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Beyond Classical Liberalism

This book brings together diverse sets of standpoints on liberalism in an era of

growing skepticism and distrust regarding liberal institutions.
The chapters in the book:

• Relate concerns for liberal institutions with classical themes in perfectionist

politics, such as the priority of the common good in decision-making or the role of
comprehensive doctrines.
• Analyze how perfectionist intuitions about the political life affect our concepts of
public reason or public justification.
• Outline various moral duties we have toward other persons that underlie the
liberal institutions or notions of rights functioning across the contemporary
political landscape.
• Explore various aspects of pluralism from within influential religious or
philosophical traditions, applying insights from those traditions to issues in
contemporary politics.

The comprehensive book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and researchers
of politics, especially those in political philosophy and political theory.

James Dominic Rooney, OP, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist
University. He works primarily in metaphysics, medieval philosophy, philosophy
of religion, and Chinese philosophy, with research interests in natural law theory,
social ontology, the ethical and political implications of pluralism, and how norms
of practical reason affect public reason theories of justification. He has published
in Faith and Philosophy, dialectica, American Journal of Jurisprudence, Journal of
Church and State, International Philosophical Quarterly, and other venues. His most
recent book is Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The
Inevitability of Hylomorphism (2022).

Patrick Zoll, SJ, is Professor of Metaphysics at the Munich School of Philosophy

in Germany. He published a monograph on the debate between anti-perfectionist
and perfectionist liberals which won the renowned Karl Alber Prize 2016 and was
nominated for the Deutscher Studienpreis 2016: Perfektionistischer Liberalismus
(2016). His other publications appeared in several journals: Journal of Ethics & Social
Philosophy, Heythrop Journal, Faith and Philosophy, and Zeitschrift für Theologie
und Philosophie. His most recent book is What It Is to Exist: The Contribution of
Thomas Aquinas’s View to the Contemporary Debate (2022).
Beyond Classical Liberalism
Freedom and the Good

Edited by James Dominic Rooney

and Patrick Zoll
Designed cover image: Suzuki Harunobu 鈴木 春信. Freeing a
captured bird, c. 1769/70. Art Institute of Chicago.
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, James Dominic Rooney
and Patrick Zoll; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-40577-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-70275-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-70276-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781032702766
Typeset in Sabon LT Pro
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Editor information viii

List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xv

Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism: Freedom

and the Good 1
JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY AND PATRICK ZOLL

PART I
Freedom and the good of liberal institutions 13

1 Republican freedom, social justice, and democracy 15

PHILIP PETTIT

2 Political perfectionism and spheres of state neutrality 30

STEVEN WALL

3 The common good of nations and international order 45

MARK D. RETTER

4 Contractual obligation and the good: beyond classical liberalism 63

STEPHEN HALL

PART II
Public reasonability and justification 79

5 Discursive equality and public reason 81

THOMAS M. BESCH
vi Contents

6 Perfectionist public reason liberalism: why public reason

liberalism should be reconcilable with political perfectionism 99
PATRICK ZOLL

7 Liberal arts and the failures of liberalism 114

JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY

8 Perfectionism, political justification, and Confucianism 130

FRANZ MANG

PART III
The ethics of pluralism 145

9 Religion, democratic deliberation, and the requirement

of fallibilism 147
PAUL BILLINGHAM

10 The perfectionist challenge to relational theories of justice 163

NATALIE STOLJAR

11 Toleration: beyond minimal, negative liberty 179

ANDREW R. MURPHY

12 Human rights in the natural law tradition 190

JONATHAN CROWE

PART IV
Perfectionist traditions 203

13 Well-being policy: consensus hallmarks and cultural variation 205

DANIEL M. HAYBRON

14 Aristotle, Athens, and modern democracy: prospects for a

usable past 222
V. BRADLEY LEWIS
 Contents vii

15 Liberty and the good in the American founding 241

VINCENT PHILLIP MUÑOZ

16 Confucian perfectionism and resources for liberties 251

MAY SIM

Index 269
Editor information

James Dominic Rooney, OP, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hong

Kong Baptist University, a Fellow of the Angelicum Thomistic Institute
(Rome, Italy), and Research Fellow of the HKBU Centre for Sino-Christian
Studies. A Dominican friar of the Province of St. Albert the Great (Chicago,
IL), he works primarily in metaphysics, medieval philosophy, and Chinese
philosophy. He also has significant research interests in philosophy of reli­
gion and ethical and political issues connected with these areas, including
social ontology, the ethical and political implications of pluralism, and how
norms of practical reason affect public reason theories of justification. He
has published over forty articles in Faith and Philosophy, American Journal
of Jurisprudence, Journal of Church and State, Religious Studies, Nova et
Vetera, International Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy East and West,
and other venues, as well as popular articles in Law & Liberty, Church Life
Journal, 儒家网, and 爱思想. His most recent book is Material Objects in
Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The Inevitability of Hylomorphism
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), and his current book project, Not a Hope in
Hell, will be forthcoming from Routledge in 2024.

Patrick Zoll, SJ, is Professor of Metaphysics at the Munich School of Philoso­

phy in Germany. He studied philosophy and theology in Munich, Madrid,
and Bonn and held the Michael and Rita Mooney Visiting Professorship in
Catholic Studies as a postdoctoral fellow at Saint Louis University, MO. As a
result of his research on contemporary theories of perfectionism, liberalism,
and public justification, he published a monograph on the debate between
anti-perfectionist and perfectionist liberals which won the renowned Karl
Alber Prize 2016 and was nominated for the Deutscher Studienpreis 2016:
Perfektionistischer Liberalismus: Warum Neutralität ein falsches Ideal in
der Politik Begründung ist (Karl Alber Verlag, 2016). His other publications
include a monograph on the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, an edited
book about the taxation of wealth, and several articles on perfectionist jus­
tifications of public policies and other topics which appeared in journals,
including Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, Heythrop Journal, Faith
and Philosophy, and Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie. His most
recent book is What It Is to Exist: The Contribution of Thomas Aquinas’s
View to the Contemporary Debate (De Gruyter, 2022).
Contributors

Thomas M. Besch is Luojia Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University and

Honorary Associate at the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
University of Sydney. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford
in 2005. Before he came to Wuhan in 2015, he taught social and political
philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia, and at Bilkent Univer­
sity, Turkey. He also briefly worked as Research Fellow at the University
of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, and as Tutor in Logic at Somerville
College of the University of Oxford. His research focuses on contempo­
rary debates in Western social and political philosophy. His most recent
work engages debates around John Rawls’s political liberalism, ideas of
public justification, Rainer Forst’s neo-Kantian brand of critical theory,
and the ideas of respect and equality at the heart of such views. He has
published widely in this area, including papers in journals such as the
Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophia, Theoria, Dialogue, Social
Theory and Practice, and The European Journal of Philosophy, amongst
others. He has also published a monograph in German, Über John Rawls’
politischen Liberalismus.
Paul Billingham is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department
of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, and a
Fellow of Magdalen College. His research focuses on political liberalism,
public reason, religious freedom, and the place of religion in public life.
His work has been published in numerous journals in moral, political, and
legal philosophy, including Journal of Moral Philosophy, Politics, Philos­
ophy & Economics, Legal Theory, and The Philosophical Quarterly. He
is one of the authors of Does Faith Belong in Politics?: A Debate, which is
forthcoming with Routledge.
Jonathan Crowe is Head of School and Dean of the School of Law and
Justice at the University of Southern Queensland, where he also holds a
Research Chair in Law and Justice. He previously taught at Bond Uni­
versity and the University of Queensland, and has held visiting positions
at Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin. He is
the author or editor of eleven books and well over 100 book chapters
x Contributors

and journal articles, primarily on legal philosophy, ethics and public law.
His books include Australian Constitutional Law: Principles in Move­
ment (Oxford University Press, 2022), Mediation Ethics: From Theory to
Practice (Edward Elgar, 2020, co-authored with Rachael Field), Natural
Law and the Nature of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and the
Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory (Edward Elgar, 2019,
co-edited with Constance Youngwon Lee). He co-edits the Journal of
Legal Philosophy with Raff Donelson and Hillary Nye.
Stephen Hall is a professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(CUHK). Professor Hall joined the Faculty of Law at CUHK as a found­
ing member in 2005, after serving as Associate Professor in the School
of Law at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) for three years. He was
the founding director of the first Juris Doctor programs in Hong Kong,
at both CityU and CUHK. Professor Hall is also a fellow of C.W. Chu
College at CUHK, where he teaches a class on the origins of Western
civilization. Before moving to Hong Kong, he was for six years a Senior
Lecturer and Director of the European Law Centre in the Faculty of Law
at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. Professor Hall
has been admitted as a barrister and solicitor in Australia. Before joining
UNSW, he practiced law as Counsel with the Australian Attorney-Gen­
eral’s Department, where he served for nine years. Professor Hall’s areas
of research and teaching interest are Contract Law, International Law,
the traditions of the Natural Law and the Common Law, and European
and Roman legal history. Among his recent publications are Founda­
tions of Contract Law in Hong Kong (8th edition, LexisNexis, 2023),
Ho & Hall’s Hong Kong Contract Law (6th edition, LexisNexis, 2022),
Principles of International Law (7th edition, LexisNexis, 2022), “Pacta
Sunt Servanda, the Common Law, and Hong Kong”, in Contract Law
in Changing Times: Asian Perspectives on Pacta Sunt Servanda (Rout­
ledge, 2023), and “Natural Law, Human Rights and Jus Cogens” in The
Cambridge Handbook of Natural Law and Human Rights (CUP, 2022).
Professor Hall has received several awards for outstanding teaching,
including CUHK’s highest teaching award.
Daniel M. Haybron is the Theodore R. Vitali C.P. Professor of Philosophy
at Saint Louis University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Rutgers
University. His research focuses on ethics and the philosophy of psychol­
ogy, with an emphasis on well-being and its psychology. He has pub­
lished numerous articles in these areas. He is the author of The Pursuit of
Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford University
Press, 2008) and, most recently, Happiness: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press, 2013). He has received a $5.1 million grant to
study happiness and well-being from the Templeton Foundation with the
Happiness and Well-Being Project.
 Contributors xi

