A Refutation of Anti-Perfectionist or ‘Neutralist’ Liberalism

by

David Thunder

16^th November 1999

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A Refutation of Anti-Perfectionist or ‘Neutralist’ Liberalism [1]

Both advocates and opponents of the political ideal of ‘value’ neutrality, or neutrality between conceptions of the good, will agree upon one thing: the neutralist or ‘anti-perfectionist’ view of the moral limitations of laws and state interventions has exerted a tremendous influence upon the course of debate within political philosophy in the latter quarter of this century. The ideal of neutrality, though undermined in certain respects by communitarian and perfectionist critiques, is far from dead, and continues to shape the contemporary perfectionist/anti-perfectionist debate [2] engaged in by many political theorists, including Joseph Raz, John Finnis, William Galston (on the ‘perfectionist’ side), Charles Larmore, John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin (generally associated with the ‘anti-perfectionist’ side) to name but a few. In this essay, I will argue that neutralist theorists both violate their own neutrality injunction, and propose an ideal that, because of basic exigencies of political theory and practice, is impossible to implement.

 

The neutrality which I am attributing to the most dominant thread of contemporary liberalism, and argued for by such thinkers as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, Bruce Ackerman and Charles Larmore, has come to be known as neutrality between ‘conceptions of the good’. Henceforth, I will refer to this form of neutrality as ‘liberal neutrality’. Neutrality is not a free-standing, self-sufficient principle of political morality, but a principle designed to secure certain political goods. In other words, it is an instrumental rather than intrinsic political good. We are not ‘neutral’ among conceptions of the good simply for the sake of being ‘neutral’, but because this (it is argued) is the best, or only way, to secure certain fundamental political values. In other words, neutrality is a second-order rather than first-order value. [3] The virtue of neutrality is praised by liberals not because there is something intuitively appealing about remaining impartial among competing conceptions of the good (indeed, it can even seem counter-intuitive to set aside one’s beliefs about which lifestyles are most worthy in making political judgments) but because this seems to provide the best way to respect the separateness, liberty and equality of individuals who are subject to a common law and political authority.

Neutrality between conceptions of the good is designed to meet the demands of justice as fairness, that is, it is designed to respect the equal freedom of individuals to pursue a conception of the good of their choosing. If the state were to judge the ends or goods chosen by its citizens, or systematically discriminate against certain goods and in favour of others, it would thereby fail to respect the equality of those citizens who hold conceptions of the good which the state does not favour. Why so? Because what is significant about a moral person is not the content  of his vision of the good, but his ability to autonomously or freely pursue a conception of the good. If the state constrains his choice or rules out certain choices in advance, simply because certain choices are deemed less worthy than others, then the state violates the freedom of that individual, and does so in a deliberately partisan or biased fashion. The liberal conception of equality is inextricably bound up with the equal right to pursue one’s conception of the good within the limits of justice:

 

In order to challenge putatively neutral liberal theories, I will raise a number of considerations which cast substantial doubt on the proposition that a theory of justice independent of conceptions of the good is a coherent ideal, taken both on its own terms (is it consistent with what we know about human beings and the nature of political life, as such?) and in conjunction with the wider philosophical vision of its proponents (is it consistent with other fundamental political principles espoused by its proponents?).

Firstly, given what we know about politics as an activity aimed at ordering the life of a polity according to certain goals such as peace, prosperity and individual security, can we imagine a state adhering to the norm of neutrality in its laws and/or public policies and institutions? Even if states never perfectly observe the neutrality injunction in practice, is there a satisfactory theoretical basis for neutrality as a political ideal, a theoretical basis which might be reproduced, for example, in broad constitutional principles, even if never perfectly reflected in practice? I will suspend the empirical question of whether existing or former states have ever actually embodied the ideal of neutrality in their constitutions and practices, in order to give the theory of neutrality the best, and fairest, chance it can have of surviving a critique. If, upon inspection, neutrality is found to lack any satisfactory theoretical basis, then we can safely dismiss it as a fallacious ideal.

