This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 11, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen argues that society should be organized

to protect the possibility of ethical behavior

and that attempts to do more will actually compromise that basic goal.

To him that implies a government strictly limited in its aims and powers.

Rasmussen is most recently the co-author of the book,

Norms of Liberty, a perfectionist basis for non-perfectionist politics.

We spoke earlier today.

When Americans talk about something being liberal, they usually mean it in the political

sense, and it's far flung from our ideas about what is liberal when you're talking about it in the world of philosophy.

Can you talk about that distinction?

Yeah, well, when we talk about liberalism and philosophy, we're talking in political

philosophy and we're making a distinction really between an ancient and a modern

tradition. The ancient tradition in politics

viewed the polis as the central thing by which human life would be done.

And in that conception, the distinction between the state and society was

blurred. It was conflated. And also the idea of the human good and that order was a very monistic

one. So that view of politics very monistic one.

So that view of politics led to the idea

that state craft is solecraft, and that the purpose

of the legislator in the state is to help people

...