V. Bradley Lewis specializes in political and legal philosophy, especially in

classical Greek political thought and in the theory of natural law. He holds
a B.A. from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the Univer­
sity of Notre Dame. He has published scholarly articles in Polity, His­
tory of Political Thought, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy
and Rhetoric, Communio, Josephinum Journal of Theology, Pepperdine
Law Review, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, and Proceedings of
the American Catholic Philosophical Association, as well as chapters in a
number of books. He is currently working on a book project provisionally
titled “The Common Good and the Modern State.” He is also a fellow
of the Institute for Human Ecology and serves as Associate Editor of the
American Journal of Jurisprudence.
Franz Mang (孟繁麟) is Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong. Dr. Mang’s research interests lie mainly in social and politi­
cal philosophy and ethics. He received his D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford
University in 2017. Between 2010 and 2014, he was a Swire Scholar, on
a fully funded scholarship, at St. Antony’s College of Oxford University.
Dr. Mang received his B.A. in Philosophy and M.Phil. in Politics from
the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong,
respectively. He has published articles on Confucianism, perfectionism,
public reason, and liberal neutrality.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Con­
current Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and a Distin­
guished Fellow of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
He won a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to sup­
port his most recent book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding:
Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Reli­
gion Clauses (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
Dr. Muñoz’s first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washing­
ton, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009), won the Hubert
Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the
best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First
Amendment church–state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American
Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Lit­
tlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being
used at Notre Dame and other leading universities. In 2019, he joined the
editorial team of American Constitutional Law (11th edition, Routledge,
2019), the leading constitutional law casebooks designed for undergradu­
ate instruction.
Muñoz’s scholarship has been cited numerous times in church-state
Supreme Court opinions, most recently by Justice Alito in Fulton v. City of
Philadelphia (2021) and by both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas
in Espinoza v. Montana (2020).
xii Contributors

Andrew R. Murphy is Professor in the Political Science Department at the

University of Michigan. His research takes up the intersections between
politics and religion in both historical and contemporary contexts; he is
particularly interested in the emergence of religious liberty and liberty of
conscience in early modern England and America, and the ongoing rami­
fications of these debates as they continue to unsettle American politics.
In recent years, Murphy has focused on the life, career, and politi­
cal thought of William Penn, a figure who brought political theory and
practice together in the early modern British Atlantic. He is the author
of William Penn: A Life (Oxford, 2019) and Liberty, Conscience, and
Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn (Oxford, 2016); and
coeditor (with John Smolenski) of The Worlds of William Penn (Rutgers,
2019). An edition of Penn’s political writings, for the Cambridge Texts
in the History of Political Thought series, appeared in 2021. His work
on Penn continues the exploration of these topics begun in his first book,
Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent
in Early Modern England and America (Penn State, 2001). His more con­
temporary interests are reflected in his coauthored book (with David S.
Gutterman of Willamette University) Political Religion and Religious Poli­
tics: Navigating Identities in the United States (Routledge, 2015) and his
Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New Eng­
land to 9/11 (Oxford, 2008). He brings together historical and contempo­
rary political reflection in “The Past and Present (and Future?) Politics of
Religious Liberty,” The Forum 17 (2019): 45–67.
Philip Pettit is L.S. Rockefeller University Professor Human Values at Prince­
ton University, where he has taught political theory and philosophy since
2002, and since 2012–2013 has held a joint position as Distinguished
University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University,
Canberra. Born and raised in Ireland, he was a lecturer in University Col­
lege, Dublin, a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Professor
of Philosophy at the University of Bradford, before moving in 1983 to the
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University; there
he held a professorial position jointly in Social and Political Theory and
Philosophy until 2002. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in 2009, honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy
in 2010, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2013; he has
long been a fellow of the Australian academies in Humanities and Social
Sciences. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in
2017. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the National University
of Ireland (Dublin), the University of Crete, Lund University, Universite
de Montreal, Queen’s University, Belfast, the University of Athens and the
University of Buenos Aires.
Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit appeared
from OUP in 2007, edited by Geoffrey Brennan, R.E. Goodin, Frank
 Contributors xiii

Jackson, and Michael Smith. Pettit works in moral and political theory
and on background issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. His
recent single-authored books include The Common Mind (OUP 1996),
Republicanism (OUP 1997), A Theory of Freedom (OUP 2001), Rules,
Reasons and Norms (OUP 2002), Penser en Societe (PUF, Paris 2004),
Examen a Zapatero (Temas de Hoy, Madrid 2008), Made with Words:
Hobbes on Mind, Society and Politics (PUP 2008), On the People’s Terms:
A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (CUP 2012), Just Freedom:
A Moral Compass for a Complex World (W.W. Norton 2014), The Robust
Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue and Respect (OUP
2015), The Birth of Ethics (OUP 2018) and The State (PUP 2023).
Mark D. Retter is Senior Research Fellow with the Cambridge Initiative
on Peace Settlements and Associate Member of the Las Casas Institute,
Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. Prior to this, he was a postdoc­
toral research associate on the Legal Tools for Peace-Making Project at
the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, and completed his doctoral
studies, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Retter is currently writing Human Rights after Virtue, a monograph
that examines the grounds for Alasdair MacIntyre’s human rights skepti­
cism and its relevance for the philosophy and law of human rights. His
publications include (with Tom Angier and Iain Benson) The Cambridge
Handbook of Natural Law and Human Rights (Cambridge University
Press, 2023), and (with Marc Weller and Andrea Varga) International
Law and Peace Settlements (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
May Sim is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies at the
College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in Phi­
losophy from Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, Aristotle’s Under­
standing of Form and Universals, was directed by Alasdair C. MacIntyre.
She is the Director of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philoso­
phy, and served as the past president of a couple of regional societies. She
was the 62nd president of the Metaphysical Society of America in 2013.
Her publications include Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confu­
cius (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and over 50 articles and book
chapters on Eastern and Western philosophies. These essays include com­
parisons between Confucianism (primarily, early Confucians such as Con­
fucius and Mencius) and Western Philosophy (primarily, Ancient Greek
Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus), Daoism and West­
ern Philosophy, Confucianism and Daoism, Confucianism and Human
Rights, as well as Eastern and Western accounts of metaphysics and eth­
ics. She is the contributing editor of The Crossroads of Norm and Nature:
Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics (1995) and From Puzzles to
Principles?: Essays on Aristotle’s Dialectic (1999). Her current research
includes two books: a Confucian account of human rights, and Metaphys­
ics and Ethics: East and West.
xiv Contributors

Natalie Stoljar is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for

Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University. She holds a
joint appointment in the Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy, Faculty
of Medicine. Her research expertise is in social and political philosophy,
feminist philosophy, and the philosophy of law. She has published numer­
ous articles and book chapters and is co-editor (with C. Mackenzie) of
Relational Autonomy. Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and
the Social Self (OUP 2000) and (with K. Voigt) of Autonomy and Equal­
ity. Relational Approaches (Routledge 2021).
Steven Wall is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where
he is also a member of the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and
a member of the Politics, Philosophy, Economics and Law Program. He
works primarily on questions in political philosophy, but also has interests
in ethics and philosophy of law. Professor Wall edits Oxford Studies in
Political Philosophy, and is the author of Liberalism, Perfectionism and
Restraint (Cambridge, 1998) and Enforcing Morality (Cambridge, 2023).
He edited Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory with
G. Klosko (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Reasons for Action, with D.
Sobel (Cambridge, 2009), and The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism
(Cambridge, 2015).
Acknowledgements

Thanks, in addition, to the Angelicum Thomistic Institute (Rome, IT) and

brothers in our Dominican and Jesuit communities for their support and
encouragement throughout this project.
Introduction to Beyond Classical
Liberalism: Freedom and the Good
James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

General introduction
On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol building was stormed by rioters pro­
testing the attempt of Congress to certify the election of Joseph Biden to the
presidency. The event brought with it public outcry, as it was taken by many
to be an assault on basic principles of democratic governance, and many
called on the government to punish the protestors to the full extent of the
law. However, the event also brought criticism from some quarters, who held
that the condemnations of violence in the United States following the Capitol
Hill riots and the earlier riots after the death of George Floyd were hypocriti­
cal in light of the way that Americans had previously praised pro-democracy
protests in Hong Kong. Even more seriously, this was claimed to illustrate
the failure of democracy as a viable mode of government.
Skepticism about the value of liberal institutions goes deep and has pro­
moted rediscoveries of and fascination with various illiberal communitarian
alternatives. Patrick Deneen has argued, in the widely discussed Why Liberal­
ism Failed, that the political establishment in America and Europe have failed
to provide what the ideology of liberal institutions has long sought: equal­
ity, respect, and progress.1 Instead, liberal institutions have deteriorated into
what Deneen and others have argued is the enforcement of a novel, uniquely
liberal, orthodoxy of approved and forbidden political opinions. Despite
having claimed to be neutral on matters of what John Rawls claimed were
comprehensive religious, moral, or metaphysical doctrines, these authors
argue that liberalism has revealed itself to be yet another comprehensive doc­
trine that aims to exert its dominance over all its rivals. These criticisms are
not restricted to the ethereal world of intellectuals, but have taken corporeal
form in new geopolitical configurations which aim to supplant the liberal
national or international order as a superior way of life for human beings.
This book takes a different stand, defending the moral or political legiti­
macy and relevance of liberal institutions that ensure equal rights to political
participation by all citizens, freedom of speech and conscience, and require­
ments that state coercion be publicly justified. The authors in this book are