Can a theory of justice strong enough to justify and protect what are considered basic human entitlements, prescind from judging certain lifestyles and ends intrinsically superior to others? Or if it must make judgments of that kind, can they be based on sufficiently ‘thin’ premises not to count as components of a substantive theory of human well-being? The answer to both of these questions is, ‘no’. The idea of a robust theory of justice (that is, one which will do the ‘work’ which one normally requires of a theory of justice) which prescinds from judging certain ends and lifestyles intrinsically superior to others, which refuses to categorise human ends (to put it in Rawlsian language), is quite simply unrealisable. It is unrealisable because it presupposes an untenable division between conceptions of the good life on the one hand, and conceptions of justice on the other.

A liberal theory of political justice for the modern state must be capable of determining the nature of the relationship between the government and the citizen; it must provide criteria for the basis of desert and the kinds of demands which count as basic human needs (as opposed to, say, caprices); a means of distinguishing between legitimate or reasonable expectations and illegitimate demands on the part of citizens; principles of justice sufficiently concrete to enable us to adjudicate in moral disputes and conflicts of interest between citizens; some means of balancing competing liberties (e.g. freedom of expression vs. freedom from racial or religious discrimination) and of balancing liberties with other goods (e.g. freedom to own private property vs. the welfare of citizens; freedom of association vs. public order); an explication of the basis  of the moral equality and freedom of persons; and principles which establish the limits of government intervention. These are just a few of the basic issues which one would expect a liberal theory of justice to be equipped to deal with.

It is sufficient to consider just two of these issues to illustrate the apparently insurmountable difficulties which a liberal theorist will encounter if he is constrained by the principle of neutrality from the outset. These are the issues of competing goods (liberty considered as one good among many) on the one hand, and the basis of liberal equality on the other.

One of the fundamental tenets of liberalism is that liberty should only be constrained for the sake of liberty; that is, the liberty of one citizen can only be constrained where that liberty impinges upon or diminishes the liberty of another citizen. [5] What this means in practice is that, for example, it is not acceptable to legally constrain the liberty of one citizen simply because the action being contemplated is intrinsically immoral, but only if the action of that citizen concretely and significantly diminishes the liberty of another. Thus, Dworkin asserts that only personal preferences and not ‘external’ preferences are to count as reasons for legally prohibiting or restricting an action, where personal preferences are understood as preferences about how one leads one’s own life, and ‘external’ preferences are understood as preferences about how others  lead their lives. [6]

Both Rawls’ principle of refusing to constrain liberty except for the sake of liberty, and Dworkin’s exclusion of ‘external’ preferences as reasons for constraining another’s freedom seem quite plausible at face value. However, when we attempt to put them to work, so to speak, so that they will yield practical conclusions, without judging the quality of the lives or ends chosen by citizens and without invoking a substantive theory of the good, we face an impossible task. For we must determine what constitutes a significant breach of liberty, which requires of us an understanding of which important human goods liberty promotes, and why certain breaches of liberty are too ‘weak’ to warrant government intervention. On the other hand, where two or more liberties come into conflict, we are required to make qualitative judgments about the relative value of competing liberties, in such a way that we can give a non-arbitrary reason for favouring one liberty over another. In other words, we are required to make a judgment of the worth  or relative worth  of one liberty vis-à-vis another and the worth of a liberty is of course determined by the worth of its content. The problem for the neutralist liberal is,

 

Political liberty is not a purely negative, abstract concept totally dissociated from the good. [8] Its relative worth must be established based upon a) a general conception of human well-being; and b) an understanding of the good which a given liberty promotes and a judgment about the importance of that good within an overall picture of human well-being. A few examples should make this clearer.

