Portal:Liberalism

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Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, constitutional government and privacy rights. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under the law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition based on the social contract, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights. While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building. (Full article...)

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Individual contributors to classical liberalism and political liberalism are associated with philosophers of the Enlightenment. Liberalism as a specifically named ideology begins in the late 18th century as a movement towards self-government and away from aristocracy. It included the ideas of self-determination, the primacy of the individual and the nation as opposed to the state and religion as being the fundamental units of law, politics and economy.

Since then liberalism broadened to include a wide range of approaches from Americans Ronald Dworkin, Richard Rorty, John Rawls and Francis Fukuyama as well as the Indian Amartya Sen and the Peruvian Hernando de Soto. Some of these people moved away from liberalism while others espoused other ideologies before turning to liberalism. There are many different views of what constitutes liberalism, and some liberals would feel that some of the people on this list were not true liberals. It is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. Theorists whose ideas were mainly typical for one country should be listed in that country's section of liberalism worldwide. Generally only thinkers are listed whereas politicians are only listed when they also made substantial contributions to liberal theory beside their active political work. (Full article...)

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1873 portrait by George Frederic Watts

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.

Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. (Full article...)

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John Locke T. H. Green John Dewey Norberto Bobbio John Rawls Isaiah Berlin David Lloyd George Jeremy Bentham

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My conception of freedom. - The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what you achieved with it, but in what you pay for them - what they cost us. I'll give an example. The liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are reached: there is no worse later and more thorough injuring the freedom than liberal institutions. We know, indeed, what they bring to ways: they undermine (unterminiren) the will to power, they are raised on moral leveling of hills and valleys, they make small, cowardly and pleasure, - triumphs with them every time the herd. Liberalism: in German bring herd's animalization (Heerden- Verthierung)... These same institutions as long as they are still fought for, produce very different effects, then in fact they promote freedom in a powerful way. Specifically looked on, it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which can take more than the war illiberal instincts. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom! That one has the will to self -responsibility. That the distance that separates us notes. That is to toil, hardship, privation, even to the lives of indifferent. That one is willing to sacrifice its cause not the people charged. Freedom means that the male, the war and the victorious happy instincts have dominion over other instincts, for example of the "happiness". The things that has become (Derfreigewordne) man, how much more the spirit freed (freigewordne) occurs with feet on the contemptible type of well-being of the grocer, dream Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is warrior.- What is the measure of freedom, to individuals, as nations? After the resistance that must be overcome by the effort it cost to stay on top. The highest type of free men had to be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is psychologically true, if you here among the "tyrants" relentless and terrible instincts understand that challenge the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves - the most beautiful type of Julius Caesar - and this is politically true, they only do its course through history. The nations that were worth something, were worth, this was never under liberal institutions: great danger made something out of them, deserve the respect, the danger that we know our expedients, our virtues, our military and weapons, our spirit only teaches - which forces us to be strong... First principle: it must necessary have to be strong: it's never been otherwise. - Those large hothouses for the strong, the strongest type of person who has been given, the aristocratic community in the way of Rome and Venice freedom accurately understood in the sense that I understand the word freedom as something that you have and lacks, that you want, this one conquers...

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— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, 1889.

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General images

The following are images from various liberalism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1T. H. Green, an influential liberal philosopher who established in Prolegomena to Ethics (1884) the first major foundations for what later became known as positive liberty and in a few years, his ideas became the official policy of the Liberal Party in Britain, precipitating the rise of social liberalism and the modern welfare state (from Liberalism)
Image 2Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 3The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)
Image 4Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 5United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 6Noam Chomsky's 1999 book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order is an open critique of neoliberalism and the American economic structure (from Neoliberalism)
Image 7John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of modern times and whose ideas, which are still widely felt, formalized modern liberal economic policy. (from Liberalism)
Image 8Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 9Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 10Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 11John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 12Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 13Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 14John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 15Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 16Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 17Execution of José María de Torrijos y Uriarte and his men in 1831 as Spanish King Ferdinand VII took repressive measures against the liberal forces in his country (from Liberalism)
Image 18The Great Depression, with its periods of worldwide economic hardship, formed the backdrop against which the Keynesian Revolution took place (the image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depiction of destitute pea-pickers in California, taken in March 1936). (from Liberalism)
Image 19Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 20John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 21Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian writer and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals, who was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam" in 2014 (from Liberalism)
Image 22Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 23Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 24The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 25Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 26As a liberal nationalist, K. J. Ståhlberg (1865–1952), the President of Finland, anchored the state in liberal democracy, guarded the fragile germ of the rule of law, and embarked on internal reforms. (from Liberalism)
Image 27U.S. President Bush, Canadian PM Mulroney, and Mexican President Salinas participate in the ceremonies to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). (from Neoliberalism)
Image 28Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 29The European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas, has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 30Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 31GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 32Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 33Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 34Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia, (Spain) (from Liberalism)