DOI: 10.4324/9781032702766-1
2 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

not all committed defenders of liberalism in its recent form, and some might
not describe themselves as liberals at all. The authors collected together here
intentionally represent a broad collection of philosophical, moral, and reli­
gious traditions—with much room for disagreement on the justifications
offered for their defenses of liberal governance. Nevertheless, these authors
are united in working out political alternatives that navigate beyond the more
well-known liberal consensus positions as well as the illiberal communitarian
directions in recent political theory.
In sum, the aim of this book is to bring together chapters which depict
ways to go beyond a certain kind of liberalism. The kind of liberalism which
is judged to be unsatisfactory is a liberalism that is closely associated with the
work of John Rawls and his Political Liberalism.2 Broadly speaking, liberal­
ism involves commitment to values such as freedom or liberty, equality, and
respect, emphasis on the protection of individual rights, and advocacy for
democratic institutions such as the rule of law, elections, or the separation of
powers. Given these characteristics, liberalism in political philosophy is from
its very beginnings in the seventeenth century closely connected to the idea of
limited government.
The term ‘classical liberalism’ ordinarily refers to the views of John Stuart
Mill or John Locke. This older liberal tradition did not break completely with
the perfectionist tradition in political philosophy. According to this tradition,
an important purpose of the state is to enable and promote the flourishing
of its citizens. Founding figures of the liberal tradition such as Mill did not
regard their liberalism as being in a principled conflict with perfectionism.3
Matters started changing beginning with an epistemic turn within political
philosophy initiated in 1971 by the publication of Rawls’s seminal A Theory
of Justice. Rawls tied the normative question of the scope and legitimacy of
the use of coercive state power to the epistemological question of whether
it can be publicly justified, that is, justified with considerations which are
accessible as reasons to all reasonable members of the public.4 An important
consequence of this epistemic turn was that it resulted in a kind of liberalism
which is inherently anti-perfectionistic in nature. From the 1970s onward, it
appeared that a commitment to liberalism could not be divorced from a com­
mitment to neutrality concerning the good.5 Limited government too seemed
now to imply that the state should refrain from promoting or taking a stand
on what a flourishing human life should be.
Due to the dominance and lasting influence of the Rawlsian model of lib­
eralism over the last five decades, the liberal current has been largely diverted
away from perfectionism. As such anti-perfectionist views have become
for many on both sides inextricable from commitment to liberal values or
institutions themselves, the package of views has assumed “classical” status
within contemporary political philosophy (just as Rawls’ books constitute a
“classical” work in liberal theory), and hence are rightly described as a kind
of “classical liberalism” relative to political philosophy today. Those allied
 Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism 3

to this way of tying anti-perfectionism with liberal political theory, alongside

Rawls, argued that conceptions of the good can play no role in the pub­
lic justification of coercive state action due to a non-eliminable reasonable
pluralism about conceptions of the good.6 Given this reasonable pluralism,
considerations which rely on premises about the good life can play no role in
public justification because such considerations are not accessible as reasons
to all reasonable members of the public. The use of such premises would
result in unsolvable reasonable disagreements and state action which were
justified with such arguments could not count as legitimate because members
of the public could object that the interference with their liberty which goes
along with the relevant state action is not publicly justified to them. Their
moral status as free and equal citizens would be violated and they would not
be treated with the respect owed to them because their liberty was restricted
with considerations which are not accessible as reasons for them.
Right from the start, the anti-perfectionist character of that liberalism was
the target of a series of objections from critics such as Michael Sandel, Alas­
dair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, or Michael Walzer which have been lumped
together under the label ‘communitarians.’7 These authors were united by
their conviction that a liberalism without perfectionism is seriously flawed,
unsatisfactory, and that a completely anti-perfectionist liberalism cannot
even be formulated in a coherent way. In a nutshell, perfectionist critics
claimed that Rawlsian-esque liberalism is just another kind of perfectionism.
Characteristic of it is simply its distinctive liberal conception of the good life
with its emphasis on negative freedom, autonomy, and individual rights, its
dismissal of virtues, neglect of character formation, lacking awareness of the
importance of communities, and so on. It was argued that contemporary anti-
perfectionist liberals disguise this fact with appeal to values such as respect or
tolerance and attempt to impose their controversial liberal conception of the
good life without the possibility to challenge it, in the name of “neutrality.”
However, what has not been sufficiently recognized in the unfolding and
still ongoing debate about liberalism’s relation to the good is that two forms
of perfectionist critique of classical liberalism must be distinguished. Illib­
eral perfectionists such as MacIntyre and, more recently, Patrick Deneen
and Adrian Vermeule agree with Rawlsian liberals that liberalism cannot be
reconciled with perfectionism for principled reasons.8 They only draw the
opposite inference: if liberalism cannot accommodate perfectionism, it is not
perfectionism but liberalism which must be abandoned.
Alternative streams of thought are represented in our book which chal­
lenge this purported need to choose between perfectionism and liberal values/
institutions. And not every perfectionist critique of anti-perfectionist liberal­
ism and its doctrine of neutrality concerning the good is illiberal in nature.
For instance, over the last decades, authors such as Joseph Raz, George Sher,
Alexandra Couto, Christoph Henning, Kevin Vallier, and some represented
in this book (Steven Wall and Patrick Zoll) have challenged the premise that
4 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

liberalism is irreconcilable with perfectionism and argued for different ver­

sions of a liberal perfectionism or perfectionist liberalism.9 According to per­
fectionist liberals, it is possible to go “beyond” more recent deviations in
liberalism without jeopardizing liberal values such as liberty, equality, and
respect, or abandoning liberal ideas and institutions such as the protection of
individual rights, the rule of law, democratic elections, or the separation of
powers. These perfectionist liberals also do not replicate the views of classi­
cal liberals such as Mill, but are instead pioneering new paths for those still
committed by the liberal tradition to take. Nevertheless, some of the authors
go beyond liberalism in ways that leave even classical liberal theory behind.
Those represented in this book include more than perfectionist liberals, and
instead represent other traditions, such as republicanism (Pettit and Muñoz),
or classical Greek political thought (Lewis), or Confucianism (Mang and
Sim), or natural law theories (Crowe), or those who do not approach the
issues through these political theoretical lenses at all (Haybron).
We will not attempt to classify the theoretical schools to which each author
belongs, since many overlap among these categories, and merely highlight
that the chapters collected in this book intend to contribute to this ongoing
project to go “beyond” liberalism without thereby abandoning commitment
to liberal values or institutions. They are motivated by the conviction that a
defense of such values/institutions will be able to meet the many internal and
external anti-liberal challenges which threaten the very persistence of liberal
and democratic states around the world only if it draws on the resources
provided by perfectionist traditions. Freedom requires the good for its effec­
tive defense.

Summary of structure and chapters

This book consists of four parts. Part I contains chapters which relate con­
cerns for liberal values or institutions with classical themes in perfectionist
politics. These themes concern freedom, neutrality, the common good, and
the tension between individual and community, with corresponding parallel
tensions between nation-state and wider international community.
Philip Petitt contrasts classical liberalism’s conception of freedom as non­
interference with the republican conception of freedom as the absence of
domination. The republican conception of freedom points to a more substan­
tive ideal than that of a laissez-faire society: freedom requires a state which
protects and empowers its citizens under the law to a level that secures a
republican version of social justice. However, a challenge for the political
implementation of a republican ideal of freedom is that it may enable public
domination by those in office. To guard against this, Pettit advances a dis­
tinctively republican conception of democracy whose goal it is to generate a
range of constitutional demands by which the discretion of those in power
is reduced and by which they are forced to operate on terms laid down by
their people.
 Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism 5

Two chapters of this part go beyond certain established boundaries of

the debate between contemporary liberals affected by the Rawlsian turn and
their perfectionist critics.
Steven Wall questions the assumption that the divide between classical
liberalism and perfectionism is as sharp or deep as it is widely believed to
be. It is usually taken for granted in the debate that classical liberals accept
state neutrality—and consequently embrace the view that it is illegitimate
for the state to take sides between rival conceptions of the good life—and
that perfectionists reject state neutrality—and consequently hold that it is
permissible, and may be a requirement, for the state to support or promote
some conceptions of the good life over others. Wall challenges this belief by
presenting a perfectionist case for state neutrality with respect to competing
conceptions of the good within certain spheres of social life. In his view, state
neutrality is not a global property of state action, but a property that applies
to some spheres of state action and not others. However, the character and
specification of the relevant neutrality requirements operative in these dif­
ferent spheres of social life rest on substantive, and no doubt controversial,
judgments concerning the goods of human life.
Mark D. Retter transcends the usual boundaries of the debate by expand­
ing it to issues that go beyond the nation-state. According to Retter, with its
methodological individualism and the privileged, authoritative status attrib­
uted to state sovereignty, the liberal tradition cannot provide an adequate
justification for the international rule of law and international institutions.
Classical liberalism’s methodological individualism frustrates an adequate
articulation of the legitimacy and limits of political authority. Retter argues
that the presumption that such authority is exercised through an artificial
reason of state renders international relations a function of state prerogative.
In the international realm, liberalism has a difficult time proposing a compel­
ling justification for individual states to accede to any substantive rules-based
order, since the international order is increasingly and vociferously rejected
as the imposition of hegemonic or parochial conceptions of the good/just
upon sovereign nation-states, sometimes against what they take to be in their
best interest—as was exemplified in Russia’s justification for its invasion of
Ukraine. The result is an unstable dialectic between a liberal international­
ism, advancing an individualistic form of human rights at the expense of
solidarity through the nation-state, and a collectivist and state-based nation­
alism, asserting the privileges of sovereignty for those wielding state power.
Retter seeks to reclaim and extend intellectual resources from the perfection­
ist philosophical tradition drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. His
practice-based account of politics aims to explain the legitimacy of political
and legal authority by reference to human sociability and the common good,
before extending that explanation into the transnational domain.
Stephen Hall moves beyond liberalism in regard to conceptualizing the
structure and justification of legal institutions. He engages with the so-called
‘will theory’ of contractual obligation which originated in the Victorian era
6 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom and which remains influential

