ABSTRACT
Kantian liberalism seeks to secure the rights of the individual by establishing a basis for the liberal state where justice, not utility, is posited as the primary moral value. It is at their foundational levels, at the laying down of first principles, that we see most clearly the difference between utilitarianism and rights-based theories. To put it epigrammatically, Kant has displaced Mill as the founding father of the liberal state. In short, the tacit understanding in liberal democracies tends to be that the language of individual rights is the only moral discourse appropriate to the modern world, and the only language capable of sustaining social justice. More and more, individual rights have come to function as the final determining ground of morality, and the secular faith in liberal democracies turns on the belief that an everincreasing body of individual rights and entitlements is synonymous with moral and social advancement.
