Citizenship and Moral Narcissism

Putting freedom first is what liberal society has always stood for. There is nothing wrong with enterprise, initiative, personal responsibility or even the lawful pursuit of private profit. What is incoherent is believing these goals can be achieved without a citizenship of entitlement, without the shared foundation that alone Makes freedom possible for all.

The Myth of Citizenship

Citizenship is a myth in both the noble and the ironical sense. On the one hand, the Western political imagination remains haunted by the ideal of citizenship enunciated in Aristotle’s Politics. On the other hand, to the modern western political tradition, citizenship has seemed a fanciful conception of man and his political nature.