Both types of liberalism have an optimistic view of human nature. Liberal thinkers such as John Locke and Jeremy Bentham perceived humans as rational beings who act in their own self-interest by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Classical liberals would argue that if humans are inherently reasonable and self seeking, then a successful society can be based on meritocracy without the need for an overbearing state to control us. Jeremy Bentham argued that the state should only intervene in cases in which an individual’s freedom imposes upon another’s. However the modern liberal T.H Green suggested that people have a natural desire to enhance others’ welfare as well as their own. Modern liberals have a more optimistic view of human nature. Hence, people’s egoism is tempered with a sense of social responsibility. Therefore according to modern liberals this philanthropic instinct suggests that the state should help those in need, enabling them to achieve the same fulfillment as others through the provision of state welfare. Therefore liberals agree on the primacy of the individual and in the pursuit of maximum freedom but they are divided over the role of the state to achieve these.
Liberals disagree about the concept of liberty, and as a result the liberal ideal of protecting individual liberty can lead to very different conceptions of the task of government. Classical Liberals believe in negative freedom. This conception of freedom is ‘negative’ in that it is based on the absence of external constrains on the individual. Consequently the state is regarded as a ‘necessary evil’. Evil in that it imposes collective will on society thereby limiting the freedom of the individual but necessary in that, it lays down the conditions for orderly existence. Classical Liberals thus believe in a minimal state whose legitimate role is limited to the protection of ‘life, liberty and