ABSTRACT
When we fi rst approached the contributors to this volume, we did so in the following terms:
The volume is premised on the assumption that much of the world will be living in broadly ‘liberal’ societies for the foreseeable future. Sustainability and security, however defi ned, must therefore be considered in the context of such societies, yet there is very little signifi cant literature that does so. Indeed, much ecologically oriented literature is overtly antiliberal, as have been some recent responses to security concerns. The proposed work aims to explore the implications for sustainability and security of a range of intellectual perspectives on liberalism: those offered (in no particular order) by John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Frederick Hayek, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Oakeshott, Amartya Sen, and Jürgen Habermas. We see these as leading infl uences on the progress of liberal societies at the present time, even though not all would defi ne themselves as liberal . . . We suggest . . . that liberalism is best understood in this context as an engagement with (and, to some extent, a commitment to) six core concerns: democracy, education, justice, liberty, markets, and progress. We appreciate, of course, that we are playing very loosely with academic defi nitions of liberalism in this, but our concern here is to produce a volume of lively debate around a shared set of broad foci.
