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The Development of the Liberal Tradition

The purpose of this essay is to discuss and analyze the development of two schools of the liberal/democratic tradition during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ôclassicalö and the ômodern.ö

A. The Core Values of the Liberal Tradition.

Modern liberalism emerged as the major unifying theory of politics, economics, and society among the middle and upper classes of European-style nations in the late nineteenth century, and continues to be a major theory at the end of the twentieth century, despite challenges by reactionaries and ôconservatives,ö many of whom subscribe to what were the theories of classical liberalism.

In the eighteenth century, conservatives were those who defended the traditional rights and powers of monarchs, the nobility, and the hereditarily rich. In contrast, liberals were those who defended the rights of individuals against the powers of the state. According to Perry et al., ôliberalism aspired to carry out the promise of the philosophes and the Revolution. Liberals called for a constitution that protected individual liberty and denounced censorship, arbitrary arrest, and other forms of repression. They believed that through reason and education, social evils could be remedied . . . that individuals should be judged on the basis of achievement, not of birth . . . [and] that the individual would develop into a good and productive human being and citizen if not coerced by governments and churchesö (137).

Benjamin Constant warned against the dangers of unrestrained popular sovereignty, as exemplified in the excesses that followed the French Revolution, and advocated separation of powers to ensure that government could not exceed its authority. His views are close to those of the American founding fathers who wrote checks and balances into the US Constitution.

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, argued that only the good of individuals was real, not that of society a...

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The Development of the Liberal Tradition. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 23:33, March 18, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1709294.html