According to the doctrine of political liberalism it is largely up to individuals to define what a good life is. Because our role is to find this, as authentically and autonomously as possible, society should safeguard our individual ethical autonomy. Political scientist Rosa Hartmut takes issue with this (1998). She believes that there is something fundamentally wrong both with refraining from democratic political control to steer social development, and with the liberal view of how people define their identities and views of the good. This is because, she argues, such views lead to a betrayal of the core ideals of liberalism and the Enlightenment, i.e. that people should be able to determine the world they live in.
Harmut argues that the modern economic system obviously predetermines the conceptions of the good life people choose: individual preferences are not formed independently but within a social setting that includes the political, social and economic spheres. Hartmut’s writing suggests that there are both tight connections and (under-analysed) contradictions between the dominant political philosophy of liberalism (autonomy of the individual, freedom of choice) and capitalist culture which work to constrain and channel individual choices in specific directions. In this paper we will explore her thinking further.
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