Introduction - Why Liberalism? Why Freedom?

Summary

The problem of polarization – our growing inability to talk to each other across lines of disagreement – is the most fundamental challenge facing modern societies. The only viable response to this challenge is to identify a moral vocabulary that has more than one dimension, but whose dimensions are broad and coherent enough to provide a common point of orientation. This is what a liberal theory of freedom provides. Liberal freedom, like liberal society itself, has two distinct and complementary dimensions, which give rise to two distinct and complementary moral projects; on the one hand to create the social conditions under which we are fit to be held responsible for what we do, and on the other hand to carve out a domain of conduct within which we are not responsible to anyone else for what we do except by choice. Contractarianism, with its focus on identifying principles of justice that all reasonable people should accept, tends to exacerbate the problem of polarization that liberalism is best suited to solve.