I take the idea that persons are free and equal to be the core idea of liberalism. Freedom and equality have here a specialised sense. The paper will attempt three things: one, to clarify the idea of persons being free and equal. This will allow exploring the implications of this idea. I think that “persons being free” implies what has often been called the liberal principle of legitimacy and “persons being equal” implies a principled moral pluralism. I then move on to showing that this idea is at the core of liberalism in two steps. First, by looking at some canonical liberal thinkers who can be all interpreted to share this idea. And, second, by examining the characteristics we usually think make liberalism distinct from other political doctrines. Given the implications of this idea I want to argue that we cannot be perfectionist if we want to be perfectionist.
