Political Ideology

Liberalism
Liberalism
 Isa political doctrine that takes protecting
and enhancing the freedom of the
individual to be the central problem of
politics.
Liberalism as Tolerance
Liberal Society

 Social liberalism believes individual liberty requires a

level of social justice. Social liberalism endorses a market
economy and the expansion of civil and political rights
and civil liberties, but differs in that it believes the
legitimate role of the government includes addressing
economic and social issues such as poverty, health care,
and education. Under social liberalism, the common good
is viewed as harmonious with the freedom of the
individual.
Hobbes and Liberalism
 It implicitly entails a rejection of natural authority – the
authority of the sovereign derives from a contract and not
from inheritance or divine right.
 People are equal in the state of nature because, with
stealth, the weaker can kill the strongest. Admittedly this
is a claim about individuals’ physical powers – and a
questionable one at that – rather than a claim for moral
equality.
 Later contract theorists fundamentally received the
nature of the contract, but the method remains, so
Hobbes's argument has proved remarkably productive of
liberal thought.
 Hobbes vs Lock

 Liberty is simply the  Liberty takes the form of

absence of restraint. actionable rights.
 We are equal because no
 Equality in naturalistic
person has a natural right
rather than moral to subordinate another.
terms.
 Laws have theological
 Laws of nature basis- we have a natural
duty to preserve
ourselves, a duty owed to
God , who created us.
Locke and Liberalism
 The idea that there are what Robert Nozick calls ‘side constraint’’,
which limit what the state, or society in general, can do to human
beings.
 Natural (or moral) rights provide a standpoint from which we can
judge the state. Unlike Hobbes, obligation to obey the state is not for
Locke can ‘all or nothing’ matter. Although we give up a certain
degree of moral judgment when we contract into the state, we do not
‘hand over’ all our autonomy.
 There is much more discussion of the institution of liberal democracy
in Locke than in Hobbes.
Immanuel Kant
 Kant outlines a method of determining how we should
behave. He offers a number of formulations, the
differences intended to capture different aspects of moral
relationships. Simplifying a great deal, what autonomous
standpoint, unaffected by emotional, and other,
attachments.
Kant and Liberalism

 Entailing the right over the good.

 A Political consequence of the priority of the right over
the good is that the state’s functions are limited.
 If the state is only justified insofar as it protects
individual rights it cannot have purposes of its own which
are independent of that function.