Cultivating liberal virtues

This article criticizes a group of contemporary political theories that describe the virtues appropriate to liberal citizens, the ills that result from a waning of these virtues and the kinds of public policies that would renew the traits of character necessary to the healthy functioning of a liberal polity. While enumerations of broadly liberal virtues can seem relatively uncontroversial, these pieties provide insufficient warrant for the concrete policy recommendations made in their name. Theoretical and practical discussions of citizen virtues need to take seriously the diversity of liberal ''citizenship stories,'' and to consider how legitimately to conciliate these perspectives in particular cases.