ABSTRACT
The Western intellectual and political stage has had certain characteristic presences on it: the realist who scoffs at liberalism, the radical scornful of it, the liberal apologetic or wistful about it. In their origins liberal culture and the liberal ideal of civilization have an aristocratic flavor and a leisure-class bias, and in abstract principle, they are compatible with highly stratified and stable societies. The primary working conception of justice in liberal society, therefore, is procedural: the rules of society, whatever their content, must be laid down in accordance with higher-order rules that define how any authoritative decisions are to be made. Liberalism in culture and morals has traditionally been filled out, therefore, with four principles—in classic eighteenth-century language, "reason," "nature," "progress," and "humanity." Liberal methods constitute liberalism's great advantage in dealing with the future: it can account for the major force for change, namely science.