today. According to this theory, the explanation of contractual obligation is
that it is the product entirely of the human will. Hall maintains that the will
theory has its merits but fails to fully explain contractual obligation. Because
humans are social beings, we cannot achieve our highest good of full human
flourishing without cooperative action. It is this necessity of cooperative
action in support of reasonable goals that is the true source of all obligation.
Promise-making is a practice that can secure such action. Once reliance has
been placed on a promise, the promisor is obliged to honor it. Contract law
strengthens the trust that certain promises will be honored where trust might
otherwise be weak, thereby serving the common good. Therefore, Hall con­
cludes, contractual obligation should be understood as being the product of
will directed by practical reason toward the attainment of reasonable goals,
in circumstances where the common good is served by legal enforcement.
The contributions in Part II aim at contemporary issues arising for public
reason or public justification, including whether liberal societies are fair in
their treatment of the unreasonable citizen, whether and how perfectionists
can legitimately appeal to theories of public reason, and the way in which
perfectionist intuitions about political life affect our concepts of public
justification.
Thomas M. Besch opens the part by raising concerns about the dominant
public reason liberal view of public justification: whether liberals violate their
own principles in excluding unreasonable citizens from public justification.
Besch argues that, on the one hand, public reason liberalism—liberalism
which ties legitimacy to public justification—with its commitment to equal
respect requires that conceptions of justice be publicly justifiable to relevant
people in a manner that allocates to each an equal say. On the other hand,
liberal public justification also excludes because it accords no say, or a lesser
say, to people it deems unreasonable. Thus, a decisive question is whether
that kind of liberal public justification be aligned with the equal respect that
allegedly grounds it, if the latter calls for discursive equality? Besch suggests
that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect can cohere with the
standing of the unreasonable in public justification if that standing is not
impermissibly unequal in discursive purchase. He considers one candidate
view of what is permissible: purchase inequality is permissible provided rel­
evant people have standing of enough purchase to be able to avoid what is
bad. Yet Besch proposes, in the end, that these considerations merely draw
out further important questions about such inequalities. Public reason lib­
eralism still has difficulties concerning the way in which public justification
needs to be authoritative to those who are supposed to accept it, when those
people are not merely idealized reasoners but the actual (sometimes unrea­
sonable) members of the community.
A current debate between advocates of consensus and convergence
accounts of public reason liberalism exemplifies concerns to widen the scope
 Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism 7

of public justification, and the next two chapters attempt to contribute to this
ongoing controversy within public reason liberalism and indirectly address
some of the tensions which Besch identifies in the philosophical landscape.
Patrick Zoll argues that there is a compelling reason to prefer a conver­
gence account of public reason’s structure over a consensus account. Only
the former permits to reconcile a public reason liberalism with political per­
fectionism. According to Zoll, the former should be reconcilable with the
latter because an anti-perfectionist public reason liberalism imposes severe
restrictions on the scope of what liberal states can legitimately do which in
turn deprive them of important means to ward of illiberal threats to their
well-functioning or even their existence. Thus, what speaks in favor of a con­
vergence account of public reason’s structure is that it allows constructing a
perfectionist public reason liberalism which is far better suited to deal with
anti-liberal and anti-democratic challenges than an anti-perfectionist public
reason liberalism.
James Dominic Rooney shows that consensus accounts of public reason
liberalism have serious difficulty justifying fair educational policies and pre­
serving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies
about teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice.
But many acrimonious conflicts concern matters that such approaches have
difficulty in resolving fairly, such as the preservation/promotion of cultural
patrimony (languages, architecture, art, church buildings) or education pol­
icy that might significantly affect the development of children. Some have
appealed to these difficulties as illustrating that liberal societies undermine
those features within civil society that sustain public reasoning. Rooney con­
curs that consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about
these kinds of disputes. Yet, convergence accounts of public reason, which
allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited
ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition
and can justify a pluralist state advancing valuable community goods. He
shows that John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds
resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that
there can be convergence around the fact that educational policies or cul­
tural goods are valuable, despite deep substantive disagreements about what
makes such things valuable. The purported defects of liberal societies only
result from an overly restrictive vision of public justification, one which can
be jettisoned without undermining the ideal of public justification itself.
Franz Mang makes a contribution to a debate within perfectionism. Per­
fectionists are united by the conviction that the state may, or should, promote
valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are
bad or worthless. However, Mang draws attention to the fact that two types
of perfectionist theory must be distinguished: comprehensive perfectionism
and moderate perfectionism. Comprehensive perfectionism claims that per­
fectionism should be grounded in some comprehensive moral doctrine, while
8 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

moderate perfectionism claims that perfectionism does not have to be based

upon any comprehensive moral doctrine. Moderate perfectionism also con­
tends that in justifying the use of political power, citizens and state officials
may appeal to judgments about the good life that are piecemeal, convincing,
widely accepted, and not highly controversial. Mang provides some reasons
for favoring moderate perfectionism and defends it against criticisms, clarify­
ing the nature and limits of moderate perfectionism through a discussion of
Joseph Chan’s Confucian perfectionism.
Part III of this book collects chapters which aim to defend or outline vari­
ous moral duties we might have toward other persons that underlie the lib­
eral institutions or notions of ‘rights’: functioning across the contemporary
political landscape, but doing so outside the dominant frameworks. The con­
tributions thus address worries that perfectionism is necessarily paternalistic
or anti-pluralistic, or that it undermines core liberal values such as tolerance
or respect.
Paul Billingham deals with an important subset of perfectionist reasons,
namely, religious reasons. Liberalism with its emphasis on public justifica­
tion seems to demand that any arguments used within political deliberation
should be open to critical scrutiny, that is, be advanced in a fallibilistic spirit.
But can religious citizens comply with this requirement of fallibilism when
offering religious political arguments? We might think not, given that such
arguments often appeal to what religious citizens see as authoritative sources
of absolute truth. Billingham argues in his contribution that, despite this fact,
religious citizens can comply with the requirement of fallibilism even if they
are unwilling to be fallibilistic about their core religious convictions, because
the requirement should be understood as permitting this. In resolving this
worry, Billingham argues that religious beliefs may be advanced in a way that
makes them a constructive and fruitful contribution to deliberation. Indeed,
he suggests that accommodating religious reasons can positively affect politi­
cal discussions concerning what policies will promote justice and the com­
mon good within a community of freedom.
Natalie Stoljar deals with two basic values of the liberal tradition in politi­
cal philosophy: equality and autonomy. Stoljar, as well as others, has argued
that these values are relational in nature and consequently defended relational
approaches to equality—relational egalitarianism—and autonomy. A char­
acteristic of such relational accounts is the claim that certain forms of unjust
social hierarchy (particularly oppression) are incompatible with equality and
autonomy. Thus, it seems that they introduce substantive moral commit­
ments into liberalism itself. According to Stoljar, an important objection to
relational approaches is that, in importing substantive moral commitments,
they are problematically perfectionist: they constitute disrespectful treatment
of people holding conceptions of the good that are incompatible with the
substantive morality implicit in relational approaches. With her contribution,
Stoljar unpacks the challenge and argues that, even if relational theories are
 Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism 9

committed to perfectionism, this is not morally problematic. The perfection­

ism implicit in relational approaches is compatible with a moral requirement
of respect for persons.
Andrew R. Murphy challenges a portrayal of toleration—a value central
to the liberal tradition—as a strictly negative liberty, that is, as the absence
of constraint. In connection with this characterization, toleration has been
attacked as unduly minimal, compared to more robust and affirmative terms
like respect, recognition, and equality. Furthermore, it has been argued
that emphasis on toleration fosters a depoliticizing discourse that ignores
the presence of vast power differentials between social groups, as well as
ignoring the place of socioeconomic inequalities. In response to this critique,
Murphy offers a brief overview of the history of toleration in the liberal tra­
dition. Toleration was at its inception a negative liberty concerned primarily
with religious differences. However, toleration evolved to include positive
elements such as liberties of speech, press, and assembly. Murphy concludes
that, on the one hand, the tolerationist legacy is not as unsavory as its detrac­
tors maintain—it retains the possibility of addressing concerns about power
differentials and positive liberties. On the other hand, toleration is not a
panacea for the many types of difference that animate contemporary social
and political tensions. Without overstating the prospects of toleration for
progressive politics, Murphy points out that it lends itself to a particular type
of issues, namely, those related to circling conscientious belief and practice.
Jonathan Crowe argues that natural law theory offers a straightforward
and compelling way of deriving human rights from intrinsic goods. Crowe
concedes that human rights are not a basic concept in the natural law out­
look. Rights are subsidiary to the more fundamental notion of intrinsic
human goods. Nevertheless, goods generate reasons for action, which in turn
produce duties toward others. These duties then correlate to rights. Crowe’s
contribution elaborates and defends a specific version of the natural law
argument for human rights which makes appeal to such intrinsic goods. He
then explores some advantages of the natural law approach to human rights,
showing how it defuses criticisms of rights discourse advanced from both
within and outside the natural law tradition. According to Crowe, the prior­
ity of goods over duties, and duties over rights, in the natural law outlook
offers an antidote to the individualistic and positional tendencies of rights
claims in contemporary politics: instead, when given their appropriate place
in political thought, rights claims need not obscure or override the primary
role of the common good in shaping political obligations.
The contributions of Part IV aim to explore various aspects of pluralism
from within influential religious or philosophical traditions, and to apply
insights from those traditions to issues in contemporary politics. The chap­
ters aim to go beyond the usual geographical and historical boundaries within
which classical liberalism is often discussed and challenged by perfectionist
intuitions.
10 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

