Abstract
There is a damaging confusion within contemporary liberalism surrounding the proper understanding of the requirement of governmental neutrality or impartiality, roughly the demand that governments maintain an attitude of neutrality toward the many conceptions of the good life that are held by the members of society, which has come to dominate contemporary discussions of liberalism. Many liberals, including John Rawls, Bruce Ackerman, Ronald Dworkin and Will Kymlicka, believe that, as a matter of practical politics, liberalism requires state neutrality between conceptions of the good. The list of notable exceptions to this view is expanding, however, and now includes Joseph Raz and George Sher.1 Nonetheless, liberals understand the implications of a requirement of governmental neutrality as a practical political policy in drastically different ways. Some theorists claim that neutrality requires that individual liberty be assigned a priority over other political values. Others insist that liberal neutrality demands an egalitarian political system. Still others suggest that neutrality requires us to privilege a conjunction of the values of liberty and equality. Further disputes arise among advocates of these broad positions.
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John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971) and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,’ 1980); Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); George Sher, Beyond Neutrality (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997 ).
Cf. John Gray, “Contractarian method, private property and the market economy,” in Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy ( New York: Routledge, 1989 ).
Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986 ), p. 110.
Cf. Raz, op. cit.; Kymlicka, op. cit.; and Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism ( London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1989 ).
Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,” Ethics 99:3, July 1989; and Raz, op. cit., p. 117.
Cf. Peter Jones, “The Ideal of the Neutral State,” in Robert Goodin and Andrew Reeve, ed., Liberal Neutrality (New York: Routledge, 1989), esp. pp. 14–17.
Mendus, op. cit., p. 84.
Ibid., pp. 115.
Cf Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 82:2, 1973, reprinted in Norman Daniels, ed., Reading Rawls (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); and Raz, ibid., pp. 118–119.
Cf. Rawls, op. cit. and John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14: 3, 1985.
Cf. Richard Flatman, Toward a Liberalism ( Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989 ), pp. 116–117.
Dworkin, op. cit., p. 190.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 190–191.
Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10:3, 1981 and “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10:4, 1981; Larry Alexander and Maimon Schwarzschild, “Liberalism, Neutrality, and Equality of Welfare vs. Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 16:1, 1987; and Richard Norman, “Does Equality Destroy Liberty?”, in R.T. Garner and A. Oldenquist, eds., Society and the Individual: Readings in Political and Social Philosophy ( Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1990 ).
Raz, op. cit., p. 116.
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, J. Tully, ed. ( Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1983 ).
Ibid., p. 42.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia ( New York: Basic Books, 1974 ).
Cf. Mendus, op. cit.
Ibid., p. 84.
Raz, op. cit., p. 116.
Cf. Harry Brighouse, “Is There a Neutral Justification for Liberalism?”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77, 1996.
Mendus, op. cit., p. 122; Raz, op. cit., pp. 139–140.
Raz, op. cit., p. 2.
Cf. John Gray, “Liberalism and the Choice of Liberties,” in Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989); and Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969 ).
John Gray, “Oakeshott on Law, Liberty and Civil Association,” in Gray, op. cit., p. 207.
I would like to thank Jan Narveson, Chris Tucker, Paul Viminitz and Bob Bright for the stimulating discussions and thoughtful comments they have given me on this and related topics.
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Dimock, S. (2000). Liberal Neutrality. In: Narveson, J., Dimock, S. (eds) Liberalism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9440-0_3
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