 By contrast, Mill is a perfectionist liberal who eschews neutrality about the good. According to Millian perfectionism, the good life is not defined in sectarian terms as consisting in a particular set of activities. Rather, the good life is understood in terms of the exercise of capacities for practical deliberation that can be realized in diverse, though limited, ways. Basic liberties are important because they are necessary conditions for this sort of reflective self-direction and self-realization. On this version of liberalism, the state recognizes various civil liberties and resists regular paternalism and moralism, not because it won’t take a stand on questions of the good, but precisely because it recognizes autonomy and self-determination as higher-order goods.