Daniel Haybron moves us from perfectionism as such to matters of well­

being in public policy. He takes up a notorious problem facing perfection­
ism and any well-being policy: the risk of paternalistically imposing some
uniform conception of well-being on a diverse public characterized by deep
cultural differences. Haybron maintains that a policy may in a sense promote
substantive views of the good, but must take individuals’ own values as the
standard for assessing benefits and harms—whether or not an objective the­
ory of well-being is correct. From that starting point he argues that to a great
extent, the aims of well-being policy can be accomplished by focusing on a
modest set of consensus hallmarks of well-being such as happiness, health,
relationship, and rewarding work. According to Haybron, governments can
promote well-being without endorsing a particular conception of welfare,
and without purporting to sum up citizen’s well-being in any comprehensive
metric.
V. Bradley Lewis’s contribution considers Aristotle’s critical engagement
with classical Greek democracy as a resource for thinking about the ways
that non-liberal ideas may support and improve liberal democratic practice.
V. Bradley Lewis proposes that self-government, active citizenship, and mod­
eration are the kinds of Aristotelian ideas that may help, and that Aristo­
tle’s critical evaluation of democracy is more complex and less hostile than
often thought. He looks carefully at the basic conceptual structure of Aris­
totle’s political science by reference to his closely interrelated notions of the
city, the regime, and citizenship. Lewis examines Aristotle’s characterization
of democracy and his most important criticisms of it as a political regime.
Finally, he considers complexities of Aristotle’s view that stem from other
aspects of his own political theory and actual Greek political practice as
described by modern students of Greek democracy. The Aristotelian tradi­
tion, he argues, remains relevant to our modern circumstances as providing
the classical inspiration for the basic values that underlie contemporary lib­
eral societies, such as self-government, democratic citizenship, and a need for
principled limits on governmental authority.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz shifts our attention from antiquity and Europe to
the establishment of the United States. He explores the relationship between
freedom and the good within the political philosophical milieu at the Ameri­
can founding. He contends that the American Founding Fathers and the con­
stitutionalism they bequeathed to us are neither indifferent toward the good
nor neutral toward competing conceptions of the good. Rather, the founders
conceived of political liberty, including protection for the inalienable natural
right of religious liberty, as a demand of justice. They held, accordingly, that
the security of natural rights “endowed by our Creator” is the foundation of
the political common good properly understood.
May Sim proposes that Confucian ethics is relevant to contemporary
debates on individual autonomy and liberalism. Some authors have argued
that Confucianism can support these values with certain modifications, while
 Introduction to Beyond Classical Liberalism 11

others hold that Confucianism already contains the necessary resources for
liberal values and human rights. By analyzing these diverse perspectives, Sim
aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the degree to which classical
Confucianism supports liberal values. She compares the views of Confucius
and Mencius on choice to those of Aristotle, aiming to shed light on the
degree of freedom of choice that each endorses. Sim concludes that, due to
Aristotle and these early Confucians having a common perspective, a virtue-
oriented ethics, comparing them reveals that both contain relevant resources
for understanding and supporting a system of political liberties which facili­
tate the pursuit of ultimate goods. Thus, Sim argues that Confucianism con­
tains resources that support individual freedom and human rights without
needing to be modified to fit contemporary values.

A concluding word
We do not aim to propose that all of these approaches represent a unified
political perspective—indeed, some of our authors are perfectionists, whereas
others have a more liberal politics—but that they form a broadly coherent
defense of the way in which liberal values and institutions remain good for
human beings or represent our moral obligations to one another. While dif­
ferent authors appeal to different traditions to make sense of these goods and
obligations, there is a profound convergence even among these varied per­
spectives.10 What we hope to thereby prompt is a deeper engagement with the
values at the core of our shared traditions. Undercutting the motivations for
recent trends toward authoritarianism or populism lies in showing the way
that liberal values or institutions are not a threat to the flourishing of a vibrant
civil society but rather its ally. The weaknesses and flaws of the liberal tradi­
tion which we have inherited should not blind us to its many achievements
and future possibilities to secure a life of valuable liberty for those who come
after us. The chapters in this book support that proposition while simultane­
ously pointing beyond the limits of that tradition to the way in which we
might develop those insights in light of other traditions, cultures, and more
recent problems. What we have learned over the past centuries can help pro­
vide us with a better way of living within those modern liberal regimes that
aim to provide robust self-governance which secures the common good.

Notes
1 Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2018).
2 Rawls most important works in this regard include John Rawls, “Justice as Fair­
ness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985);
John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
12 James Dominic Rooney and Patrick Zoll

3 Cf. David O. Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Phi­
losophy of T.H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); David O. Brink, Mill’s
Progressive Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Christoph Hen­
ning, Freiheit, Gleichheit, Entfaltung: Die politische Philosophie des Perfektionis­
mus (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2015).
4 However, Gerald Gaus criticized that Rawl and other proponents of classical lib­
eralism erroneously believed that they could avoid contentious epistemological
issues, and that they therefore failed to reflect on and to defend sufficiently the
conceptions of justification or public justification presupposed by their liberalism,
cf. Gerald F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Politi­
cal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
5 See, for example, Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980); Brian Barry, Justice as Impartial­
ity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Charles E. Larmore, Patterns
of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Steven
Lecce, Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2008); Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991); Jonathan Quong, Liberalism without Perfection (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011). For support of the claim that liberalism’s com­
mitment to neutrality is a contingent feature of liberalism and a relatively new
development within the liberal tradition, see also Brink, Mill’s Progressive Prin­
ciples, 255–259; Thomas Hurka, “Indirect Perfectionism: Kymlicka on Liberal
Neutrality,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1995): 36–37.
6 In what follows, the terms ‘conceptions of the good’ and ‘conceptions of the good
life’ are used interchangeably.
7 See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory,
2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1982); Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which
Rationality?, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2003); Michael J.
Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Iden­
tity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Michael Walzer, Spheres of
Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). For
a good overview of the communitarian critique of liberalism, see Stephen Mulhall
and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Pub­
lishing, 1996).
8 See, for example, Adrian Vermeule, Common Good Constitutionalism: Recover­
ing the Classical Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022).
9 See, for example, Alexandra Couto, Liberal Perfectionism: The Reasons that
Goodness Gives (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014); Henning, Freiheit, Gleichheit, Ent­
faltung; Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986); George Sher, Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997); Kevin Vallier, Liberal Politics and Public
Faith: Beyond Separation (New York: Routledge, 2014); Steven Wall, Liberalism,
Perfectionism and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Pat­
rick Zoll, Perfektionistischer Liberalismus: Warum Neutralität ein falsches Ideal
in der Politikbegründung ist (Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber Verlag, 2016). In what
follows, the terms ‘liberal perfectionism’ and ‘perfectionist liberalism’ are used
interchangeably.
10 Indeed, we had hoped to represent further traditions in the project, but it was bad
fortune that sadly led to us being unable to include other perspectives that would
have been desirable, such as Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.
Another random document with
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the House all the data available for a judgment and decision,
understating, as is his wont, the case for such a solution as he
himself might be apt to favour.

It now appears (he said) from the news I have received to-
day, which has come quite recently—and I am not yet quite sure
how far it has reached me in an accurate form—that an
ultimatum has been given to Belgium by Germany, the object of
which was to offer Belgium friendly relations with Germany on
condition that she would facilitate the passage of German troops
through Belgium. Well, until one has these things absolutely
definitely up to the last moment, I do not wish to say all that one
would say if one was in a position to give the House full,
complete, and absolute information upon the point. We were
sounded once in the course of last week as to whether if a
guarantee was given that after the war Belgian integrity would be
preserved that would content us. We replied that we could not
bargain away whatever interests or obligations we had in
Belgian neutrality. Shortly before I reached the House I was
informed that the following telegram had been received from the
King of the Belgians by King George:

“Remembering the numerous proofs of your Majesty’s friendship and

that of your predecessor, and the friendly attitude of England in 1870,
and the proof of friendship you have just given us again, I make a
supreme appeal to the diplomatic intervention of your Majesty’s
Government to safeguard the integrity of Belgium.”

Diplomatic intervention took place last week on our part.

What can diplomatic intervention do now? We have great and
vital interests in the independence of Belgium, and integrity is
the least part. If Belgium is compelled to allow her neutrality to
be violated, of course the situation is clear. Even if by agreement
she admitted the violation of her neutrality, it is clear she could
only do so under duress. The smaller States in that region of
Europe ask but one thing: their one desire is that they should be
left alone and independent. The one thing they fear is, I think,
 not so much that their integrity should be interfered with, but
their independence. If in this war which is before Europe one of
the combatants should violate its neutrality and no action should
be taken to resent it, at the end of the war, whatever the integrity
may be, the independence will be gone. I have one further
quotation from Mr. Gladstone as to what he thought about the
independence of Belgium. He said:

“We have an interest in the independence of Belgium which is wider

than that we have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in
the answer to the question whether under the circumstances of the case
this country, endowed as it is with influence and power, would quietly
stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime that ever
stained the pages of history, and thus become participators in the sin.”

Now if it be the case that there has been anything in the

nature of an ultimatum to Belgium, asking her to compromise or
violate her neutrality, whatever may have been offered to her in
return, her independence is gone if that holds, and if her
independence goes, the independence of Holland will follow.

As yet, however, there was nothing solid in the way either of a

declaration of Germany’s policy or of an ascertained breach of
Belgium’s neutrality to go upon. And the Foreign Secretary was
careful to make this clear:

Now (he said) I have put the question of Belgium somewhat

hypothetically, because I am not yet sure of all the facts, but if
the facts turn out to be as they have reached us at present, it is
quite clear that there is an obligation on this country to do its
utmost to prevent the consequences to which those facts will
lead if they are undisputed.

