Note-Taking

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The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, First Edition. Edited by Michael T. Gibbons.

DOI: 10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0607

Liberal Theory Inder S. Marwah

Liberal theory is better characterized as a

family of concepts, ideals, and commitments

than as a single, readily identifiable doctrine.

Reflecting both the principle of toleration from

which they emerge and the Enlightenment

ideals of freedom and autonomy that run

through them, liberal theories are inescapably

diverse, mutable, and capacious, crystallizing

in myriad ways around a foundational set of

moral and political principles. It is thus mis-

leading to speak of liberal theory in singular

terms; liberal theory is best understood as

a shifting network of moral, political, and

philosophical concerns and commitments.

This does not suggest that we are unable to

probe central and recurring features of a liberal

world; liberalism is not, after all, a merely chi-

merical amalgam of entirely disparate ideas, but

rather a general view of human ends and of the

political structures best suited to pursuing them.

Liberal political theories coalesce around a few

seminal commitments and values that, though

understood and interpreted in often diverging

and occasionally contradictory ways, structure

given political views as distinctively liberal.

I proceed in three steps. I begin (1) by briefly

delving into the origins of liberal political theory

in order to clarify its central features, principles,

and values; I then (2) describe several variants or

“strains” of liberal theory, which result from dif-

fering interpretations, arrangements, and weight-

ings of those values, before (3) considering several

important lines of criticism that have been leveled

at the liberal tradition.

Liberal Origins, Values, and Constellations

At its post-Reformation origin, liberal theory is

based on ideals of political toleration and

inclusiveness (despite, as critics have pointed

out, liberal theories’ and theorists’ frequent

failures to live up to them). Forged in reaction

to the sixteenth/seventeenth-century wars of

religion and to the catastrophic divisions of

medieval and premodern Europe, liberal

theory stems from a principle of inclusiveness,

a conscious attempt to ground moral and

political principles on universal rather than

sectarian foundations. It is thus a distinctively

modern political philosophy, based upon dis-

tinctively modern values and moral views.

Although Hobbes himself did not develop

any kind of liberal political doctrine, his social

contractarianism established the conceptual

framework for the liberal view of political

membership as based on individual choice,

authorization, and consent (in spite of the con-

siderable distance between Hobbes’s under-

standing of consent and our own). Locke’s

social contract theory, elaborated in the second

of his Two Treatises on Government , moves

considerably closer to what we would recog-

nize as a distinctively liberal political theory,

defending a view of government as legitimized

by the (ongoing and uncoerced) consent of the

governed. In stark contrast with Hobbes and

his absolutist (and authoritarian) conception

of sovereign power, Locke understood govern-

ment as a revocable fiduciary trust endowed

with the task of preserving individual natural

rights to life, liberty, and property. His consti-

tutionalism thus reflects seminal liberal values

and institutional commitments, recognizing

the moral primacy of individual rights and

liberties, the civic equality of all citizens, and

the limitation and division of the powers of

government – ideas that exerted a considerable

influence over both the French and the

American Revolution. While Rousseau did not

share in liberal commitments to natural rights

and individual liberties, his republican argu-

ments for self-government and the rule of

public law became incorporated into liberal

theory, particularly through Kant’s legal and

political philosophy. In his doctrine of right,

Kant developed a deontological defense of

national, international, and cosmopolitan

orders of law that, along with certain dimen-

sions of his moral philosophy, continues to

exert a profound influence over liberal political

theory today. Taking an altogether different

tack, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty mounted a

powerful utilitarian defense of liberal freedoms

of speech, action, thought, and association.

As Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty (first

published in 1969) perhaps best articulates it,

liberal political theories are based on the core

belief that, as agents capable of self- direction,

human beings ought to live according to their

own enlightened (that is, noncoerced) desires,

choices, and convictions. All other liberal com-

mitments and values – individuality, liberty, jus-

tifiability, revisability, consent, autonomy, and

so on – are, to a degree or another, derived from

this core conviction. Liberal theorists have long

disagreed over the nature of, and conditions for,

self-direction and “enlightened” choices; but,

despite such variations, liberals remain com-

mitted to the foundational idea that political

institutions should enable individuals to live

according to their own lights. As Waldron

(1986) puts it, liberalism is fundamentally

concerned with agency.

But, of course, Marxists share in the belief

that the freest life is, to the greatest degree

possible, self-directed. What, then, are the

additional features of liberal political theories?

