Liberal Perfectionism and the Virtues

Abstract

Is Rawls’s political liberalism so thoroughly aligned with the principle of neutrality that no space is left for proposals aimed at strengthening a liberal ‘conception of the good’? The argument I develop here attempts to establish the grounds for a ‘virtue-based liberal perfectionism’ that, drawing on the present debate between liberal neutralists and perfectionists, re-introduces the virtues as a category of goods that have so far been largely neglected in the theoretical context of liberal theory. The argument does not start from zero, but is grounded in Rawls’s views on the virtues and self-respect as outlined in his major works. Rawls’s views also seem very compatible with Kramer’s recent proposal of an aspirational perfectionism. I propose to take some further steps in the direction already laid out by their contributions. My conclusion is in favour of an enlarged understanding of ‘public reason’ in which reasonableness no longer hinges merely on Rawls’s key notion of reasonableness as reciprocity but, following Von Wright, on an idea of reasonableness as encompassing everything that is concerned with ‘the right way of living’.