Public morality and liberal society1996

The issue of public morality, so often at the center of heated debates about pornography, narcotics, public indecency, violent entertainments, "family values," et cetera, is at once a continuing reality and a persistent dilemma in our liberal society. With Public Morality and Liberal Society, Harry M. Clor makes an important contribution to this perennial and intensely debated theme by considering how public morality can be justified in theory and accommodated in practice within a liberal society. Clor's argument departs from the usual discussions of public morality - which spring from the premises of liberal philosophy and are oriented to an overriding concern with personal liberty or rights - and considers instead the moral interests and claims of the community as a whole. He maintains that a reasonable case can still be made for a publicly supported ethnic of self-restraint, and that this enterprise involves the definition of public morality, the articulation of its philosophic justification, and a consideration of its problems and prospects in the face of the community-weakening tendencies of liberal modernity. By systematically analyzing society's need for public morality and by confronting the major libertarian and egalitarian objections to it, Clor clearly shows that what is at stake in the debates about public decency and liberal society is nothing less than our communal self-understanding, our sense of what a liberal community is about, and our understanding of human well-being.