ABSTRACT
What is the provenance of this deeply-embedded conception of the individual as a wanting thing? I shall suggest that it is entwined with the ontological roots of the empiricist programme from which liberalism emerged. The liberalism concerned is moral liberalism, or what Gerald Gaus calls classical individualist liberalism, summarizing it as follows:
Although classical liberalism is itself very diffuse, I think that it is safe to say that the liberalisms articulated by Locke and James Mill, as different as they are, share a vision of men as essentially independent, private and competitive beings who see civil association mainly as a framework for the pursuit of their own interests.1
