Freedom and Pluralism Guest Editor's Introduction

liberals prize two things above all: freedom and pluralism. Freedom is associated with agency. In liberal societies, people are allowed and encouraged to establish their own path, to take it if they like, and to reverse course if they want to do that. Liberals think people should be allowed to be authors of the narratives of their own lives. Pluralism follows from the commitment to freedom. Some people will want to marry; some people will not want to marry. Some people will want to have children; some people will not want to have children. Because liberals believe in freedom and pluralism, many of them are romantics. They like it when people fall in love. They think people should be allowed to have secrets and to keep them to themselves. A. S. Byatt's great novel Possession is a quintessentially liberal novel.¹ Liberals promote freedom from fear. They want people to feel safe.

Who is not a liberal? Adolf Hitler was not a liberal. Joseph Stalin was not a liberal. Vladimir Putin is not a liberal. For Hitler, Stalin, and Putin, freedom and pluralism are hardly defining values. If you do not believe in freedom of thought and freedom of speech, you are not a liberal. If you do not believe in freedom of religion, you are not a liberal. If you do not believe in experiments in living, you are not a liberal. If you do not believe in the rule of law, you are not a liberal. Antiliberals and postliberals are not liberals (though they may share certain liberal convictions; we should certainly hope so). Many anti-liberals and postliberals believe in obedience.

Liberals tend to like defiance. Even so, liberals do not want to make over society in a liberal image. Liberals make space for antiliberals and postliberals; they are mostly focused on what governments can do, not on what civil society can do. (Still, they do not like murder, rape, and assault. Nor do they like slavery.)

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is a shattering depiction of antiliberalism. Big Brother opposes freedom and pluralism above all. One of Orwell's chief villains offers this warning: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever" ([1949] 1961, 220). And consider this: "All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour" (111). Recall the novel's chilling last words: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother" (245).

More than at any other time since World War II, liberalism is under pressure, even siege.² There is a lot of marching up and down. People are cheering. Plenty of them are waving flags. Many of them seem to love Big Brother. They hope that they have found him. On the right, some people have given up on liberalism. They see it as a kind of all-purpose demon, a kind of bogeyman. They want to kill it. They hold it responsible for godlessness, the collapse of the family and traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority, and widespread immorality. They do not respect the liberal political tradition. (Many of them do not know what it is.)

On the left, too, some people despise liberalism. They associate it with economic inequality—with millionaires and billionaires. They insist that it is old and exhausted and dying. They think it lacks the resources to handle the problems posed by racism, sexism, corporate power, and environmental degradation. They refer to "neoliberalism" with disdain. They think that neoliberalism and liberalism are one and the same. They do not respect the liberal political tradition. (Many of them do not know what it is.)

Fascists reject liberalism. So do communists (and many socialists). So do populists who think freedom is overrated. In ways large and small, antiliberalism is on the march. So is tyranny. Many of the marchers do not depict liberalism accurately; they offer a caricature. As Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman put it: "The refutation of a caricature can be no more than a caricature of refutation" (1996, 584). The marchers describe liberalism in a way that no liberal could possibly endorse. They neglect the history of liberalism. They neglect philosophical debates about liberalism, and within it. Perhaps more than ever, there is now an urgent need for a clear understanding of liberalism—of its core commitments, its breadth, its internal debates, its evolving character, its promise, what it is and what it can be.

What is a liberal? Who is a liberal? Liberals do not merely acknowledge pluralism and the freedom that makes it possible; they cherish these things. Liberals are committed to freedom of religion. They believe in freedom of speech. They are committed to the rule of law. They welcome dissent. They believe in experiments in living.

Among historians, it is standard to attempt to specify the origins of liberalism and to focus on the particular role of French, German, and British thinkers in helping to create it.³ We know that long before the rise of liberalism, the word "liberal" referred to certain character traits: generosity and openness of spirit, alongside a commitment to others, to the public interest, and to the common good, rather than to one's own self-interest. The accompanying noun was "liberality," not "liberalism." During the Middle Ages, Christian values, including charity, were connected with "liberality." The term "liberal" was associated with concern for the common good, rather than opposition to it, and was not connected with a focus (solely) on one's self-interest.

In 1628 John Donne, English poet and cleric, said: "Christ is a liberal God." He urged that people should find "new ways to be liberal" (Rosenblatt 2018, 17). In his "City upon a Hill" sermon in 1630, John Winthrop, a leader of Puritan colonists in New England, argued that the difficult times required "extraordinary liberality," in which the colonists would "bear one another's burdens" (18–19). The idea of "liberality" entailed a willingness to help to reduce the suffering of others. Similarly, John Locke, sometimes counted as the first liberal philosopher, contended that children ought to learn to be "kind, liberal and civil" (22). Once more, Locke's use of the word "liberal" was closely connected with "liberality."

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, people did not speak of "liberalism." In 1772 the Oxford English Dictionary drew on long-standing understanding in saying that the word "liberal" meant "free from bias, prejudice, or bigotry; open-minded, tolerant" (Rosenblatt 2018, 29). Importantly and revealingly, "liberality" became closely associated with the idea of religious toleration, which was a particularly central concern during the late eighteenth century. It remains a central concern today.

In 1790 George Washington wrote: "As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government" (Rosenblatt 2018, 29). Here Washington offered a strong signal of the importance of respect for pluralism, which has of course become central to the liberal tradition. Washington also associated the idea of being "more liberal" with a conception of equal protection of the law, which became part of the United States Constitution after the Civil War. The adjective "liberal" was widely applied to the Constitution, even though the word "liberalism" was not in use.

