Moral liberty

that liberty of choice which is essential to moral responsibility.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.

References in periodicals archive ?

In conclusion, in spite of the surprising expressions found in the encyclical Libertas and their obvious limitations, it has to be noted that Leo XIII valued personal moral liberty. His insistence on the moral law was a way of stressing that liberty needs to be formed and focused on the good that is truly in accord with human nature and, furthermore, is perceived with greater clarity thanks to the light of faith.

Rerum Novarum in the Light of Libertas

Moral liberty was the freedom to choose to do the right thing as prescribed by the Bible.

The revivalists preached moral liberty and shared the Puritan belief that the state was a legitimate tool of moral improvement.

To build a shining city on a hill: the gulf between the religious ideals of us conservatives and those of the European Enlightenment is as wide as the Atlantic. Tim Stanley looks at the origins and the enduring legacy of the American revivalist tradition

But let us leave behind the question of whether one argues from a philosophical hole or a philosophical hill in choosing as one's first premise a right against punishment as opposed to a right that matches one's legal liberty to one's moral liberty. Let us instead take as a test of the relative merits of these alternative approaches the question of the legitimacy of laws that are motivated by paternalistic concern--namely, by a legislative desire to rescue persons from their own poor choices.

In such "moral ties," it is plausible to think that one is at moral liberty to choose because no choice is better or worse than its alternatives.

Paternalism on pain of punishment

"Introduction." In Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty, by Lysander Spooner.

The right of private judgment: Jonathan Mayhew's religious route to political individualism

He also explores social conservatism's effects on liberty, specifically individual moral liberty.

Modern free society and its nemesis; liberty versus conservatism in the new millennium; v.1

George Santayana was a "critical conservative," according to Russell Kirk--but also, according to David Corey, a "spiritual conservative." He was an implacable anti-liberal, one of the earliest thinkers to have observed in detail how liberalism's vaunted "moral liberty" leads ineluctably to social homogenization.

Conservative minds revisited

He is also right to point out that conceiving of autonomy as obedience to a law that one prescribes for oneself, in the manner of Rousseau's "moral liberty," leads to some of the problems associated with Rousseau's "general will."(1) But these two rights do not make my claim wrong.

Rejoinder to Michael Sandel

A new conservative Supreme Court, which disturbs us greatly, is now embarked upon an agenda to greatly restrict individual moral liberty in the name of good.

The limits of tolerance

In the second part of the work Stendhal presents his views, considered radical at the time, against marriage and favoring the full education and moral liberty of women.

On Love

Liberalism, it seemed to him, promised two things, material comfort and moral liberty; but it could deliver on neither of these promises, and tended rather to destroy what traditional order there was in a society.