 48, 1 59

Straussianism, 1 40- 1 4 1

Watchdog State, 55

Supreme Pragmatic Imperative (SP!) , 1 46

Wealth of Nations (Smith) , 240, 247

Weber, Max, 123, 1 3 1 , 1 37, 1 38,

Taking Rights Seriously (Dworkin) , 48

Tawney, R. H . , 241 -242, 245

238
Welfare economics, 1 59, 1 66, 1 69

Taylor, Charles, 1 4, 21 1 , 225, 232, 238

Welfare state, 2, 3

Theory of]ustice, A (Rawls) , 1 , 46, 51 -52,

Whitman, Walt, 205; and individualism,

1 40, 1 84
Thoreau, Henry David, 1 92, 1 93, 1 96;

1 85 , 1 86, 1 89- 1 90, 1 95, 2 1 3; and aes

theticism, 1 96, 1 97, 2 1 4

and individualism, 1 85, 1 86, 1 89- 1 90,

Williams, Bernard, 1 28, 1 34, 1 36

1 94- 1 95, 2 1 4

Wolff, Robert Paul, 230

Thorton, W. T . , 1 1 4

Wolin, Sheldon, 230, 232, 239, 252

Tocqueville , Alexis de, 54, 106, 1 09, 1 23,

Women : status of, 8, 10- 1 1 , 41 -53, 1 53,

1 65, 205

1 55, 223