Margins
Norms of Liberty book cover
Norms of Liberty
A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics
2005
First Published
4.29
Average Rating
464
Number of Pages

How can we establish a political/legal order that in principle does not require the human flourishing of any person or group to be given structured preference over that of any other? Addressing this question as the central problem of political philosophy, Norms of Liberty offers a new conceptual foundation for political liberalism that takes protecting liberty, understood in terms of individual negative rights, as the primary aim of the political/legal order. Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue for construing individual rights as metanormative principles, directly tied to politics, that are used to establish the political/ legal conditions under which full moral conduct can take place. These they distinguish from normative principles, used to provide guidance for moral conduct within the ambit of normative ethics. This crucial distinction allows them to develop liberalism as a metanormative theory, not a guide for moral conduct. The moral universe need not be minimized or morality grounded in sentiment or contracts to support liberalism, they show. Rather, liberalism can be supported, and many of its internal tensions avoided, with an ethical framework of Aristotelian inspiration—one that understands human flourishing to be an objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, social, and self-directed activity.

Avg Rating
4.29
Number of Ratings
21
5 STARS
43%
4 STARS
43%
3 STARS
14%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved