To Have and to Hold: Liberalism and the Marriage Contract

Abstract

The starting point of this chapter is a question about the nature and extent of modern liberalism. Specifically, it addresses the question; ‘How comprehensive can liberalism be, and how much of social and moral life can it aspire to explain?’ The question is prompted by a (somewhat crude) distinction between historical and modern liberalism. Historically, liberals have usually set themselves rather modest aims and have distinguished between the scope of political philosophy and the scope of moral philosophy. Both Locke and Hume differentiate between the requirements of political justice and the prior, and independent, dictates of morality. They construe politics as being necessitated by our imperfect moral nature. As Sandel points out:

For Hume, justice cannot be the first virtue of social institutions, and in some cases it is doubtfully a virtue at all … Insofar as mutual benevolence and enlarged affections could be cultivated more widely, the need for ‘the cautious, jealous virtue of justice’ would diminish in proportion, and mankind would be the better for it.¹

More recently, however, political liberalism has expanded into a theory which includes both moral and political concerns.Thus Rawls’s early liberalism aspires to provide an account of moral and political life, in which all institutions are subject to the same conditions of justification, and all are called to the tribunal of justice.