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

is governed by two other liberal core concepts, rationality and the dispersal of power among all. But it also includes the duty of men ‘to love others than themselves’, indicating a strong interdependence of respect and affinity among people from the very beginning. Locke’s state of nature is thus pre-political but not pre-social, because of the concern of any one person for the life, property, and health of another. Out of those modest beginnings there then arose over the years within liberalism the notion of beneficial mutual interdependence, whether economic, ethical, emotional, or physical. That notion vindicated the non-solitary condition of human beings and it even made inroads into market versions of liberalism. For that reason if, as some critics of liberalism insist, individualism is interpreted as social atomism—the fundamental separateness of every person from another—that kind of individualism is not part of liberalism’s mainstream profile, though we may find it among libertarians.
    Sometimes related to sociability, but conceptually distinct, is the concept of the general interest. That sixth core concept conjures up the liberal claim to include all individuals—and groups—in its purview rather than emphasizing class, race, gender, or ethnicity as points of rupture. Liberals thus appear to be impervious to those distinctions as a matter of principle. The critics of liberalism emphatically deny that liberal blindness. They point out ways in which liberals display contentious prejudices, often deluding themselves that they do not. Generally speaking, the idea of community on different levels implies the sharing of some conditions or circumstances that forge a specific identity of its members, an identity that also includes a loose pooling of perspectives, opinions, and ideas. In the liberal case, the default position of the sixth core concept is the desire to appeal to universal human interests as such, to what unites people rather than what divides them, even to some fundamental consensus. That may refer to a sense of decency, to reasonableness, to mutual respect and equality of regard, and to a wish to promote the collective good of individuals. Even among those who interpret liberalism as a market oriented and competitive ideology, there are emphatic references to the general interest. They often subscribe to a version of Bernard Mandeville’s famous ‘Fable of the Bees’, in which he contended that private vices produce public benefits: the pursuit of personal advantage could result in benefits for all. Adam Smith and Hegel, as mentioned in Chapter 2 , had suggested that an invisible hand worked to convert the pursuit of self-interest through the division of labour and specialization into outcomes that were in the public interest.
    What then, about the fifth layer of liberal pluralism and multiculturalism? Although here liberals recognize the multiplicity of communities within any society, their relationships are not wholly centrifugal. Layer five liberals simply extend the notion of the general interest to endorse the setting up of conditions under which group co-existence is not only possible but valuable. Decency, reasonableness, and mutual respect become even more imperative in societies where those parallel and interrelated communities of religion, ethnicity, and locality cohabit. The assumption here is that their humanity and pursuit of the good encourages interaction and makes it more likely that they form strong attachments to the other core liberal concepts. But as we have seen, intractable problems still obtain for liberals grappling with social pluralism. The former inattentiveness of liberals to minority identities has been attenuated by a conflicted awareness of them.
    A seventh core concept is power, but in a specific sense—as limited and accountable. In a deep sense liberals are embarrassed by power: after all, the historic emergence of liberalism was chiefly in response to