AGAINST STEREOTYPES: PROMINENT LIBERALS FAVOUR 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, Idemonstrate 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.