Fundamentals

Liberalism and Civic Virtue: Liberty, Responsibility, and Institutions

By Daniel Sardá · Published on September 23, 2026

7 min read1,518 words

A liberal society does not require identical citizens, but it does depend on certain public dispositions: respect for rights, tolerance, responsibility, and a willingness to live together under fair rules.

Can a society defend each person's freedom while also expecting certain virtues from its members? The question can seem contradictory. If the state decides what it means to be a good citizen, it may end up intruding on conscience and private life. But if a political community expects no respect for rights, rules, or other people, freedom is left vulnerable to abuse and arbitrariness.

The tension is real, but it does not force a choice between individual autonomy and living together. The decisive questions are which virtues count as civic, who may encourage them, and by what means. Liberalism can recognize necessary public habits without turning political power into a guardian of the good life.

Two concepts with more than one meaning

Liberalism is not a single doctrine. It is a family of traditions that gives central importance to individual liberty, while its members disagree about what that liberty means, how rights are justified, and the legitimate scope of government. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on liberalism outlines these internal differences. Reducing the whole tradition to markets, personal isolation, or an absence of duties therefore produces a caricature.

Civic virtue is not the same as moral perfection, either. In a limited political sense, it refers to dispositions that make common life possible among people who differ from one another: respecting rights, acting with civility, tolerating disagreement, following just rules, and accepting that power must remain limited. Its content varies according to the tradition from which it is understood.

This narrower definition matters. Someone may fulfill these public duties while holding religious beliefs, family priorities, or personal ideals very different from those of their neighbors. Civic virtue governs the relationship among free citizens; it does not prescribe an exemplary biography for everyone.

Key idea: A plural society can ask people to respect the rules of freedom without requiring everyone to share the same idea of happiness or personal excellence.

Freedom does not make selfishness a virtue

A common objection is that liberalism imagines isolated individuals concerned only with their own interests. Yet recognizing individual liberty does not mean celebrating every selfish act. One person's rights also mark limits on the conduct of others. One's own freedom does not include the freedom to dominate, assault, defraud, or silence others.

For that reason, a liberal order presupposes some reciprocity. Anyone who asks that their conscience be respected must extend the same protection to the conscience of others. Anyone who demands predictable rules cannot reserve the privilege of ignoring them when they become inconvenient. And someone who loses a decision made through legitimate procedures may challenge it, criticize it, and seek to change it without thereby acquiring an automatic right to disregard the shared framework.

These examples express civic dispositions, not uncritical obedience. Respecting the law does not mean treating every order as just. The ideal of generality of the law requires that rules not be mere instruments of favoritism and that power itself be subject to them. Public criticism, institutional reform, and resistance to arbitrariness are not failures of civic virtue; they can be part of it.

Tolerance, responsibility, and neutrality

In open societies, incompatible convictions coexist. Tolerance makes it possible to manage that disagreement without treating an opponent as an enemy or using power to make consciences uniform. It does not require approval of every idea or conduct. It requires distinguishing between rejecting an opinion and denying the basic rights of the person who holds it.

Responsibility completes this disposition. Free decisions bring consequences, commitments, and duties toward third parties. Associating, contracting, speaking, or taking part in common affairs calls for considering those consequences, not merely asserting one's own powers. Tolerance and responsibility are therefore complementary: one checks the temptation to impose convictions; the other checks the temptation to detach liberty from its effects.

Some versions of political liberalism add an ideal of civility: when deciding how to use shared political power, citizens and their representatives should offer reasons that others can understand even if they do not share the same moral or religious doctrine. Jordi Tena Sánchez's analysis of civic virtue and egalitarian liberalism explains how a Rawlsian framework can recognize dispositions needed for justice without abandoning pluralism.

Here, neutrality does not mean that the state is indifferent to violence, legal discrimination, or violations of rights. Above all, it limits the justification of coercion: political power should not impose a complete conception of the good life merely because a majority regards it as superior.

