Liberalism [antikvár]

Preface and Acknowledgements In this short book I aim to give an account of liberalism - what it is, whence it came and what might still be hoped for it. I write as a liberal. I do not pretend that my inquiry occupies any space of moral or political neutraUty. At the same time, I hope my account shows an awareness of the limits and difficulties of liberalism, and I would like this book to be useful to critics of liberalism as well as to its friends. I have not aimed to add to the growing number of contemporary studies in liberal social philosophy, since I intend to do that on another occasion. Instead I have tried to show what it means to be a liberal, and why the liberal outlook remains compel-hng today. The first phase of serious work on this book was done during a period of residence as Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Social Philosophy and Policy at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I wish to thank the directors of the Center, and in particular Jeffrey Paul and Fred Miller, for their support of my work on this book. I completed the book during my stay as Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, and I wish to thank the Chair of the Department, Tom Attig, for his many kindnesses and assistance, and Pat Bressler for arranging the typing of my (sometimes barely decipherable) manuscript. For encouraging me to press on with my work on liberalism, I am indebted to David H. Padden of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. For his detailed comments on a draft of the first half of the book, I wish to thank Douglas