Liberal Neutrality

Journal of Value Inquiry 34, 2-3 (September 2000)

Posted: 23 Nov 2012 Last revised: 5 Jan 2013

Date Written: September 1, 2000

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.

The questions raised concerning neutrality as a practical requirement of liberal politics reflect a deeper sense of confusion with respect to neutrality. Liberals divide over the fundamental justification of the requirement of governmental neutrality itself. Many liberals believe that the success of liberalism depends upon being able to provide a neutral justification for liberal neutrality itself. Liberals seek this justification in a neutral position or procedure from which liberal principles of justice would be chosen, and then use those principles of justice to delineate and justify political neutrality. Many liberals thus believe that they are committed to a more fundamental and theoretical requirement of neutrality, which functions as a constraint on the theory of justification itself. The idea that liberals can provide a neutral position or procedure from which they can derive liberal principles of justice and political neutrality has been the object of considerable criticism. A liberal need not embrace fundamental neutrality, however, and so liberalism can be defended even if the critics are correct about the impossibility of developing neutral procedures of justification.

Keywords: Justification, Liberalism, Neutrality, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy

Suggested Citation

Dimock, Susan, Liberal Neutrality (September 1, 2000). Journal of Value Inquiry 34, 2-3 (September 2000), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2180067

Susan Dimock (Contact Author)

York University, Students ( email )

Ontario
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://www.yorku.ca/dimock

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