Freedom in truth or freedom as truth?

In this paper the author analyses political and economic liberalism, its contribution to and implications in the philosophy of law, and investigates its philosophical and metaphysical presu- ppositions, before subjecting it to a critical assessment. In this context he discusses various modifications of the utilitarian theory of values which underpins the classical political liberalism, the cult of freedom, freedom as a happening and the philosophical modifi-cations of the basic liberalistic tenets introduced by the so-called postmodern liberalism. In the field of economic liberalism, having explained the štand-points of the classical authors, he shows the novelties, and sometimes radical differences, of the neo-liberal school in the economy. The author assesses critically the basic assumption of liberal philosophy and concludes with a waming, that, if Europe and America, still the bastions of liberalism, persist much longer in sacrificing a universalist message of social justice and morality in political and economic affairs to individualistic hedonism and to moral insensitivity, that we can then expect in the near future a swing of the pendulum in the other opposite, which means an eruption of law and order systems, from ethnocratic nationalism and racism, to tribal religious fanaticism and to many new forms of political authoritarianism