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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
‘Liberal’ is still a term of abuse in US presidential politics and certain academic circles. But gone for now are the days when liberals were saddled with responsibility for (depending on who was making the accusation) crime, promiscuity or crass concern with material wealth. Instead, competing political visions increasingly do battle for the right to carry the liberal banner.
1 Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 4.Google Scholar
2 I suspect that Kymlicka is running together two distinct senses of the term ‘responsibility’ here. One is a notion of metaphysical responsibility, the other of being held responsible for the cost of something. The former is tied up with the idea that people are free to revise their ends, the latter with the need for someone to bear the costs of various events. The former tempts Kymlicka to the idea that choices must be informed if people are to be responsible for them, the latter to the idea that individuals are responsible only for the opportunity costs, to others, of their choices. The former looks as if it can be made sense of apart from any assumptions about what is being chosen, but is without implications for issues of distributive justice. The latter, in turn, has implications only if we attend to the specific goods being chosen.
3 Rodgers v. Elliot, (1888) 146 Mass. 349; Vaughn v. Menlove, (1837) 3 Bing. N.C. 467 (C.P.). I am grateful to Ernest Weinrib for drawing my attention to these cases.
4 Markets represent a sphere in which most ways of putting others at risk of financial loss (through competition) do not give rise to individual liability.
5 Or, rather, if it is political, it is in a broader sense of that term than is the traditional concern of a nation state seeking to treat its citizens as equal.
6 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 329.Google Scholar
7 I am grateful to David Dyzenhaus and Will Kymlicka for helpful comments on an earlier draft.