Abstract

It is easy and popular these days to be a political liberal. Compared to ‘ethical liberals’, who justify the use of state power by way of one or another conception of people's true moral nature, ‘political liberals’ seek a less controversial foundation for liberal politics. Pioneered within the past twenty years by John Rawls and Charles Larmore, the ‘political liberal’ approach seeks to justify the coercive power of the state by reference to general political ideas about persons and society. Since it abandons the debates about personal moral value that have historically dogged liberal theory, political liberalism offers itself as a more latitudinarian, indeed a more liberal, form of liberalism. Being a political liberal is not the only way to be a good liberal, but this approach has become prevalent enough that I shall focus upon it here