Free Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Freeden Page B

force of the liberal heritage.

The liberal core
    What, then, are the liberal commonalities? What are the ideas to be found in all liberalisms, irrespective of their spatial position or their relative weight within each manifestation of liberalism? As suggested in Chapter 1 , ideologies are composed of core concepts that have considerable durability. That means, first, that their persistence can be empirically ascertained by examining different instances of a given ideology and, second, that deprived of such a core concept, that ideology would not be recognizable, or mutate into a member of a different family. We can illustrate that with the concept of liberty , or freedom . Unsurprisingly, liberty is a valued core feature of liberalism that runs through its multiple versions. Unsurprisingly, if we were to remove the idea of liberty from any such version, liberalism would forfeit an absolutely crucial distinguishing element. It is simply unimaginable to entertain, and empirically impossible to find, a variant of liberalism that dispenses with the concept of liberty. But nor is it the case that any ideology that refers to liberty is ipso facto liberal.
    Of course, to state that the concept of liberty is indispensable to liberalism is only the beginning of a long story. To announce ‘I am free’ is an incomplete statement that hangs in the air. All it does is to suggest that I am not being constrained by someone else or something. It immediately draws in a further question: ‘by whom?’ or ‘by what?’ Are other people the potential constraint? Do laws constitute a major constraint on individuals? Are there additional constraints that prevent me from being free? Perhaps poverty, so that I don’t have the means to realize my choices? Perchance ignorance, so that I cannot make informed choices? Maybe preventable ill-health, which renders me too unwell to act on my free desires? Possibly the lack of meaningful work, so that I cannot exercise my abilities? Or discrimination on grounds of gender, race, religion, or ethnicity, so that I am barred by social prejudice from living a good life? All those, too, act as constraints on my liberty and we have noted them when discussing layer four liberalism.
    Because all those meanings of liberty are conceivable interpretations of what liberty means, we have here an instance of an essentially contested concept, namely, a concept for which there will always be more than one plausible meaning. That happens because there is no objective or final way of ranking preferences among values, such as: is it better to be free from discrimination or free from poverty? However, different streams within liberalism do express preference for some or others of those meanings, and policy decisions, all said and done, have to be made. Consequently, one of the functions of all ideologies, liberalism included, is to decontest the concepts they employ—to remove all their major concepts from contest by attempting to assign them a clear meaning. And because the liberal family is extensive, liberty can attract different decontestations in the numerous variants of that family. Broadly speaking, the meaning of liberty will stretch between securing an area of harmless activity, or even passive existence, unimpeded by physical or state initiated intrusions (layer one liberalism) and enabling the exercise of human potential through actively removing any hindrances that could seriously dehumanize human beings (layers three and four). The decision on which of those hindrances deserve to be removed itself reflects continuous changes in the cultural environment of liberalism. Thus, some emotional deprivations are now acknowledged to be as serious as physical violence, or forms of patriarchy are no longer appropriate in a culture of gender equality.
    But liberty is not the only concept endowed with core status in liberalism’s morphology. It is one of seven core concepts, and we enumerate the others in no particular