According to a number of recent critics, various efforts to justify liberalism in a neutral or merely "political" fashion have failed badly In response, William Galston and Ronald Dworkin, as well as other theorists, have tried to articulate a foundational conception of the good from which liberal poli tics can be derived. In analyzing their competing conceptions of ethical liberalism, I assume that any reasonable liberalism must be consistent with individual agency and the idea that genuine goodness is a product of inner persuasion and belief. Galston's "purposive liberalism" rests on a teleologi cal structure that compromises his expressed concern for those value con siderations and opens the door to public coercion and manipulation as a way of maximizing his liberal good. Since Dworkin's approach manages to avoid such problems, I argue that his "challenge model" of the good life provides a superior ethical foundation for liberalism.
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