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From: hfavr@mtuxo.UUCP (a.reed)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Liberalism, Part I
Message-ID: <1400@mtuxo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 12:59:14 EST
Article-I.D.: mtuxo.1400
Posted: Wed Mar 12 12:59:14 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 06:21:20 EST
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Richard Carnes writes:
> Modern liberalism
> is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a
> development of the same basic principles.  The basic idea, more or
> less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS
> CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal concern and respect.

Sorry, but I find no reference to this "basic idea" in any "Liberal"
writings up to the time of House. The early Liberals - de la Boetie,
Locke, Voltaire, Smith, Paine - would have disagreed explicitly with
several components of the above:

1. Up to the time of Hegel, who made this kind metaphoric animism
academically acceptable, the ascription of personal attitudes (such as
concern and respect) to collective institutions (such as the state)
would have been regarded by every competent philosopher as a category
error.

2. As Isiah Berlin points out, the statement that "Justice requires X"
does not imply the advocacy of X unless one regards "justice" as one's
highest-priority political value. But most of the early Liberals put
Liberty rather than Justice at the head of their priorities - this is
why they were called Liberals. (Those who put Justice ahead of all
other considerations, such as order, security, virtue, and even
liberty, were called Jacobins). (Later classical Liberals, starting with
Bastiat, defined "Justice" to consist of "the predictable consequences
of one's own actions", so that a Liberal government, which left citizens
free to act, and to enjoy the consequences of their actions, would also
go a long way in the direction of ensuring "Justice". But, by
definition, a Liberal was someone who put Liberty ahead of all other
political goals).

3. Since Liberty is maximized by reducing governmental constraints on
*every* person to the absolute minimum, and since most restrictions on
the liberty of Europeans in the 18th century were the consequence of
special priviledges bestowed on members of established institutions,
the Liberals were, from the beginning, advocates of equal liberty. And,
as Amitay Etzioni put it, "those who aimed at liberty ahead of equality
have always done better by equality, than those who put equality ahead
have done by liberty". But to make equality the entire basis of
liberalism, to the total exclusion of liberty, as in the Dworkin/Carnes
formulation presented above, would have flabbergasted every Liberal up
to the time of Mill, and perhaps even later.

				Adam Reed (ihnp4!npois!adam)