Description
Book SynopsisLiberalism is today under serious intellectual attack. It is said to undermine its own principles, to have lost any strong claims to universal validity, and to foster injustice and inhumanity. Liberalism is associated with Enlightenment thought and is considered by some as an outmoded political philosophy. Professors Rasmussen and Den Uyl take up this challenge to liberalism. They show that liberalism is not locked into traditional ways of understanding itself and has the capacity to enrich itself by intellectual traditions not usually associated with liberalism.
Unlike much of liberalism, which defends its politics by resorting to either moral skepticism or moral minimalism, Rasmussen and Den Uyl employ a distinction between normative and “metanormative” principles. The latter are more directly tied to politics and concern principles that establish social/political conditions under which full moral conduct can take place. Thus it is not necessary to minimize the moral universe to support liberalism. Rasmussen and Den Uyl support their distinction through a novel use of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, and they show the importance of this distinction when they specifically address the positions of two leading critics of liberalism - John Gray and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Trade Review’This is an exceptionally fine treatment of one of the most troubling aspects of classical liberalism, namely, its relationship to morality and the fact of the plurality of moral practices within human community life. The authors address the most recent statement of the problem and handle it with magnificent clarity and philosophical astuteness. This is clearly the best of not only what these authors have said on the topic thus far but what any classical liberal has produced in an attempt to demonstrate that the challenges of human community life are met most successfully by a well thought out classical liberal polity.’ -- Tibor R. Machan, Auburn University, US
Table of ContentsPart 1 Liberalism and ethics: the good and the right; the socialization of ethics; the metanormative solution. Part 2 The foundations of liberalism: neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics; rights, ethics and liberalism. Part 3 Analyses and objections: the challenge of liberal communitarianism; the challenge of conservative communitarianism. Part 4 Conclusion.
