THE LIBERAL PROJECT

From theorists concerned with the course of ideas and institutions over time, one often hears claims about the various “projects” that characterize historical periods. Such talk is often not salutary: speaking of “the Enlightenment project,” for example, or “the project of modernity” tends more often to hide tendentious assumptions than to denote a clear subject of inquiry. What Enlightenment project?, we want to ask. What do you mean by modernity? To philosophers such broad reductionism is especially unwelcome, as it leaves little room for the careful consideration of nuance and distinction that is their stock-in-trade.

Mindful of these concerns, I nonetheless intend the following book as an assessment of what I shall call the liberal project, as understood and advanced by its most forceful contemporary advocates. In referring to this project I mean to deny neither that contemporary liberal theory (or the liberal tradition as a whole) exhibits great diversity, nor that failure to attend to that diversity can result in a narrow reconstruction of a complex body of thought. But such considerations should not condemn from the outset any attempt to discern and assess what is central and distinct in liberal thought, to identify key elements that characterize the liberal account of political association.

The liberal project I understand as the attempt to mount an argument that achieves two distinct goals: one concerning the argument's conclusion for political practice, the other having to do with the nature of the argument itself.