Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics

Part Three: Defending Liberalism

Part Three defending liberalism Institutions have to be created by the spontaneous motion of sentiments. For them to be powerful but not tyrannical, their origin must be lost in the night to time. For their head to reach toward heaven and cover us with its shade, their roots must be hidden in the earth’s bosom. They are useful as a heritage; they are merely oppressive when drafted as laws. —benjamin constant, the principles of politics applied to all governments We argued in Part I that liberalism is not an ethical doctrine for guiding human conduct in achieving good or performing right activity, but is instead a political philosophy of metanorms. Further, we argued that liberalism needs a new deep structure and that this new deep structure is an ethics of Aristotelian inspiration. In Part II we developed an account of this new deep structure, which we called ‘‘individualistic perfectionism.’’ We then defended this account against criticisms and used it to critique both traditional and new natural law views of perfectionism and the political common good. Finally, we used this account to examine and evaluate the self-ownership thesis. We argued that this thesis is not adequate to support the basic negative right to liberty and that attempts to defend this right on deontic grounds do not suffice. In this third and final part, we seek to defend liberalism in the following ways: (1) as a political philosophy of metanorms, not as a normative ethics; (2) as a political philosophy whose basic principles of individual rights are metanorms; and (3) as a political philosophy whose deep structure is individualistic perfectionism. In Chapter 10 we begin our defense of liberalism by considering criticisms of the claim that liberty should be the central and primary value of the political/legal order—the value to be achieved and maintained before any other—that is, what we have called ‘‘liberalism’s basic tenet.’’ This chapter considers criticisms of liberalism’s tenet that reflect the insights of communitarian, conservative, and indeed Aristotelian political theory. Chapter 11 sets out our argument for individual rights as metanormative principles. It does so in a step-by-step manner showing how both this conception and the defense of the basic negative right to liberty employ crucial insights of liberalism’s new deep structure of individualistic perfectionism. This chapter seeks to make our overall conception and defense of individual rights as clear as possible. Chapter 12 replies to objections to our argument. These objections reflect primarily the perspectives of political philosophers who employ the conceptual techniques of contemporary analytic philosophy. We seek in this chapter not only to deal with objections to our argument but also to show the desirability, and indeed moral necessity, of liberalism when its basic principles of individual rights are understood as metanormative principles. Overall in Part III, we believe we show not only a new and better way to defend liberalism but also a new and better way to conceive of political philosophy. ...