ABSTRACT
Contemporary intellectual orthodoxy accepts the twentieth-century positivist fact/value distinction for two reasons: on explicit logical grounds that normative/value statements cannot be logically derived from factual ones; and on implicit ideological grounds that a free and open (i.e. liberal) society requires a meta-ethics of either subjectivism or relativism to sustain it. The spiritual fountainhead of new liberalism is not the Greek tradition but the Romantic tradition of self-assertion and of epistemological sovereignty in the self. New liberalism is in keeping with an epistemology of 'negative endorsement'. The liberalism, reformism and gradualism in the political philosophy spring essentially from the horror and abhorrence of totalitarianism (both right and left). 'Utopia and Violence' is an exceptionally revealing piece. The possibility of argument and criticism is crucial to the method of fallibilism. Critical dualism is correct — norms cannot be reduced to facts and are man-made.
