Reflections on Liberal Civic Society

Amos Witztum ()
Additional contact information
Amos Witztum: London School of Economics

Chapter Chapter 2 in The Economics of Political Philosophy, 2026, pp 39-110 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Modern liberal society is understood to be a functional organisation that is predicated on upholding the principles of individuals’ liberty (understood as freedoms) and equality (before the law) through the organisational principle of natural liberty (a self-regulated system or spontaneous order). In this chapter we trace back these ideas to the origins of liberalism to find that there is no justification for them, there. Instead, we argue that whatever individuals seek to achieve either by forming society or by creating institutions that will promote certain expectations which they may have from it, there will always be a price in terms of that which people believe that they already possess or have a right to possess that is independent of social existence in the former case or the new institutions in the latter. We argue here that whether one takes the view of a social contract or one sees society as a natural phenomenon where social bonds may have preceded the emergence of the conception of the self, the idea that individuals’ freedoms coupled with an organisation based on natural liberty cannot be the raison d’être of social organisation. This is particularly so when we take into consideration that natural liberty will always fail to deliver that which people may expect from the social project.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-032-04799-1_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032047991

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-04799-1_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().