ABSTRACT
The authorities—epistemological, political, legal, economic—that held the modern world in place served as anchors against contingency, the possibility that the institutions of liberalism might prove groundless and revisable. The rational principles of liberalism always worked in favor of the rational man, the one who benefited most from political sovereignty, economic rationality, legal authority, and epistemological clarity and rigor. Circumstance, contingency, difference, context, relationality, and the like must be accorded a larger role in shaping our political, economic, and legal values and ideals. The concept of social design assumes the necessity of artificial mechanisms and legal instruments that build new social contexts and economic relations, but it need not eschew economic interaction that is independent of legal or political determination. The liberal ideal of individual freedom already presupposes social design in several ways. A designed or structured context allows ends to be achieved and one's own free designs to be rational and predictable.
