12 quotes
Unlike the liberty of the early republic, the modern version permits — in fact even requires — concentrated power.
To put the point another way, the republican sees liberty as internally connected to self-government and the civic virtues that sustain it.
Democracy's Discontent (1996)
But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another.
Democracy's Discontent (1996)
Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.
Political philosophy seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to live up to our ideals seldom fully succeed.
Democracy's Discontent (1996)
The idea that freedom consists in our capacity to choose our ends finds prominent expression in our politics and law. Its province is not limited to those known as liberals rather than conservatives in American politics; it can be found across the political spectrum.
Democracy's Discontent (1996)
Meritocratic hubris reflects the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It is the smug conviction of those who land on top that they deserve their fate, and that those on the bottom deserve theirs, too. This attitude is the moral companion of technocratic politics.
The Tyranny of Merits (2020)
Kantian liberals thus avoid affirming a conception of the good by affirming instead the priority of the right, which depends in turn on a picture of the self given prior to its ends. But how plausible is this self-conception? Despite its powerful appeal, the image of the unencumbered self is flawed.
Democracy's Discontent (1996)
This liberalism says, in other words, that what makes the just society just is not the telos or purpose or end at which it aims, but precisely its refusal to choose in advance among competing purposes and ends. In its constitution and its laws, the just society seeks to provide a framework within which its citizens can pursue their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others
Luck egalitarianism defends inequalities that arise from effort and choice. This highlights a point of convergence with free-market liberalism. Both emphasize personal responsibility and make the community’s obligation to help the needy conditional on showing that their neediness is no fault of their own.
The Tyranny of Merits (2020)
We have seen that Rawls’ theory of justice requires for its coherence a conception of community in the constitutive sense, which requires in turn a notion of agency in the cognitive sense, and we have hound that Rawls’ theory of the good can allow for neither. This calls into question the theory of justice, or the theory of the good, or both.
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982)
Americans’ strong attachment to individual initiative, together with their willingness to accept inequality, leads them to exaggerate the possibility of rising through hard work. Europeans’ skepticism that individual effort conquers all, together with their lesser tolerance of inequality, leads them to underestimate the possibility of rising.
The Tyranny of Merits (2020)