AGAINST STEREOTYPES: PROMINENT LIBERALSFAVOUR STATE INTERVENTION

Abstract

This paper identifies and highlights Mill and Raz’s perfectionist reasoning with
respect to the state’s role in fostering freedom, which is simultaneously praised
as an accounting of (what I see as) their successful reasoning on liberalism. By
giving prominence to Mill’s widely overlooked perfectionist stance
concerning the educational, cultural, and moral role that he attributed to the
liberal state and by delineating, among others, Raz’s ideal of a state charged
with the duty to enable citizens and authority’s conformity with reason, I
demonstrate the theoretical proximity between a prominent liberal (Mill) and
an advocate of perfectionism (Raz) whose theoretical ‘models’ aim to cogently
advance and defend the ideal of freedom by ascribing a proactive and enhanced
role to the state, thus rendering it an efficient vehicle for the flourishing of self development
and autonomy.