Meanwhile, the British Ambassador in Berlin had kept on

pressing for an answer to what was indeed a Sphinx question—the
scrap of paper—for the Kaiser, whose diagnosis of the British
character, fitfully tested and modified by the official despatches daily
pouring in upon him, played a material part in swaying his
appreciation of the situation, and together with it his decision. The
bearings of this decision were twofold—political and military.
Germany might dispense with the strategic advantages which the
route through Belgium offered her army under one of two conditions:
either if the odds against France were sufficient to enable her to
count upon an easy victory, or if the political disadvantages that
would accrue to her from a violation of the Treaty of 1839
outweighed the military facilities it would secure her. And it was for
the purpose of settling this preliminary point and allowing her to
choose whichever course offered her the greatest inducements that
Prince Lichnowsky put the question whether the British Government
would engage to remain neutral if Germany promised to observe the
terms of the Treaty. And when, this attempt having failed to elicit a
definite assurance, he pressed Sir Edward Grey to formulate
conditions which would buy our neutrality, the British Secretary of
State virtually told him that it was not for sale.
This straightforward way of meeting the stratagem by which our
hands were to be fettered, while Germany was to be free to choose
whichever alternative best suited her, clinched the matter in the
Kaiser’s mind, if we may judge by the closing conversations between
his Ministers in Berlin and our Ambassador.
Sir Edward Goschen describes these final scenes of the historic
game of “hedging” in words which will be remembered as long as the
British Empire stands:

In accordance with the instructions contained in your

telegram of the 4th inst. (he writes) I called upon the Secretary of
State that afternoon and inquired, in the name of his Majesty’s
Government, whether the Imperial Government would refrain
from violating Belgian neutrality. Herr von Jagow at once replied
that he was sorry to say that his answer must be “No,” as, in
consequence of the German troops having crossed the frontier
that morning, Belgian neutrality had been already violated. Herr
von Jagow again went into the reasons why the Imperial
Government had been obliged to take this step, namely, that
 they had to advance into France by the quickest and easiest
way, so as to be able to get well ahead with their operations and
endeavour to strike some decisive blow as early as possible.
It was a matter of life and death for them, as if they had gone
by the more southern route they could not have hoped, in view
of the paucity of roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have
got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of
time. This loss of time would have meant time gained by the
Russians for bringing up their troops to the German frontier.
Rapidity of action was the great German asset, while that of
Russia was an inexhaustible supply of troops. I pointed out to
Herr von Jagow that this fait accompli of the violation of the
Belgian frontier rendered, as he would readily understand, the
situation exceedingly grave, and I asked him whether there was
not still time to draw back and avoid possible consequences,
which both he and I would deplore. He replied that, for the
reasons he had given me, it was now impossible for them to
draw back.

Thus the die was cast. An accomplished fact was created which
could not, it was urged, be undone. It was now unhappily too late,
just as it had been too late to stay Austria’s invasion of Servia. But at
least reasons could still be offered in explanation of the stroke, and it
was hoped that Great Britain might own that they were forcible. The
Germans “had to advance into France by the quickest and easiest
way, and they could not have got through by the other route without
formidable opposition entailing great loss of time.” And the German
army was in a hurry.

During the afternoon (continues the British Ambassador) I

received your further telegram of the same date, and, in
compliance with the instructions therein contained, I again
proceeded to the Imperial Foreign Office, and informed the
Secretary of State that unless the Imperial Government could
give the assurance by twelve o’clock that night that they would
proceed no further with their violation of the Belgian frontier and
stop their advance, I had been instructed to demand my
passports and inform the Imperial Government that his Majesty’s
Government would have to take all steps in their power to
uphold the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a treaty
to which Germany was as much a party as themselves.
Herr von Jagow replied that to his great regret he could give
no other answer than that which he had given me earlier in the
day, namely, that the safety of the Empire rendered it absolutely
necessary that the Imperial troops should advance through
Belgium. I gave his Excellency a written summary of your
telegram, and, pointing out that you had mentioned twelve
o’clock as the time when his Majesty’s Government would
expect an answer, asked him whether, in view of the terrible
consequences which would necessarily ensue, it were not
possible even at the last moment that their answer should be
reconsidered. He replied that if the time given were even twenty-
four hours or more, his answer must be the same.
I said that in that case I should have to demand my
passports. This interview took place at about seven o’clock. In a
short conversation which ensued Herr von Jagow expressed his
poignant regret at the crumbling of his entire policy and that of
the Chancellor, which had been to make friends with Great
Britain, and then, through Great Britain, to get closer to France. I
said that this sudden end to my work in Berlin was to me also a
matter of deep regret and disappointment, but that he must
understand that under the circumstances and in view of our
engagements, his Majesty’s Government could not possibly
have acted otherwise than they had done.
I then said that I should like to go and see the Chancellor, as
it might be, perhaps, the last time I should have an opportunity of
seeing him. He begged me to do so. I found the Chancellor very
agitated. His Excellency at once began a harangue, which lasted
for about twenty minutes. He said that the step taken by his
Majesty’s Government was terrible to a degree; just for a word
—“neutrality,” a word which in war-time had so often been
disregarded—just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to
make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to
be friends with her. All his efforts in that direction had been
rendered useless by this last terrible step, and the policy to
which, as I knew, he had devoted himself since his accession to
office had tumbled down like a house of cards. What we had
done was unthinkable; it was like striking a man from behind
while he was fighting for his life against two assailants. He held
Great Britain responsible for all the terrible events that might
happen.
I protested strongly against that statement, and said that, in
the same way as he and Herr von Jagow wished me to
understand that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life and
death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate the
latter’s neutrality, so I would wish him to understand that it was,
so to speak, a matter of “life and death” for the honour of Great
Britain that she should keep her solemn engagement to do her
utmost to defend Belgium’s neutrality if attacked. That solemn
compact simply had to be kept, or what confidence could anyone
have in engagements given by Great Britain in the future? The
Chancellor said, “But at what price will that compact have been
kept? Has the British Government thought of that?” I hinted to
his Excellency as plainly as I could that fear of consequences
could hardly be regarded as an excuse for breaking solemn
engagements, but his Excellency was so excited, so evidently
overcome by the news of our action, and so little disposed to
hear reason, that I refrained from adding fuel to the flame by
further argument.
As I was leaving he said that the blow of Great Britain joining
Germany’s enemies was all the greater that almost up to the last
moment he and his Government had been working with us and
supporting our efforts to maintain peace between Austria and
Russia. I said that this was part of the tragedy which saw the two
nations fall apart just at the moment when the relations between
them had been more friendly and cordial than they had been for
years. Unfortunately, notwithstanding our efforts to maintain
peace between Russia and Austria, the war had spread, and
had brought us face to face with a situation which, if we held to
our engagements, we could not possibly avoid, and which
unfortunately entailed our separation from our late fellow-
workers. He would readily understand that no one regretted this
more than I.
After this somewhat painful interview I returned to the
Embassy, and drew up a telegraphic report of what had passed.
This telegram was handed in at the Central Telegraph Office a
little before nine p.m. It was accepted by that office, but
apparently never despatched.
At about 9.30 p.m. Herr von Zimmermann, the Under-
Secretary of State, came to see me. After expressing his deep
regret that the very friendly official and personal relations
between us were about to cease, he asked me casually whether
a demand for passports was equivalent to a declaration of war. I
said that such an authority on international law as he was known
to be must know as well or better than I what was usual in such
cases. I added that there were many cases where diplomatic
relations had been broken off, and, nevertheless, war had not
ensued; but that in this case he would have seen from my
instructions, of which I had given Herr von Jagow a written
summary, that his Majesty’s Government expected an answer to
a definite question by twelve o’clock that night, and that in
default of a satisfactory answer they would be forced to take
such steps as their engagements required. Herr Zimmermann
said that that was, in fact, a declaration of war, as the Imperial
Government could not possibly give the assurance required
either that night or any other night.
 CHAPTER XI
JUST FOR “A SCRAP OF PAPER”

“Just for neutrality—a word which in war-time had so often been

disregarded—just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to
make war on a kindred nation.”
The frame of mind which generated this supreme unconcern for
the feelings of the Belgians, this matter-of-fact contempt for the
inviolability of a country’s plighted word, gives us the measure of the
abyss which sunders the old-world civilization, based on all that is
loftiest in Christianity, from modern German culture. From this
revolutionary principle, the right to apply which, however, is reserved to
Germany alone, radiate wholly new conceptions of right and wrong,
truth and falsehood, plain and double dealing, which are destructive of
the very groundwork of all organized society. Some forty or fifty years
ago it was a doctrine confined to Prussia of the Hohenzollerns: to-day
it is the creed of the Prussianized German Empire.
Frederic the Great practised it without scruple or shame. It was he
who, having given Maria Theresa profuse assurances of help should
her title to the Habsburg throne ever be questioned by any other State,
got together a powerful army as secretly as he could, invaded her
territory, and precipitated a sanguinary European war. Yet he had
guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian Empire. What were his
motives? He himself has avowed them openly: “ambition, interest, and
a yearning to move people to talk about me were the mainsprings of
my action.” And this wanton war was made without any formal
declaration, without any quarrel, without any grievance. He was soon
joined by other Powers, with whom he entered into binding
engagements. But as soon as he was able to conclude an
advantageous peace with the Austrian Empress, he abandoned his
allies and signed a treaty. This document, like the former one, he soon
afterwards treated as a mere scrap of paper, and again attacked the
Austrian Empire. And this was the man who wrote a laboured
refutation of the pernicious teachings of Machiavelli, under the title of
“Anti-Machiavel”!
Now, Frederic the Great is the latter-day Germans’ ideal of a
monarch. His infamous practices were the concrete nucleus around
which the subversive Pan-Germanic doctrines of to-day gathered and
hardened into the political creed of a race. What the Hohenzollerns did
for Prussia, Prussia under the same Hohenzollerns has effected for
Germany, where not merely the Kaiser and his Government, or the
officials, or the officers of the army and navy, or the professors and the
journalists, but the clergy, the socialists, nay, all thinking classes of the
population, are infected with the virus of the fell Prussian disease
which threatens the old-world civilization with decomposition.
To this danger humanity cannot afford to be either indifferent or
lenient. It may and will be extremely difficult to extirpate the malady,
but the Powers now arrayed against aggressive and subversive
Teutonism should see to it that the nations affected shall be made
powerless to spread it.
The sheet-anchor of new Germany’s faith is her own exclusive
right to tear up treaties, violate agreements, and trample the laws of
humanity underfoot. To no other Power, however great its temptation,
however pressing its needs, is this privilege to be extended. Belgian
neutrality is but a word to be disregarded—by Germany; a solemn
treaty is but a scrap of paper to be flung into the basket—by Germany;
but woe betide any other Power who should venture to turn Germany’s
methods against herself! Now that Japan has begun operations
against German Tsingtao, the Kaiser’s Minister in Pekin promptly
protested against the alleged violation of Chinese neutrality which it
involved. Sacred are all those engagements by which Germany stands
to gain some advantage, and it is the duty of the civilized world to
enforce them. All others which are inconvenient to the Teuton he may
toss aside as scraps of paper.
To the threats that China would be held responsible for injury to
German property following on the Japanese operations, unless she
withstood the Japanese by force, the Pekin Government administered
a neatly worded lesson. If the Pekin Government, the Foreign Minister
replied, were to oppose the landing of the Japanese on the ground that
the territory in question belongs to China, it would likewise be her duty
to drive out the Germans for the same reason, Tsingtao also being
Chinese. Moreover, Tsingtao had only been leased to Germany for a
term of years, and, according to the scrap of paper, ought never to
have been fortified, seeing that this constituted a flagrant violation of
China’s neutrality. These arguments are unanswerable, even from
Germany’s point of view. But the Kaiser still maintains that he has right
on his side! Deutschland über Alles!
With a people whose reasoning powers show as little respect for
the laws of logic as their armies evince for the laws of humanity or their
press for truth, it would be idle to argue. Psychologically, however, it is
curious to observe the attitude of the body of German theologians
towards the scrap of paper. Psychologically, but also for a more direct
reason: because of the unwarranted faith which the British people are
so apt to place in the German people’s sense of truth and justice, and
more particularly in the fairmindedness of their clergy. Well, this clergy,
in its most eminent representatives, does indeed expend strong
adjectives in its condemnation—not of the Kaiser’s crime, but of
Belgian atrocities!
This is how German divines propound the rights and wrongs of the
Belgian episode to Evangelical Christians abroad:

Unnameable horrors have been committed against Germans

living peaceably abroad—against women and children, against
wounded and physicians—cruelties and shamelessness such as
many a heathen and Mohammedan war has not revealed. Are
these the fruits, by which the non-Christian peoples are to
recognize whose disciples the Christian nations are? Even the not
unnatural excitement of a people, whose neutrality—already
violated by our adversaries—could under the pressure of
implacable necessity not be respected, affords no excuse for
inhumanities, nor does it lessen the shame that such could take
place in a land long ago christianized.
If Ministers of the Gospel thus tamper with truth and ignore elementary
justice and humanity, can one affect surprise at the mischievous
inventions of professional journalists?
This strange blending of religion with mendacity, of culture with
humanity, of scientific truth with political subterfuge, reads like a
chapter in cerebral pathology. The savage military organism against
which a veritable crusade is now being carried on by the peace-loving,
law-abiding nations of Europe has been aptly characterized as “the
thing which all free civilization has learned to loathe like a vampire: the
conscienceless, ruthless, godless might of a self-centred militarism, to
which honour is a word, chivalry a weakness, and bullying aggression
37
the breath of life.”

* * * * *
It is a relief to turn from the quibbles, subterfuges, and downright
falsehoods that characterize the campaign of German diplomacy to the
dignified message which the King-Emperor recently addressed to the
Princes and Peoples of that India which our enemies hoped would rise
up in arms against British rule.

To the Princes and Peoples of my Indian

Empire:
During the past few weeks the peoples of my whole Empire at
home and overseas have moved with one mind and purpose to
confront and overthrow an unparalleled assault upon the continuity
of civilization and the peace of mankind.
The calamitous conflict is not of my seeking. My voice has
been cast throughout on the side of peace. My Ministers earnestly
strove to allay the causes of strife and to appease differences with
which my Empire was not concerned.
Had I stood aside when in defiance of pledges to which my
Kingdom was a party the soil of Belgium was violated, and her
 cities laid desolate, when the very life of the French nation was
threatened with extinction, I should have sacrificed my honour and
given to destruction the liberties of my Empire and of mankind. I
rejoice that every part of the Empire is with me in this decision.
Paramount regard for treaty faith and the pledged word of
rulers and peoples is the common heritage of England and of
India.
Among the many incidents that have marked the unanimous
uprising of the populations of my Empire in defence of its unity and
integrity, nothing has moved me more than the passionate
devotion to my Throne expressed both by my Indian subjects and
by the Feudatory Princes and the Ruling Chiefs of India, and their
prodigal offers of their lives and their resources in the cause of the
Realm.
Their one-voiced demand to be foremost in the conflict has
touched my heart, and has inspired to the highest issues the love
and devotion which, as I well know, have ever linked my Indian
subjects and myself.
I recall to mind India’s gracious message to the British nation
of goodwill and fellowship, which greeted my return in February,
1912, after the solemn ceremony of my Coronation Durbar at
Delhi, and I find in this hour of trial a full harvest and a noble
fulfilment of the assurance given by you that the destinies of Great
Britain and India are indissolubly linked.

The history of the Kaiser’s dealings with Belgium is but a single

episode in the long series of lessons taught us by German militarism,
with its two sets of weights and measures and its Asiatic maxims of
foreign policy. The paramount interest of this incident is to be ascribed
to the circumstance that it marks the central moment of the collision
between Germany and Britain. It also struck a keynote of difference
between the new Pan-Germanic code of morals and the old one still
common to the remainder of the human race. Lastly, it opened the
eyes of the purblind in this country and made them see at last.
Belgium and Luxemburg are neutral States, and all Europe is
bound to respect their neutrality. But this obligation in the case of
Prussia is made more sacred and more stringent still by the
circumstance that she herself is one of the guarantors of that neutrality.
Not only is she obliged to refrain from violating Belgian territory, but it
is her duty to hinder, with force if necessary, a breach by other nations.
This twofold obligation Germany set at naught, and then affected
wonder at the surprise of her neighbours. “By necessity we have
occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps have already entered Belgian
territory,” the Chancellor said calmly. “This is an infraction of
international law.... We are ... compelled to overrule the legitimate
protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. We shall repair
the wrong we are doing as soon as our military aims have been
achieved.” Military aims annul treaties, military necessities know no
law, and the slaughter of tens of thousands of peaceable citizens and
the destruction of their mediæval monuments constitute a wrong which
“we Germans shall repair as soon as our military aims are achieved.”
In such matter-of-fact way this German Bayard, as he once was
called by his English admirers, undertakes, if he be allowed to break
two promises, that he will make a third by way of compensation.
Not content with having brought six Powers into line against her
destructive doctrines and savage practices, Germany would fain throw
the blame for the war now on Great Britain, now on Russia. Here,
again, it is the Imperial Chancellor who propounds the thesis. On
September 12th he sent the following curious statement to the Danish
Press Bureau for publication:—

The English Prime Minister, in his Guildhall speech, reserved

to England the rôle of protector of the smaller and weaker States,
and spoke about the neutrality of Holland, Belgium, and
Switzerland as being exposed to danger from the side of
Germany. It is true that we have broken Belgium’s neutrality
because bitter necessity compelled us to do so, but we promised
Belgium full indemnity and integrity if she would take account of
this state of necessity. If so, she would not have suffered any
damage, as, for example, Luxemburg. If England, as protector of
the weaker States, had wished to spare Belgium infinite suffering
she should have advised Belgium to accept our offer. England has
not “protected” Belgium, so far as we know; I wonder, therefore,
whether it can really be said that England is such a disinterested
protector.
We knew perfectly well that the French plan of campaign
involved a march through Belgium to attack the unprotected
Rhineland. Does anyone believe England would have interfered to
protect Belgian freedom against France?
We have firmly respected the neutrality of Holland and
Switzerland; we have also avoided the slightest violation of the
frontier of the Dutch province of Limburg.
It is strange that Mr. Asquith only mentioned the neutrality of
Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, but not that of the
Scandinavian countries. He might have mentioned Switzerland
with reference to France, but Holland and Belgium are situated
close to England on the opposite side of the Channel, and that is
why England is so concerned for the neutrality of these countries.
Why is Mr. Asquith silent about the Scandinavian countries?
Perhaps because he knows that it does not enter our head to
touch these countries’ neutrality; or would England possibly not
consider Denmark’s neutrality as a noli me tangere for an advance
in the Baltic or for Russia’s warlike operations?
Mr. Asquith wishes people to believe that England’s fight
against us is a fight of freedom against might. The world is
accustomed to this manner of expression. In the name of freedom
England, with might and with the most recklessly egotistic policy,
has founded her mighty Colonial Empire, in the name of freedom
she has destroyed for a century the independence of the Boer
Republics, in the name of freedom she now treats Egypt as an
English colony and thereby violates international treaties and
solemn promises, in the name of freedom one after another of the
Malay States is losing its independence for England’s benefit, in
the name of freedom she tries, by cutting German cables, to
prevent the truth being spread in the world.
The English Prime Minister is mistaken. When England joined
with Russia and Japan against Germany she, with a blindness
unique in the history of the world, betrayed civilization and handed
 over to the German sword the care of freedom for European
peoples and States.