The idea of liberalism, as such, arose in France in the early nineteenth century, probably around 1811. It did so in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when people sought to defend the basic principles for which that revolution had been fought, with a particular emphasis on (1) the rule of law, (2) representative government, (3) freedom of the press, and (4) freedom of religion. Political thinkers Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël were defining figures here. It is important to emphasize that in its origins, liberalism was not at all associated with a focus on greed and self-interest. On the contrary, it owed a great deal to previous understandings of what it meant to be "liberal." Madame de Staël wrote: "What we need is a lever against egoism" (Rosenblatt 2018, 53). No early liberal argued that human beings were asocial creatures, unmoored from social bonds, the family, culture, religion, and tradition.

In 1815 Constant wrote a defining book with a stunningly ambitious title: Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments. The book called for popular sovereignty and hence a form of democracy, and also for a set of freedoms, including freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Constant insisted on the importance of the separation of church and state. One of his central themes was the need to ensure that the state, and the law, would respect pluralism with respect to belief and action. Drawing on older traditions, Constant also emphasized the importance of self-sacrifice, virtue, generosity, and dedication to the common good. In the next decades, the modern idea of liberalism was essentially born.

Since that time, liberalism has been subject to an extraordinary number of twists and turns. Liberalism is a wide tent. John Locke thought differently from Adam Smith, and John Rawls fundamentally disagreed with John Stuart Mill. Here are some liberals: Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Constant, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Dewey, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Isaiah Berlin, Jürgen Habermas, Joseph Raz, Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Amartya Sen, Thomas Nagel, Jeremy Waldron, Mil-ton Friedman, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Susan Okin, Charles Larmore, and Christine Korsgaard. These people differ on fundamental matters.

In some times and places, liberalism has been closely identified with respect for free markets, free trade, and private property ("classical liberalism"). In some times and places, liberalism has been identified with a government determined to provide social services and help those at the bottom of the economic ladder ("New Deal liberalism"). Many social democrats are liberals. Some liberals emphasize "negative rights": rights to be free from coercion and intrusion, above all from government. Other liberals emphasize "positive rights": rights to receive government help, such as education, housing, and healthcare. Liberals who emphasize such rights do not favor government control of the economy; they believe in free markets. But they want to help those at the bottom and to give everyone a fair chance.

In some times and places, liberalism has leaned technocratic, with an emphasis on the importance of experts and expertise. In some times and places, liberalism has leaned populist, with an emphasis on the need for accountability and public control. While rights of some kind have always been a part of liberalism, the strong emphasis on freedom of choice and individual rights, as liberalism's foundation or core, is relatively recent. Still, that emphasis has continuity with the work of the early liberal theorists, who emphasized freedom of conscience, speech, and religion and who sought to make space for pluralism.

In political philosophy, it is standard to emphasize the liberal commitment to freedom, but also to make a distinction between two kinds of liberalism. Some philosophers, like John Rawls and Charles Larmore, endorse what they call "political liberalism." They think that different people, from radically different starting points, ought to be able to accept certain liberal principles. Political liberals think that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists can embrace the same basic liberties. They believe that those with different philosophical commitments can agree to be liberals. Rawls himself gives priority to the following "principle of justice": "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others" (1971, 60). By way of elaboration, Rawls singles out the "basic liberties of citizens," which include "political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law" (61). We can understand this catalogue as an effort to summarize the arc of liberal thought since the early nineteenth century.

Rawls refers to a liberal idea about legitimacy: "Our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason" (1996, 137). Note here the emphasis on agency. All citizens are taken to be "free and equal," and they are put in the driver's seat, equipped with their "common human reason." Rawls urges that liberal principles can be endorsed by people with different "comprehensive doctrines"—that is, doctrines about right and wrong, good and evil, the existence of God, and the foundations of morality and politics. Note here the emphasis on pluralism.

By contrast, some philosophers, like John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Joseph Raz, are "perfectionist liberals." They think that liberalism is not only a doctrine about political legitimacy. In their view, liberalism offers an account of what it means to have a good life. They believe that liberalism should be founded on a commitment to individual autonomy, in which each of us is allowed to be the author of the narrative of our own lives. Those who do not give pride of place to individual autonomy will not be enthusiastic about perfectionist liberalism, though they should be open to political liberalism. If you emphasize duty and faith, for example, the idea of autonomy might not be so central. Political liberals object that perfectionist liberalism is too sectarian and hence illegitimate; it excludes people who would not make individual autonomy so central. For their part, perfectionist liberals believe that political liberalism gives up on liberalism's deepest moral foundations. Still, it is essential to see that both endorse the basic liberties.

Liberal philosophers disagree with one another about many other things as well. Some liberals, like Robert Nozick, are "libertarians"; they believe that redistribution from rich to poor is fundamentally unjust. Other liberals, like Rawls, do not share that belief at all; they might even believe that large-scale redistribution is mandatory. You can be a liberal whether you agree with Nozick or instead Rawls, so long as you put a premium on agency, and welcome pluralism, and want people not to feel afraid.

The essays in this issue span an exceedingly wide range, and I will not presage or summarize them here. Some deal with philosophical issues; some deal with economics; some deal with practice; some touch on culture. Our hope is that they give a sense of the vibrancy and energy of liberalism now. What John Dewey said of the United States is also true of liberalism: "Be the evils what they may, the experiment is not yet played out. The United States are not yet made; they are not a finished fact to be categorically assessed" (2021, 53).