Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics, Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pp. xviii, 358.

As the sub-title here suggests, Rasmussen and Den Uyl seek to defend a liberalism that does not shy away from deep moral commitments. Instead they seek one with a “robust moral framework,” one that rejects “the claim that … liberalism is necessarily connected to moral minimalism or skepticism” (15). As they point out, this is not an especially new idea, and indeed much of their argument for a more philosophically invested liberalism is in general sympathy with the vision Mill articulated 150 years ago. (They happily go back even further, to Spinoza.)