Chapter 7 - Liberal Authority and Moral Education

Summary

This chapter focuses on the relationship between consent and the moral educational aims of the liberal state. Consent is oft-cited as a condition for the legitimate use of coercive state power. Moral requirements are generally non-coercive on the face of it; nobody has the right to rule over our conscience. Curiously, liberal states often see the moral formation of citizens as subject to political requirements (e.g. compulsory civic education). How does the consent condition bear on these requirements? The general argument is that reasons for withholding consent to a liberal state moral education are often motivated by a specific worry about the relationship between morality and political authority, that is, that such authority will have undesirable downstream effects on these norms and attitudes. The chapter characterizes this worry in philosophical terms and proposes a solution in the form of a consent standard specific to the justification of a liberal state education.