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Definition: liberalism from Philip's Encyclopedia

Political and intellectual belief that advocates the right of the individual to make decisions, usually political or religious, according to the dictates of conscience. Its modern origins lie in the 18th-century Enlightenment. In politics, it opposes arbitrary power and discrimination against minorities. In British history, its greatest influence was exercised in the 19th century. In the USA, liberalism has, since the 1930s, referred to a belief in government action to manage the economy and (from the 1960s on) to improve the position of women and racial minorities. See also Liberal Party

Liberalism

From International Encyclopedia of Political Science
Liberalism offers a prescription of how the state is to deal with citizens: Loosely speaking, the state is to address citizens as equal individuals. The rise of liberalism therefore requires the prior or more or less simultaneous development of a strong principle and practice of individualism. There is a considerable literature on the roles of individualism and of individualist Protestantism in the development of capitalism but a far less rich discussion of its role in the development of political liberalism. This is not a little odd, because political liberalism is defined specifically for a society of individuals, and it requires constitutional protections of individual citizens against intrusions by the state. These three concepts—individualism, constitutionalism, and liberalism—are closely related historically, causally, and conceptually. Before turning to the structure or content of liberalism, there are two major preliminary issues to discuss here: an explanation of why…
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Full text Article liberalism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Liberalism is essentially a modern outlook, although aspects of liberalism can be found among the Sophists of ancient Greece with their argument that the state is not natural, but conventional. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was one of the earliest liberals in Britain, and what makes Hobbes a liberal is…
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Full text Article Liberalism

From World of Sociology, Gale
Liberalism traces its roots to the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Anthony Giddens wrote that “the left—and most liberals—were for modernization, a break with the past, promising a more equal and humane social order.” Originally, that meant support for democracy and…
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Full text Article liberalism

From Political Philosophy A-Z
A family of ideas which have come to be closely related, though there are varieties of liberalism, some of which are antagonistic to each other. It is perhaps such an unstable notion that it ought to be seen as an essentially contested concept along the lines that W. B. Gallie suggests. Foundational…
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Full text Article Liberalism

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
A political concept that has changed meaning over the years. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, liberalism emphasized the desirability of allowing individuals to follow their own wishes and pursue their own goals rather than thinking first of the common good. It was the political…
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From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Liberalism, both as an ideology and as a set of policies, has had shifting, and often conflicting, meanings. Originally, liberalism viewed the state as potential oppressor. In the early twentieth century liberals concluded that the state had the power and obligation to intervene for the public good. …
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From The Columbia Encyclopedia
philosophy or movement that has as its aim the development of individual freedom. Because the concepts of liberty or freedom change in different historical periods the specific programs of liberalism also change. The final aim of liberalism, however, remains fixed, as does its characteristic belief…
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From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
Islamic liberalism may be defined as a movement to reconcile Islamic faith with liberal values such as democracy, rights, equality, and other indicators of social progress. Islamic liberalism forms one strand of Islamic modernism, which also encompasses modern values that are not associated with the…
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From Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
The concept of supply and demand holds that the...
Liberalism is a political and ideological movement that advocates for using the power of democratically elected governments to regulate and reform social and economic activity within a capitalist system. The meaning of the term “liberalism” has changed as the relationship between the government and…
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From The Oxford Companion to International Relations
A protean doctrine with views on matters as diverse as epistemology and international relations, liberalism has been interpreted in different ways throughout history. As a minimal definition, we can say that liberalism considers individuals the seat of moral value and each individual as of equal…
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From Encyclopedia of American Government and Civics
During the 1950s, influential writers such as Louis Hartz described liberalism as the central defining characteristic of American public philosophy. However, since the 1980s, liberal is a term employed derisively by conservatives to smear those on the political left as hopelessly out-of-touch…
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