Necessary distinction: Protecting the conditions for free coexistence is not the same as using the law to manufacture an ideal type of person.

Institutions also educate, even without preaching

Public virtues do not arise by decree alone. People learn to cooperate by taking part in families, associations, religious communities, businesses, unions, neighborhood organizations, and cultural projects. Freedom of association opens spaces in which trust, deliberation, and the keeping of commitments can be practiced without every relationship being directed by the state.

This does not guarantee virtuous outcomes. An association may be exclusionary, irresponsible, or abusive. Civil society is a possible setting for learning and cooperation, not an automatic machine for producing good citizens. Its liberal advantage lies in pluralism: different groups can propose ideals, persuade, experiment, and correct themselves without turning any single vision into a political obligation for everyone.

Formal institutions also convey incentives and expectations. Public rules that are stable and applied without privilege make reciprocity a reasonable expectation; arbitrariness, by contrast, weakens that expectation. This connection should be stated cautiously: it does not prove that an institutional design by itself produces particular character traits. It does show that asking citizens to act responsibly while power operates without limits would be incoherent.

The republican contribution: freedom from domination

Republicanism offers a useful warning: a person may face no immediate interference and still depend on an arbitrary will. A benevolent master who chooses not to intervene today retains the power to do so tomorrow. For this reason, much contemporary republicanism understands freedom as non-domination, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy overview of republicanism explains.

From this perspective, scrutiny of power, participation, and a willingness to defend free institutions gain particular importance. Written rights are not enough if no one monitors their application or if citizens accept arbitrary relations of dependence as inevitable.

Liberalism and republicanism are not interchangeable. They differ in how they understand freedom, the weight they give participation, and the extent to which public power may encourage certain dispositions. But they share constitutional ground: limits on government, rejection of arbitrariness, and protection of the citizen's free standing. The possibility of civic virtue compatible with political liberalism is precisely the proposal Santos and Corrêa de Araújo examine in their study of a possible liberal-republican consensus. It is an argumentative thesis, not a final agreement between the two traditions.

The republican contribution can correct an overly passive account of citizenship. Liberal caution, in turn, reminds us that greater participation does not authorize a majority to decide everything or make permanent political mobilization a universal duty.

How far may civic virtue be encouraged?

The answer depends on the means used and on the kind of virtue at issue. Persuasion and coercion are not morally equivalent. A school can teach how institutions work and why rights matter; an association can invite people into community service; a news outlet can defend public honesty. Such initiatives remain open to discussion, alternatives, and criticism.

Coercion requires a much more demanding threshold of justification. Punishing violence or fraud protects the rights of others. Punishing a peaceful way of life merely because it departs from rulers' moral ideal imposes a particular doctrine. Legitimate controversies lie between those poles, but the burden of proof falls on those who seek to use public force.

A liberal approach can assess civic encouragement through three questions:

• Does it protect rights and common rules, or impose private morality?
• Does it offer reasons, education, and opportunities for cooperation, or rely on disproportionate sanctions?
• Does it respect disagreement and critical revision, or confuse civic virtue with conformity?

A liberal criterion: The further a conduct is from harming the rights of others, and the closer it is to a peaceful personal choice, the weaker the justification for coercing it.

A demanding, limited compatibility

Liberalism and civic virtue are compatible when the latter is understood as a limited set of dispositions for living freely with others, not as a state catalog of exemplary lives. Mutual respect, tolerance, responsibility, and rejection of arbitrariness help sustain institutions in which different people can pursue different ends.

That compatibility has two limits. The first applies to citizens: invoking rights does not exempt them from recognizing the rights of others or answering for their actions. The second applies to power: recognizing the importance of certain habits does not give it license to govern consciences.

Liberal civic virtue occupies precisely this space between indifference and tutelage. It asks what is necessary so that no one becomes the master of others, while leaving each person broad room to decide who they wish to be.