4 - The Liberal Tradition

Summary

The collapse of traditional hierarchies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries forced political thinkers to wrestle with the practical implications of social and political equality, and gave birth to the liberal tradition of political thought. The liberal response to this development came in two overlapping stages. First, the democratization of public and private life made it clear that the power that we exercise over each other in modern societies is reciprocal, insidious, and pervasive, and gave new urgency to the problem of carving out a domain of nonresponsible conduct. Second, the rise of industrial capitalism exposed the tension between the dependence that we experience in our private lives and the independence that we are expected to display as citizens, and gave new urgency to the task of creating the conditions under which people become fit to be held responsible for what they do. Because these two projects are often at odds with one another, the characteristic note of liberal political thought is one of balance and compromise as we seek to strike an appropriate balance between republican and market freedom.