Saturday, April 01, 2006

A liberal conception of the state's role

The role of the state is to protect the capacity of individuals to judge for themselves the worth of different conceptions of the good life (self-determination), and to provide a fair distribution of rights and resources to enable people to pursue their conception of the good.

As opposed to two alternative roles:
  1. Do nothing as certain powerful elements within society violate those rights of the individual (very prevalent in Lebanon). Doing nothing may constitute, among other things, a failure to distribute the rights and resources that would enable people to pursue their conception of the good.

  2. Proactively violating those rights by choosing for individuals what ways of life are most worthy of fulfilling. In such states, people are not free to choose their own conception of the good life, at least not without being penalized by society (or/through the state).
Will Kymlicka

1 comment:

Hassan said...

Thanks, Where is the excerpt from?