Shameless Liberalism: a vision

Freiburg Lectures on Staatswissenschaft and Philosophy of Law

Directions
  • Date: Jul 8, 2026
  • Time: 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Prof. Dr. David Enoch (University of Oxford / Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
  • David Enoch is professor of Philosophy of Law at Oxford and the Rodney Blackman Chair in Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studied at Tel Aviv University and at NYU and has published widely in moral, political, and legal philosophy.
  • Location: Freiburg/Germany, Fürstenbergstr. 19
  • Room: Seminar room (F 113) | Guests are welcome; please register
  • Host: MPI-CSL in cooperation with the Department of Political Science and Philosophy of Law at the University of Freiburg
  • Contact: c.hillemanns@csl.mpg.de
Despite everything, liberalism remains the one true political philosophy. Liberal principles – something about liberty and autonomy, something about equality, perhaps some universalist and rationalist assumptions – are still the right fundamental principles for political philosophy.

But this doesn’t mean – if you thought it did – that liberalism is free of trouble. The most dominant version of liberalism (in English-speaking political philosophy) over the past half century has been weak and confused, both philosophically and politically. We can do better. There are still many problems – new and old – to face.

The liberalism that we need to champion (not just theoretically) is robust and self-confident intellectually, but very realistic and cautious politically. It is in no way skeptical or relativistic, but it is pragmatically flexible. It is philosophically uncompromising, but politically willing to compromise about pretty much everything.

This talk presents and defends this shameless kind of liberalism in broad brushstrokes.

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