Liberalism key thinkers Flashcards
John locke
Father of Liberalism.
Influence on America’s Revolution.
Believed minds are born blank and vulnerable to ideas placed into minds by people around you,
your environment and surroundings. Therefore believed strongly in an education system.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Early classical liberalist.
Believed that the Enlightenment’s optimistic view of human nature and rationalism should apply
to both males and females.
Argued that the state denied women their individual freedom and formal equality.
Argued states were also limiting their stock of intelligence, wisdom and morality by denying
women’s rights.
Also believed formal education should be made available to men and women in order for them
to realise their potential and think rationally to recognise the absurdity of illiberal principles such as the divine right of kings.
John Stuart Mill
Late classical liberalist.
Regarded as one of greatest English philosophers.
Also a politician and campaigner who developed ideas posited by Locke, Wollstonecraft and
others.
Bridge between classical and modern liberalism – transitional liberalism.
Belief in ‘negative freedom’ (absence of restraint) linked to Mill’s ‘harm principle’.
Tolerance was especially important to Mill – to ensure new ideas emerged and bad ones
exposed.
Saw liberty as not just a ‘natural right’ but as an engine of ongoing human development – always
room for development – developmental individualism.
Mill feared that a democratic had the potential to create a ‘tyranny of the majority’.
John Rawls
American philosopher.
Modern liberalist.
First to restate the idea that the core liberal principle of ‘foundational equality’ meant individuals
needed both legal and social equality.
Could be provided with an enabling state, public spending and progressive taxation –
redistribution of wealth which was not a surrender to socialism (as Friedrich Von Hayek had
suggested).
Original position and ‘veil of ignorance’: if we knew nothing about where we would be born and
brought up, what society would we wish for? Allows people to think more objectively about the
desired society. Used this theory to justify the expansion of the state.
Human nature was rational and empathetic which would lead to individuals choosing a society
whereby the poor fared better than in the present society – in line with government by consent.
There would still be inequality of outcome.
Betty Friedan
Linked to development of feminist ideology. Like Wollstonecraft, argued that gender was a serious hindrance to females – illiberal attitudes in society fostered and nurtured via ‘cultural channels’ (school, media, religion, etc.) – ‘cultural conditioning’.
Disdained violence – progress was possible via legal equality.
Rejected radical feminist arguments that the state was patriarchal and forever under the control of the dominant gender. In line with liberalism’s positive view of human nature.
Used Mill’s harm principle to defend laws criminalising sexual discrimination.
Explained that interventionist agencies e.g. EEOC, were still consistent with liberal states original
aim of protecting and advancing natural rights.
