1. Liberalism can be understood as a social doctrine: The prohibition of forcing another person to perform an action.
1.1 Note that we are defining liberalism from the perspective of the other. If you can raise that is equivalent formally to the egocentric perspective (‘no one I can bind anything’), it is more interesting for the exposure the formulation here set, because it makes clear the moral obligation inherent in the doctrine.
2. In the same way, liberalism does not say anything about how to live one’s own life. It is not a doctrine of the good life.
3. If it is assumed that among the things that people are looking for in a doctrine of ethics is a picture of the good life, then the liberalism is necessarily incomplete.
3.1 This does not imply, in itself, a critique of liberalism. Only would indicate that it needs to be complemented with other views to generate an ethical practice of life. You can be liberal (social) and conservative (personal) for example; you can be liberal and stoic; you can be liberal and hedonistic; and so on.
4. A temptation common to liberalism is precisely the of try an creed full.
5. When it has fallen into such temptation, the available option is to defend a creed internal to follow all the impulses and desires (except those prohibited by the admonition against force others). If others don’t I can ban, this applies to the own person: Nor can I prohibit what you desire.
5.1 we have Already said that, although formally identical, the social vision of the bedrock principle of liberalism is different from the vision centred in the ego, and here we can observe the above.
6. It happens that transformed then in a creed full, an important part of the population (and this in good part from the social contexts) feels as insufficient, or even as a surface, said creed. The life, they feel, has to be something more than that to follow one’s own desires.
7. So then we come to that liberalism (to) agree to your condition of belief incomplete, or (b) is transformed into a creed which, for many, it is insufficient and superficial.
8. NOTE. We have already said on other occasions, but one of the traditional problems of liberalism as a creed is its lack of substantiation of its basic idea. Now, there are always ideas that all speech must be without justification. However, it turns out. at least, not enough that the distinctive idea, which they want to defend in debate, and therefore is problematized in him, not argue; but rather that everything is allegedly from her. But that is another type of failure that we are discussing in this entry.