Abstract
The starting point of this chapter is a question about the nature and extent of modern liberalism. Specifically, it addresses the question; ‘How comprehensive can liberalism be, and how much of social and moral life can it aspire to explain?’ The question is prompted by a (somewhat crude) distinction between historical and modern liberalism. Historically, liberals have usually set themselves rather modest aims and have distinguished between the scope of political philosophy and the scope of moral philosophy. Both Locke and Hume differentiate between the requirements of political justice and the prior, and independent, dictates of morality. They construe politics as being necessitated by our imperfect moral nature. As Sandel points out:
For Hume, justice cannot be the first virtue of social institutions, and in some cases it is doubtfully a virtue at all … Insofar as mutual benevolence and enlarged affections could be cultivated more widely, the need for ‘the cautious, jealous virtue of justice’ would diminish in proportion, and mankind would be the better for it.1
More recently, however, political liberalism has expanded into a theory which includes both moral and political concerns.Thus Rawls’s early liberalism aspires to provide an account of moral and political life, in which all institutions are subject to the same conditions of justification, and all are called to the tribunal of justice.
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Notes
Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 169.
Michael W. Jackson, Matters of Justice, Beckenham, Croom Helm, 1986, p. 3.
Jeremy Waldron, ‘Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism’, Philosophical Quarterly, 37, 1987, pp. 127–50.
Steven Lukes, Individualism, Oxford, Blackwell, 1973, p. 62.
Carole Pateman, ‘Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy’, in Anne Phillips (ed.) Feminism and Equality, Oxford, Blackwell, 1987, p. 103.
Carole Pateman, ‘The Shame of the Marriage Contract’, in J. Stiehm (ed.) Women’s View of the Political World of Men, pp. 80–1. New York, Transactional Publishers, Dubbs Ferry, 1984.
John Locke, ‘Second Treatise of Government’, in P. Laslett (ed.) Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960, section 78.
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, London, Methuen, 1979, p. 167.
William Thompson, Appeal on Behalf of One Half of the Human Race, London, Virago, 1983, p. 55.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, London, Virago, 1983, p. 55.
Howard Williams, Kant’s Political Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, p. 118.
Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, pp. 15–16.
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London, Fontana, 1985, p. 102.
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© 2000 Susan Mendus
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Mendus, S. (2000). To Have and to Hold: Liberalism and the Marriage Contract. In: Feminism and Emotion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554559_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554559_7
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