ABSTRACT
In all societies, what is just or right is essentially defined in terms of freedoms, rights, powers, means, and the correlative duties and obligations. These items are liberties, or can generally be expressed in terms or with concepts of liberty in the broad sense.1 The social ethic of modernity consists of a specification of these liberties, which excludes inequalities based on family status, and will be presented later. Note that incomes, goods, welfare and the like appear as particular or limiting cases: income is purchasing power, one is free to consume, use, exchange, etc., the goods one possesses, and there can be rights to have certain goods or a certain level of welfare (the relations between agents’ ends and means will be further considered below). The other items are more explicitly rights, powers or liberties.