Liberals are primarily concerned with, and

committed to, individual liberty. In contrast

with premodern, virtue-based accounts of

political life, liberal theories defend the moral

primacy of the individual and a range of

liberties that preserve a sphere of individual

freedom. While theorists defend different sets

of liberties on different grounds (see, e.g.,

Locke’s natural rights, Kant’s republican public

right, Mill’s utilitarian defense of seminal

individual liberties, or Rawls’s basic liberties),

liberal political theories treat individual lib-

erties as basic and primary goods, and political

institutions as tasked with their preservation.

Liberal political theories are also committed

to moral and political equality. Liberal theory

emerges from the social contract tradition,

which treats human beings as naturally free

and political by choice. As a result, Locke

argues, political institutions are justified by

consent and legitimized by their preservation

of all citizens’ equal natural rights; civic equality

is thus derived from natural equality. Kant’s

defense of political right is similarly predicated

on human beings’ sharing in an equal “innate

right of humanity.” For both thinkers, individ-

uals’ natural equality sets the conditions for

both political liberties and civic equality. While

liberals have largely abandoned the metaphysi-

cal baggage associated with the social contract

tradition, they remain committed to the moral

and political egalitarianism that it models.

Liberal theories are committed to individual

autonomy. What autonomy actually consists

in and entails varies substantially across

theorists. From Kant’s conception of rational

self-government, to Humboldt’s and Mill’s ideals

of self-development, to Habermas’s dialogical

view of rational agency, autonomy – together

with the conditions enabling or sustaining an

autonomous life – has been understood in dif-

ferent and often incompatible ways. Despite

such interpretive differences, liberals recognize

autonomy as a central political value: the

state’s task is, from the liberal perspective, to

create, preserve, and/or sustain the conditions

enabling individuals to live self-directed lives.

Finally, liberal political theories are commit-

ted to toleration. If political institutions aim to

enable citizens’ self-direction, they can have no

authority over those citizens’ private convic-

tions. As Locke argues in the Letter on Tole-

ration , the state is both unwarranted and unable

to address matters of the soul; it is therefore

committed to tolerating any and all faiths and

convictions that fall within the limits of public

order. Liberal political institutions are, then,

bound by a principled agnosticism with respect

to citizens’ private beliefs, an agnosticism best

realized in the ideal of toleration.

The breadth, generality and malleability of

these basic commitments inescapably results in

a wide variety of interpretations regarding

liberal theory’s “central” value(s). Differences

in their weighting and arrangement invariably

produce a diverse constellation of liberal the-

ories, with equally diverse understandings of

their fundamental priorities. Will Kymlicka

(1989), for example, treats revisability as the

central liberal virtue: liberalism is, first and

foremost, a political philosophy that enables

individuals to revisit and revise their most

basic interests, values, and conceptions of the

good. Others, such as Jeremy Waldron (1986)

and Gerald Gaus (1996), treat justifiability as

the core of liberal political thought: a liberal

polity is one whose constraints, laws, and prin-

ciples can be justified to those who are subject

to them. Ronald Dworkin, conversely, under-

stands equality as “the nerve of liberalism”

(1978: 115) – and, as Waldron (1986) points

out, liberals’ concern with equality is precisely

what distinguishes them from libertarian phi-

losophies such as Robert Nozick’s.

Liberal theories are, then, amenable to a

broad range of (occasionally conflicting) inter-

pretations, depending on how we choose to

weigh, prioritize, and arrange these basic moral

commitments. Despite this diversity, the liberal

constellation of theories nevertheless shares in

foundational commitments to liberty, equality,

autonomy, and toleration.

Strains of Liberal Theory

This malleability has, over time, given rise to a

range of different strains of political thought.

Maurice Cranston (1967), for example, dis-

tinguishes broadly between Lockean and

Rousseauian variants of liberal theory (without,

of course, treating Rousseau himself as partic-

ularly liberal). Lockean liberalisms are based

on what Isaiah Berlin (1958) describes as nega-

tive liberty: freedom lies in the individual’s

independence from the (illegitimate) interfer-

ence of the state and other citizens and is best

understood as an opportunity concept (Taylor

1979). Lockean liberal theories treat freedom

as best realized through minimally intrusive

political institutions. In contrast, Rousseauian

liberalisms understand freedom as realized

through participation in democratic political

institutions that enable individual and col-

lective self-determination. The ideal of living

under one’s own laws is based on a positive

conception of liberty: freedom is realized

through participation in, or identification with,

a given ethical and political community, and is

best understood as an exercise concept (Taylor

1979). Broadly speaking, Lockean liberal the-

ories understand freedom as noninterference

and the task of government as preserving citizens’

liberties; Rousseauian liberal theories, con-

versely, understand freedom as self-realization

and the task of government as providing the

conditions for it.

