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Politics, Neutrality, and the Good*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Richard Kraut
Richard Kraut
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Northwestern University
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Extract

A large number of prominent philosophers have in recent years advocated the thesis that the modern nation-state should adopt a stance of neutrality toward questions about the nature of the human good. The government, according to this way of thinking, has two proper goals, neither of which require it to make assumptions about what the constituents of a flourishing life are. First, the state must protect people against the invasion of their rights and uphold those principles of justice without which there can be no stable and lasting social order. This goal is accomplished through a guarantee of basic civil liberties and the enforcement of a criminal code that prohibits murder, theft, fraud, and other widely recognized harms. Second, the state should promote the general welfare of the citizens by providing them with or helping them acquire the resources they need in order to lead lives of their own choosing. There are certain all-purpose means that people need in order to accomplish their goals—money, health, opportunities for employment—and it is legitimate for the state to pursue policies that enable citizens to acquire these goods. It may build roads, raise an army, regulate the economy, insure standards of safety, and supervise any other projects that give people the basic wherewithal they need to pursue their own ends.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Winter 1999 , pp. 315 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1999

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References

1 The most influential advocate of this view is, of course, Rawls, John, in both A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar Despite significant changes in some of his views, I believe that the kind of neutralism I criticize here can be found in both works; see notes 7, 8, and 11 below. For other important defenses of neutralism, see Ackerman, Bruce, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Barry, Brian, Justice as Impartiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Cohen, Joshua, “Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus,” in Copp, David et al. , The Idea of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Dworkin, Ronald, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1985)Google Scholar; Larmore, Charles, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Waldron, Jeremy, Liberal Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar For a hill and critical discussion, see Sher, George, Beyond Neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 I am hardly alone in rejecting the thesis of neutrality. Among those from whom I have learned a great deal are Galston, William A., Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurka, Thomas, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Macedo, Stephen, Liberal Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Sher, Beyond Neutrality.

3 That is, the authors mentioned in note 1.

4 This is, of course, the argument proposed by John Stuart Mill. See On Liberty, ch. 3.

5 See Dworkin, Ronald, Nagel, Thomas, Nozick, Robert, Rawls, John, Scanlon, Thomas, and Thomson, Judith Jarvis, “Assisted Suicide: The Philosophers' Brief,” New York Review of Books, vol. 44, no. 5 (03 27, 1997), pp. 41–47.Google Scholar The due process clause states that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The legal question, then, is whether existing prohibitions of assisted suicide interfere with constitutionally protected liberty. On June 26, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that they do not. See Dworkin, Ronald, “Assisted Suicide: What the Court Really Said,” New York Review of Books, vol. 44, no. 14 (09 25, 1997), pp. 40–44.Google Scholar

6 To insure that the decision is fully voluntary, the state can require a considerable waiting period before allowing assisted suicide in these cases. But revenge and a sense of loss can be resilient and durable motives. Duly considered decisions can be based on extremely bad reasons. For a defense of an anti-paternalist policy toward suicide, see Feinberg, Joel, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 3, Harm to Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 344–74.Google Scholar

7 Rawls holds that “citizens and legislators may properly vote their more comprehensive views when constitutional essentials and basic justice are not at stake” (Political Liberalism, p. 235).Google Scholar By this he means that we are not to appeal to our fundamental religious and moral views, including our conception of human flourishing, when we collectively deliberate about “constitutional essentials and basic justice.” It may be that the question of assisted suicide does not fit into this rubric, and that Rawls would therefore allow citizens voting in a referendum about this matter to justify their positions by appealing to a conception of human well-being. But it is not clear to me why it is legitimate to appeal to such a conception when one is considering lower-level legislation but not when higher-order principles are at stake. See also note 11 below. Note that Waldron expresses a more general ban: “It is not wrong for someone to favor a particular conception of the good life, but it is wrong for him in his capacity as legislator (and presumably as voter) to favor such a view” (Liberal Rights, p. 154).Google Scholar

8 Rawls writes: “[T]he government can no more act… to advance human excellence, or the values of perfection … than it can to advance Catholicism or Protestantism, or any other religion” (Political Liberalism, pp. 179–80).Google Scholar I believe that this approach makes it difficult to give the right kind of justification for a traditional liberal education.

9 For a detailed account, see Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

10 For a brief overview, see “Full Democracy,” in The Economist, vol. 341, no. 7997 (12 21, 1996).Google Scholar

11 Recall at this point Rawls's idea that in public debate “constitutional essentials” ought to be defended without appealing to “perfectionist values” or “comprehensive views” about the value of human life. See Political Liberalism, pp. 179–80 and 235Google Scholar; see also notes 7 and 8 above. If this means that one cannot seek to make the basic political institutions of society more democratic by appealing to a conception of human flourishing, then Rawls is placing too great a limitation on discussions of human flourishing in public life.

12 It might be said, against this, that to be humiliated is to be wronged but is not in itself to be deprived of a good or made to suffer a harm. This objection is highly implausible, however. Honor is widely recognized as an intrinsic good. Accordingly, its opposites—various forms and degrees of dishonor (being subjected to shame, humiliation, embarrassment)—are plausibly regarded as evils. It would be impossible to understand what is objectionable about humiliating someone (when it is objectionable), if such treatment attaches nothing bad to its victim. If various forms of mistreatment are regarded as injustices but not as intrinsically bad for the victim, the topic of good and evil can be too easily dismissed as peripheral. For a helpful analysis of various forms of dishonor, see Miller, William Ian, Humiliation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google ScholarPubMed

13 If being unemployable is a source of shame, then my argument would provide a further reason, besides economic reasons, for job training. The question is not psychological (how does it feel to be unemployable?) but sociological (are the unemployable treated as a caste?).

14 There is a large literature on politics and religion in pluralistic societies that I cannot adequately discuss here. See, for example, Greenawalt, Kent, Religious Convictions and Political Choice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Perry, Michael, Love and Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Quinn, Philip, “Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusion of the Religious,” in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 69, no. 2 (1995), pp. 35–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Here I am responding to Brian Barry, who cites the clash between rival religious conceptions of the good to support a form of skepticism, which in turn is used to justify a principle of neutrality (Justice as Impartiality, pp. 168–73).Google Scholar I think he overlooks the point that there is considerable agreement about at least certain intrinsic goods.