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British voters have been accused of being bored with government. Perhaps this boredom stems from the voters' assumption that the relationship between citizen & government is similar to that between customer & service provider. This situation lends itself to a consideration of the philosophies of Gillian Rose, Charles Mathewes, & Stanley Hauerwas -- philosophies that focus on the ties between the politics of liberal modernity & the politics of identity. These ties, in turn, are intrinsically related to a rights-based political culture that recognizes minority as well as majority groups. Meanwhile, Rose's work points to the idea that a rights-driven political culture will not necessarily result in the embrace of common values. According to Hegel, at this point it is essential to bring in theology & the "myth" of spirit, & to argue that the Christian Church contributes to the formation of common values. It must also be recognized that the Church plays a role in political campaigns & agenda setting; however, the Church fails to properly model a political system based on comprehensive social exchange. K. A. Larsen

Angesichts der Reformen in der Eurozone greift dieser Beitrag den Begriff des "Autoritären Liberalismus" wieder auf. Er wurde von Hermann Heller im Jahre 1933 verwendet, um die internen Zusammenhang zwischen dem ökonomischen Liberalismus und einem "starken Staat" zu beschreiben. Dieser Begriff ist zur Erlangung eines angemessenen Verständnisses des neuen Regierens in der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion heuristisch fruchtbar. Es ist sinnvoll von autoritärem Regieren auch dann zu sprechen, wenn diese nicht die äußeren Anzeichen staatlicher Repression trägt. Zwei Seiten des autoritären Liberalismus lassen sich unterscheiden. Während die eine Seite viel von Autorität an sich hält, sieht die andere Seite das autoritäre Regieren als etwas an, das gut für die Wirtschaft ist. Der Beitrag spekuliert abschließend darüber, ob die europäische Integration deswegen erfolgreich gewesen sein mag, weil sie geschickt zwischen beiden Seiten hin und her wechselte. Jedenfalls sollte es uns beunruhigen, wenn die europäische Integration sowohl profunde als auch zufällige autoritäre Züge trägt. ; In light of the reforms undertaken for the sake of the Euro, the article revisits the concept authoritarian liberalism that was introduced in 1933 by the German public law scholar Hermann Heller. This notion seeks to capture the liaison between the "strong state" and economic liberalism. The article suggests that this notion can be fruitfully used to designate the new governance of economic and monetary union. It argues, particularly, that it makes sense to speak of an authoritarian style of governance even if the latter does not wear vestiges of outright repression. Two different faces of authoritarian liberalism can be distinguished: one that looks more towards authoritarianism and another one that views authoritarian rule as a managerial strategy that is good for the economy. The article then speculates whether the European Union has been, indeed, successful because it shifts between the two. Disturbingly, there may be something deeply as ...

The liberal tradition, in its broadest sense, has had a prominent role in shaping Western society as we know it today. Most notably, liberalism has been a central force in the liberation of countries and their citizens from aristocratic feudalism as well as political and religious paternalism. Furthermore, liberalism, especially through its moral foundations, has shaped our perspective on individuals as free, autonomous, and equal beings. The first liberals were those in search of a new order after the chaotic times of early industrial capitalism and three late 18th century political revolutions— the American, Dutch, and French—that had turned society and politics upside down. Central to these developments were principles of freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought and speech, the division of governmental powers, and rights of private property and economic freedom (Starr, 2007). The leading figures in the development of these principles were, among others, John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill. Based on the thoughts, principles, and moral convictions of these leading figures, notions like the rule of law and the free market developed, resulting in a metamorphosis of Western society from a deeply religious, feudal, and unequal society, to one with a secular, liberal democracy in which personal rights and liberties are upheld and protected by the state and its institutions. These rights and liberties that protect individuals from unsolicited interference with their private lives and property created a stable basis for economic progress. This is not to claim, however, that liberal thought has been completely consistent and unambiguous throughout different regions or time periods. Despite the lack of unanimity among liberals, Fawcett (2014) identifies four broad ideas that served as a foundation for liberalism and reoccurred throughout the history of liberal thought: the acknowledgement of inescapable ethical and material conflict within society, distrust of power, faith in human progress, and unconditional respect for individuals. Thus, even though there is no canonical version of liberalism itself, these four ideas indicate that liberalism in general can be regarded as the search for an "ethically acceptable order of human progress among civic equals without recourse to undue power" (ibid., p. xv). Rooted in moral convictions of equality and freedom, the purpose of liberalism, therefore, is to create the conditions for a society in which each citizen can realise his or her aims without unsolicited interference, and fully develop his or her capacities to the benefit of society.

This book develops an original and comprehensive theory of political liberalism. It defends bold new accounts of the nature of autonomy and individual liberty, the content of distributive justice, and the justification for the authority of the State. The theory that emerges integrates contemporary progressive and pluralistic liberalism into a broadly Aristotelian intellectual tradition. The early chapters of the book challenge the traditional conservative idea of individual liberty-the liberty to dispose of one's property as one wishes-and replace it with a new one, according to which liberty is of equal value to all persons, regardless of economic position. The middle chapters present an original theory of socio-economic justice, arguing that a society in which every citizen enjoys an equal share of liberty should be the distributive goal of the State. It is argued that this goal is incompatible with the existence of large disparities in wealth and economic power, and that (contra conservative and libertarian economic arguments) such disparities are harmful to the overall health of national and global economies. The final chapters provide an original argument that the State has both a moral duty and a moral right to pursue this program of socio-economic justice (contra conservative and libertarian moral arguments), and that only the measures necessary to implement this program lie within the morally justifiable limits on the State's authority. Though primarily a political work, it spans most areas of practical philosophy-including ethical, social, and legal theory; and meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. And though fundamentally a philosophical work, it incorporates research from a number of fields-including decision theory, economics, political science, and jurisprudence; primatology, neuroscience, and psychology; and history, anthropology, sociology, and ecology-and is sure to be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between the notions of ethnocentrism and liberalism from the perspective of the neopragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. In this sense, we show that this tenuous political philosophy, centered on these notions, emphasizes the connectivity between conversational practices and the moral, political and social issues shared by different cultures. In Rorty's philosophy, his thin notion of ethnocentrism acts as an articulating element between his anti-representationalist perspective of knowledge and his version of political liberalism. From the naturalist criticism that makes transcendental explanations of reality unfeasible Rorty draws the historicist consequences necessary for his proposition that there are no limits, except those of conversational character, for the apprehension and description of knowledge. In this ethnocentric proposal in which there is nothing transcendent in relation to cultural, contingent and historical practices, everything is considered to be dependent on the provisional intersubjective consensus, in terms of the vocabulary and politics of a given community and time.