ABSTRACT
The case for liberty takes us beyond valuing it, and principally its negative aspect, simply because it is, or will yield in the longer term, what people want, via an acknowledgment of its moral foundations, to redefining it principally in terms of its positive aspect and as the liberty of self-dedication to transcendent ideals. Liberty, therefore, is not after all the highest political good, and the political order transcends itself into the moral order. Politically, any coherent and viable liberalism must be a conservative liberalism or liberal conservatism which seeks both to maintain a traditional order of society and within it gradually to extend, as and when possible, the liberties which it has inherited. What liberty and liberalism therefore need is a conception of the individual as a substance and a value in his own right, and therefore a unique, irreplaceable, and unrepeatable individuality, what Max Scheler called a "value-essence.".