William Galston (1995) draws another

important conceptual distinction, between

autonomy-based and diversity-based liberal-

isms. Autonomy-based liberalisms stem from

the Enlightenment’s tradition of rationalism:

freedom lies in divesting oneself of the forms of

cognitive distortion (of heteronomy, to borrow

from Kant) to which human beings are prone

and in basing one’s choices on a foundation of

rational self-reflection. These liberalisms treat

rational, enlightened choice as the central

liberal value, and so they understand the state’s

function as preserving the conditions for

individual autonomy. Conversely, diversity-

based liberalisms are descended from the

Reformation tradition of toleration and regard

liberal political institutions as enabling differ-

ent and often incommensurable ways of life to

coexist. Diversity-based liberalisms take the

fact of pluralism as the challenge to which

liberal political institutions respond. Thinkers

such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Waldron, and

Stephen Macedo hold autonomy-based liberal

views, whereas John Locke’s, John Rawls’s, and

William Galston’s political theories reflect the

concerns and commitments of diversity-based

liberalisms.

We can also distinguish between classical

and modern (also described as “new” or

“social”) liberal theories and theorists. Classical

liberals – such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo,

James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham (and, more

recently, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises) –

treat individual liberty and private property as

conditions for freedom. A just liberal polity is,

in this view, one that enables private exchange

between individual property-owners with as

little state interference as possible. Classical lib-

erals treat the institution of private property as

pivotal for human freedom; only in a market-

based society are individuals entirely free to

pursue their own goods in their own ways with

their own resources. In contrast, modern lib-

erals reject the intimate connection between

private property, justice, and freedom. Reflect-

ing both a growing lack of faith in markets’

capacities for fair self-regulation and a deep-

ening skepticism regarding their ability to

secure a just political order, modern liberal

theories are increasingly concerned with moral

equality, political fairness, and social justice.

This more socially oriented line of thought has

theoretical roots in such liberals as John Stuart

Mill and L. T. Hobhouse, who understood

liberal states as responsible not only for pre-

serving individual rights and freedoms, but

also for redressing material and class-based

inequalities. Liberal political institutions, in this

view, should aim to secure not the conditions

for unfettered individual pursuits or market

freedom, but rather the conditions for a just and

egalitarian social order. This line of thought

gained increasing traction over the late nine-

teenth and twentieth centuries, and, since the

publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice

(Rawls 1971), it has become the dominant strain

in Anglo-American liberal political theory.

Given Rawls’s prominence in, and pervasive

influence over, contemporary liberal theory,

it is worth noting a final contrast between

Rawlsian and more perfectionist liberalisms.

Rawls’s political liberalism articulates a theory

of justice for modern societies characterized

by deep social, cultural, and religious diversity.

Given the fact of pluralism, Rawls argues, a

just, liberal polity must be structured around

a basic set of political liberties that a broad

range of sufficiently reasonable citizens could

endorse for their own reasons. While earlier

iterations of the theory appear to treat liberalism

as a fuller moral theory, Rawls’s later work

emphasizes that political liberalism (1) is

an explicitly political, and not metaphysical,

conception of justice; and (2) is a theory of

justice aimed at liberal , and not all, societies.

Like other prominent democratic theorists

such as Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib,

Rawls is deeply influenced by the moral philos-

ophy of Immanuel Kant. Although they go

about doing it in very different ways, neo-

Kantian theorists aim to recast Kant’s moral

universalism in de-transcendentalized terms,

anchoring principles of political justice on

moral, but nonexclusionary grounds. Yet not

all liberal theories and theorists follow in this

vein. Neo-Kantians ideally aim to establish

political institutions on neutral or universal

grounds; political institutions ought, to the

greatest degree possible, to avoid endorsing

or favouring any particular moral view. Con-

versely, perfectionist liberals such as John

Stuart Mill, T. H. Green, and Joseph Raz

embrace the virtues of a liberal life. In their

view, liberalism is not, and should not be,

entirely confined to political life; liberal virtues –

toleration, mutual respect, individuality, and so

on – are constitutive of a good, autonomous,

well-lived life. Given this, political institutions

should promote the liberal moral values and

principles that make for a good and fruitful life,

and they are equally warranted in inculcating

the civic virtues that sustain a liberal society.

Critics of Liberalism

Unsurprisingly, liberal political theories have

been subjected to a range of criticisms. I here

focus on three important lines of (relatively)

recent critique, and I conclude by flagging a

fourth, which bears further examination.

A neorepublican literature, most often asso-

ciated with Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner,

argues that liberals misconceive freedom.

