This book is about how you should live. Although it is written by a college professor, it is not primarily intended for other college professors. It is intended instead for the person who has decided to begin thinking a bit more carefully about the nature and justification of moral judgments and about the political principles a sound system of morality would imply.

The book is motivated in part by the fact that a lot of what gets written and taught about how you should live either ignores altogether or gives short shrift to an important moral and political tradition called the “classical liberal” tradition. I believe that this neglect is a mistake: the classical liberal tradition offers a compelling vision of what it means to be a respectable human being, of what a just political state is, and of what people should do to achieve their goals. Or at least I believe it is a compelling vision, and I hope in this book to convince you of that as well. In any case it is worth giving serious consideration. One reason it often isn't given such consideration is perhaps that there is no concise presentation of its fundamental principles that applies them to currently important moral and political topics. That is what this book aims to do.

One reason I believe the classical liberal tradition is compelling is that it is founded on simple, attractive principles that almost everyone endorses, implicitly if not explicitly, in everyday life.