ABSTRACT
Certain contemporary advocates of a liberal good offer arguments that run parallel to the Hobhouse and Green. While their starting points are all rather different Galston, Machan and Reiman, like Green and Hobhouse, share an explicit commitment to a universal liberal good in such a way as to undermine even the vestiges of neutralism their liberalism might retain. However, before going any further it is important briefly to differentiate Galston, Reiman and Machan from two other noted critics of the neutralist and communitarian strands in contemporary liberalism with whose critiques they might be confused, Richard Rorty and Alasdair MacIntyre. Rorty's liberalism, therefore, is no more successful than that of Reiman, Galston or Machan in establishing a workable liberal good. For the form has grown, historically, out of that substance; and moreover, even historicism apart, the form is inextricably linked to that substance for without it has no logically adequate purchase.
