deep freedom 291ated with one such account of the good or of human identity. Its ar-
rangements, with their in- built biases in favor of certain forms of expe-
rience and against others, will characteristically be capable of being
defended in the light of a certain range of such accounts. Th e range of
views of the good and of human identity implied in one po liti cally or-
ga nized society will diff er from the range of views of the good and of
human identity embraced by other po liti cal societies.
Given the partial and defective character of all or ga nized forms of
social life, our interest is that no one institutional blueprint, and no one
range of conceptions of the good and of human identity, be imposed
upon humanity throughout the world. Our interest is also, however, that
the concert of nations or of states impose limits, although wide limits,
on the variations in forms of social life that can be allowed to exist. In
the defi nition of these limits (conventionally described under the al-
most empty label “human rights”), we encounter all over again the
same problem that we fi rst faced in dealing inside a po liti cal society
with the relation between its institutional arrangements and its presup-
positions about the good and about human identity. Every way to for-
mulate and to justify such limits requires us to think and to act in the
name of beliefs about human nature and the human good. Th e range of
the dialectic between ideals or interests and institutions and practices
will now be more widely drawn, but it will nevertheless have limits. If it
had no limits, it would have no meaning or value.
From where are these limits to be inferred? We cannot answer this
question from fi rst principles, or infer an answer from the system of a
phi los o pher. We can answer it only in the light of living experience.
Th e revolutionary ideas of democracy and of romanticism— the secular
arm of the struggle with the world— have aroused humanity in every
corner of the globe. Th ey have shaken the whole world in the name of
an idea that is also a hope: the power of every individual man and
woman to exceed their circumstance and to share in a greater life.
From this idea, there results, I argue in this chapter, a series of conse-
quences for the practical or ga ni za tion of social life.
Th e idea is nevertheless religious at its core. To say that it is religious,
in light of the way in which I have defi ned religion, is to affi rm that it
is contestable and contested: despite its unrivaled authority, this
view of who we are and can become remains at war with other living