Where liberals understand freedom as nonin-

terference (a condition in which my actions

and choices are unconstrained), neorepubli-

cans understand freedom as nondomination

(a condition in which no person or institution

has the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with my

actions and choices). In the neorepublican

view, the liberal focus on noninterference fails

to register the harm done to persons who are

not actively being coerced, but who are none-

theless subject to the arbitrary will of a domi-

nating power. We might consider the case of

the benign slave master: while the master may

choose to allow his or her slaves to live freely

(to some degree), (s)he nevertheless retains an

arbitrary coercive power over them that (s)he

could exercise at any time. Without being

subject to direct interference, the slave is never-

theless unfree, subject to the domination of

another. While the neorepublican view takes

aim at the liberal conception of freedom, the

political commitments that follow from it are

not clearly distinguishable from liberals’.

A second line of critique stems from the

communitarian position. In the 1980s–1990s,

theorists such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael

Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor

criticized liberal political theory on both

descriptive and normative grounds. From the

descriptive standpoint, communitarians resist

the contractarian portrayal of human beings as

primarily (and naturally) individualistic and

“unencumbered” and as social or political

by choice. The contractarianism underlying

liberal political theory is based on an onto-

logical fallacy: human beings are, in the com-

munitarian view, inexorably social and political

animals. This animates the normative critique:

liberals fail to recognize the primary value of

community, which leads to (at least) three prob-

lems. First, the liberal focus on individual rights

neglects the value of group membership, which

leads to the erosion of distinctive communities

and the loss of goods derived from social,

political, and cultural association. Second, lib-

erals’ distorted view of human nature results in

an equally distorted view of human goods and

values, prioritizing individual accumulation

and private profit over the values associated

with communal life and social responsibility.

Third, the privatism, atomism, and individu-

alism of the liberal tradition alienates citizens

from civic and political life. In response, liberals

such as Stephen Macedo and Will Kymlicka

have argued that liberal political theories do in

fact hold significant resources for under-

standing the relationship between individuals

and communities.

Feminist and postcolonial theorists criticize

the liberal tradition as harbouring masculinist

and Eurocentric biases. Feminist thinkers

identify several problems in liberal treatments

of women. First, liberal theories have directly

and systematically failed to recognize women’s

moral equality and political rights, in stark

contradiction with their pretensions to univer-

salism and inclusiveness. Seminal works in the

history of liberal political thought have persis-

tently portrayed women as irrational, as less

than full persons, and as incapable of civic

personality and enfranchisement. Second, the

liberal emphasis on rationality, individualism,

and autonomy encourages and perpetuates a

particularly androcentric view of the world,

inasmuch as these values are associated with

(bourgeois) masculinity. Liberal theory thus

directly and indirectly marginalizes women’s

perspectives and experiences, in addition to

consistently failing to live up to its founda-

tional egalitarian pretentions. Finally, feminist

thinkers have criticized the strong division bet-

ween public and private life common in liberal

political theories for insulating the patriarchal

power exercised in the private sphere from

critical scrutiny. The distinction between

public and private life sustains male domina-

tion by treating it as a purely private matter,

beyond the regulatory purview of politics and

law. Since Edward Said’s pioneering Orientalism

(Said 1979), postcolonial theorists have also

drawn attention to the deep complicity bet-

ween liberalism and modern European colo-

nialism, identifying at least two important

connections between them. The first is direct:

central tenets of liberal political thought were

crafted in response to the demands of colonial

expropriation by thinkers such as John Locke

and John Stuart Mill, who were personally

involved in colonialism. The second is con-

ceptual: liberal theories have, from their

beginnings, portrayed non-European peoples

as backward, uncivilized, and irrational, estab-

lishing the “positional superiority” (Said 1979:

7) of western norms and ways of life.

Finally, liberal theories have been subject to

important and sustained critiques from the left.

These range from critiques coming from socially

oriented liberals themselves (such as Mill and

Hobhouse) to deeper attacks from Marxists,

utopian socialists, and critical theorists (among

others). While these are too varied to be ade-

quately represented here, many take issue with

the liberal tendency to focus on individualism

and on abstract values such as freedom and

equality, rather than undertaking more critical

examinations of the material structures that

underlie deep socioeconomic inequalities.

In total, these lines of criticism have undoubt-

edly led to more complex and self- reflexive lib-

eralisms; whether they impugn liberal political

thought more generally is, as in so many other

aspects of so complex and variable a tradition,

an open question.

SEE ALSO: Autonomy ; Communitarianism ; Critical Theory ; Enlightenment, The ; Equality ;

Feminist Political Theory ; Freedom ; Locke, John

(1632–1704) ; Marxism ; Mill, John Stuart

(1806–73) ; Postcolonial Theory ; Rawls, John

(1921–2002) ; Reformation ; Socialism ; Toleration

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