The Germanistic conceptions of veracity and common honesty

which this plea reveals makes one feel the new air that breathes over
every department of the national cult—the air blowing from the
borderland between the sphere of high scientific achievement and
primeval barbarism. One is puzzled and amused by the solemn
statement that if Germany has ridden rough shod over the rights of
Belgium, she has committed no such breach of law against Holland,
Denmark, and other small states. “We have firmly respected the
neutrality of Holland and Switzerland.” It is as though an assassin
should say: “True, I killed Brown, whose money I needed sorely. But at
least give me credit for not having murdered Jones and Smith, who
possess nothing that I could carry away at present, and whose
goodwill was essential to the success of my stroke”!
The violation of Belgium’s neutrality was part of Germany’s plan of
campaign against France. This fact was known long ago. It was
implicitly confessed in the official answer given to Sir Edward
Goschen’s question on the subject. Yet on Sunday, August 2nd, the
German military Attaché in Brussels, in conversation with the Belgian
War Minister, exclaimed: “I cannot, for the life of me, understand what
you mean by mobilizing. Have you anything to fear? Is not your
neutrality guaranteed?” It was, but only by a scrap of paper. For a few
38
hours later the Belgian Government received the German ultimatum.
On the following day Germany had begun to “hack her way” through
treaty rights and the laws of humanity. The document published by the
Chancellor is the mirror of German moral teaching and practice.
The reply to it, issued by the British Press Bureau, with the
authority of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is worth
reproducing:

“Does anyone believe,” asks the German Chancellor, “that

England would have interfered to protect Belgian freedom against
France?”
 The answer is that she would unquestionably have done so.
Sir Edward Grey, as recorded in the White Paper, asked the
French Government “whether it was prepared to engage to
respect the neutrality of Belgium so long as no other Power
violates it.” The French Government replied that they were
resolved to respect it. The assurance, it was added, had been
given several times, and formed the subject of conversation
between President Poincaré and the King of the Belgians.
The German Chancellor entirely ignores the fact that England
took the same line about Belgian neutrality in 1870 that she has
taken now. In 1870 Prince Bismarck, when approached by
England on the subject, admitted and respected the treaty
obligations in relation to Belgium. The British Government stands
in 1914 as it stood in 1870; it is Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg who
refused to meet us in 1914 as Prince Bismarck met us in 1870.

“Not Very Tactful.”

The Imperial Chancellor finds it strange that Mr. Asquith in his
Guildhall speech did not mention the neutrality of the
Scandinavian countries, and suggests that the reason for the
omission was some sinister design on England’s part. It is
impossible for any public speaker to cover the whole ground in
each speech.
The German Chancellor’s reference to Denmark and other
Scandinavian countries can hardly be considered very tactful. With
regard to Denmark, the Danes are not likely to have forgotten the
parts played by Prussia and England respectively in 1863–4, when
the Kingdom of Denmark was dismembered. And the integrity of
Norway and Sweden was guaranteed by England and France in
the Treaty of Stockholm in 1855.
The Imperial Chancellor refers to the dealings of Great Britain
with the Boer Republics, and suggests that she has been false
therein to the cause of freedom.
 Without going into controversies now happily past, we may
recall what General Botha said in the South African Parliament a
few days ago, when expressing his conviction of the righteousness
of Britain’s cause and explaining the firm resolve of the South
African Union to aid her in every possible way: “Great Britain had
given them a Constitution under which they could create a great
nationality, and had ever since regarded them as a free people
and as a sister State. Although there might be many who in the
past had been hostile towards the British flag, he could vouch for it
that they would ten times rather be under the British than under
the German flag.”

Colonial Loyalty.
The German Chancellor is equally unfortunate in his
references to the “Colonial Empire.” So far from British policy
having been “recklessly egotistic,” it has resulted in a great rally of
affection and common interest by all the British Dominions and
Dependencies, among which there is not one which is not aiding
Britain by soldiers or other contributions or both in this war.
With regard to the matter of treaty obligations generally, the
German Chancellor excuses the breach of Belgian neutrality by
military necessity—at the same time making a virtue of having
respected the neutrality of Holland and Switzerland, and saying
that it does not enter his head to touch the neutrality of the
Scandinavian countries. A virtue which admittedly is only practised
in the absence of temptation from self-interest and military
advantage does not seem greatly worth vaunting.
To the Chancellor’s concluding statement that “To the German
sword” is entrusted “the care of freedom for European peoples and
States,” the treatment of Belgium is a sufficient answer.

Passing summarily in review the causes of the war touched upon

in the foregoing pages, the reader will have discerned that the true
interest of the story of the scrap of paper lies in the insight it affords the
world into the growth, spread, and popularization of the greatest of
human conceptions possible to a gifted people, whose religious faith
has been diverted to the wildest of political ideals and whose national
conscience has been fatally warped. For the Germans are a highly
dowered, virile race, capable, under favourable conditions, of
materially furthering the progress of humanity. In every walk of
science, art, and literature they have been in the van. Their poetry is
part of the world’s inheritance. Their philosophy at its highest level
touches that of ancient Greece. Their music is unmatched. In
chemistry and medicine they have laboured unceasingly and with
results which will never be forgotten. Into the dry bones of theology
they have infused the spirit of life and movement. In the pursuit of
commerce they have deployed a degree of ingenuity, suppleness, and
enterprise which was rewarded and may be summarized by the result
that, during the twelve years ending in 1906, their imports and exports
increased by nearly one hundred per cent.
But the national genius, of which those splendid achievements are
the fruits, has been yoked to the chariot of war in a cause which is
dissolvent of culture, trust, humanity, and of all the foundations of
organized society. That cause is the paramountcy of their race, the
elevation of Teutonism to the height occupied among mortals by
Nietzsche’s Over-man, whose will is the one reality, and whose
necessities and desires are above all law. Around this root-idea a vast
politico-racial system, partaking of the nature of a new religion, has
been elaborately built up by the non-German Prussians, and accepted
and assimilated by a docile people which was sadly deficient in the
political sense. And it is for the purpose of forcing this poisonous creed
and its corollaries upon Europe and the world that the most
tremendous war of history is now being waged. This remarkable
movement had long ago been studied and described by a few well-
informed and courageous British observers, but the true issues have
been for the first time revealed to the dullest apprehension by the
historic episode of the scrap of paper.
It is only fair to own that the Prussianized Germans have fallen
from their high estate, and become what they are solely in
consequence of the shifting of their faith from the spiritual to the
political and military sphere. Imbued with the new spirit, which is
impatient of truth when truth becomes an obstacle to success, as it is
of law when law becomes a hindrance to national aims, they have
parted company with morality to enlist in the service of a racial revival
based on race hatred. Pan-Germanism is a quasi-religious cult, and its
upholders are fanatics, persuaded of the righteousness of their cause,
and resolved, irrespective of the cost, to help it to triumph.
The non-German State, Prussia, was the bearer of this exclusively
Germanic “culture.” It fitted in with the set of the national mind, which
lacked political ideals. Austria, however, occupied a position apart in
this newest and most grandiose of latter-day religions. She was but a
tool in the hands of her mighty co-partner. “The future,” wrote the
national historian Treitschke, “belongs to Germany, with whom Austria,
if she desires to survive, must link herself.” And the instinct of self-
preservation determined her to throw in her lot with Prussianized
Germany. But even then, it is only fair to say that Austria’s conception
of her functions differed widely from that of her overbearing Mentor.
Composed of a medley of nationalities, she eschewed the odious
practice of denationalizing her Slav, Italian, and Roumanian peoples in
the interests of Teutondom. One and all they were allowed to retain
their language, cultivate their nationality, and, when feasible, to govern
themselves. But, congruously with the subordinate rôle that fell to her,
she played but a secondary part in the preliminaries to the present
conflict. Germany, who at first acted as the unseen adviser, emerged
at the second stage as principal.
We cannot too constantly remember the mise en scène of the
present world-drama. Germany and Austria were dissatisfied with the
Treaty of Bucharest, and resolved to treat it as a contemptible scrap of
paper. They were to effect such a redistribution of territory as would
enable them to organize a Balkan Federation under their own auspices
and virtual suzerainty. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
offered them a splendid opening. On pretext of punishing the real
assassins and eradicating the causes of the evil, Austria was to
mutilate Servia and wedge her in among Germanophile Balkan States.
The plan was kept secret from every other Power, even from the Italian
ally—so secret, indeed, that the Russian Ambassador in Vienna was
encouraged to take leave of absence, just when the ultimatum was
about to be presented, which he did. The German Kaiser, while
claiming to be a mere outsider, as uninitiated as everybody else, was a
party to the drafting of the ultimatum, which, according to his own
Ministers, went the length of demanding of Servia the impossible. That
document was avowedly intended to provoke armed resistance, and
when it was rumoured that the Serbs were about to accept it integrally,
Austrians and Germans were dismayed. It was the Kaiser himself who
had the time-limit for an answer cut down to forty-eight hours in order
to hinder diplomatic negociations; and it was the Kaiser’s Ministers
who, having had Sir Edward Grey’s conciliatory proposals rejected,
expressed their sincere regret that, owing to the shortness of the time-
limit, they had come too late.
When the Belgrade Government returned a reply which was fitted
to serve as a basis for an arrangement, it was rejected by the Austrian
Minister almost before he could have read it through. While the Kaiser
in his letter to the Tsar, and the Imperial Chancellor in his talks with our
Ambassador, were lavishing assurances that they were working hard
to hold Austria back, the German Ambassador in Vienna, through
whom they were thus claiming to put pressure on their ally, was openly
advocating war with Servia, and emphatically declaring that Russia
would have to stand aside. At the same moment Germany’s military
preparations were secretly being pushed forward. But Austria,
perceiving at last that the Germans’ estimate of Russia’s weakness
was unfounded, and she herself faced with the nearing perils of an
awful conflict with the great Slav Empire, drew back and agreed to
submit the contentious points to mediation. Thereupon Germany
sprang forward, and, without taking the slightest account of the Servian
question, presented twelve-hour ultimatums to Russia and to France.
Thus the thin pretension that she was but an ally, bound by the
sacredness of treaty obligations to help her assailed co-partner, was
cynically thrown aside, and she stood forth in her true colours as the
real aggressor.
In her forecast of the war which she had thus deliberately brought
about the sheet-anchor of her hope of success was Great Britain’s
neutrality. And on this she had built her scheme. Hence her solicitude
that, at any rate, this postulate should not be shaken. Her infamous
offer to secure it was one of the many expedients to which her Kaiser
and his statesmen had recourse. But they had misread the British