There are conflicts both between liberties, and between liberties and other goods, where there is no relevant social consensus at hand to draw upon, and where it seems inevitable that some contestable theory of the good be relied upon in order to arrive at a non-arbitrary resolution of the conflict. Here are a few examples: the freedom of parents to rear and educate their children according to their religious and ethical convictions vs. the freedom of children to grow up free of psychological or physical abuse or manipulation; the freedom to produce and disseminate pornographic material (a right which falls under the banner, freedom of expression) vs. the freedom of women to live and work in an atmosphere in which their dignity is preserved and they are not subjected to physical or psychological abuse; the freedom to treat others according to one’s religious principles vs. the freedom of others to lead an autonomous life (this conflict is particularly acute with regard to the Islamic religion, for example, which requires, among other things, that women wear a veil and be subjected to their husbands’ authority).

These examples do not admit of any immediate, uncontroversial resolution. Neither can the liberal state afford to remain indifferent to such conflicts, as important issues of human and civil rights are at stake. It seems, as we shall see, that the only tenable solution to these problems is one which draws upon a substantive conception of the good life, that is, any adequate resolution of these conflicts requires a judgment concerning the relative worth of different human ends, activities and ways of life. Furthermore, it is not a judgment with which any ‘reasonable’ person will necessarily agree, like a host of moral and political judgments, it is likely to be disputed by a section of the community, and it is likely to conflict with certain religious and philosophical outlooks.

 

That this is the case should be made clear if we consider just one contentious issue of particular relevance to Western countries such as France with significant religious and ethnic diversity: the issue of religious freedom, that is, the freedom to live according to the principles of one’s religion. This may conflict with certain distinctive liberal freedoms such as the freedom of an adult to make his or her own career and marriage choices. The particular example I have in mind is the relationship which holds in the Islamic religion between husband and wife. Women are frequently subjected to their husband’s authority in matters such as their choice of work, how they dress, and so on. It is not sufficient for the liberal to say that this is a violation of the equal liberty of women and men: the Islamic citizen will reply by pointing out that he is free to practise his religion and obey his conscience. What the liberal must explain, even if he fails to convince his adversary, is what important human good is advanced by protecting this liberty and why this good takes priority over the freedom to observe one’s religious duties, and the corresponding good which this latter freedom promotes. What justifies the liberal censure of certain Islamic religious practices is the centrality of the value of autonomy or self-determination in the liberal conception of the good life. For a liberal, a life which is shaped exclusively by one’s culture or excessively dominated by other people’s views is a life of less worth than one in which a person takes responsibility for important choices and makes those choices with full deliberation and consent. This perhaps helps explain why even women who willingly adhere to the Islamic religion’s requirements are thought by liberals to be leading an inferior form of life, as they lack autonomy which is so central to the liberal vision of the good life. What these examples illustrate is that liberal justice cannot be detached from the liberal conception of the good life.

This leads us quite naturally to the second issue: the basis  of liberal equality. It is, of course, one thing to judge the content and relative worth of liberties and rights; quite another to specify the subject  of such rights and/or liberties. If it is not true, as Jeremy Bentham so famously (or infamously) proclaimed, that pre-legal human rights are ‘nonsense upon stilts’, [10] then there must be some pre-legal, ontological or objective basis for saying that certain beings should be treated in certain ways and not in other ways. In other words, a liberal theory of justice committed to some doctrine of human rights must explain or at least indicate the basis or foundation of equality. Who  or what  are our political equals, and why? How are we to judge that a being has similar moral entitlements to our own? These questions take us straight to the question of the moral worth of human beings. If we are to find even a minimally satisfactory response, we cannot avoid confronting the question of the value of human life.

This may seem like a question too profound and controversial to be appropriate to liberal political philosophy. It may seem that the most liberal route is indeed the route of ‘neutrality’: the state should simply secure the basic rights of citizens, permitting them to pursue their particular conceptions of the good life relatively unimpeded, without committing itself to a particular, contestable vision of what gives value to life, or of the intrinsic worth of human life. The problem is, this approach only provides a limited structure of rights applicable to individuals capable of rational life and personal preferences. It will not provide a just or non-arbitrary resolution of some of the more pressing human rights issues facing the liberal state as we enter the third millenium.

To mention just a few issues which a liberal theory of justice cannot afford to ignore: voluntary and involuntary euthanasia; abortion; in vitro fertilisation, embryo experimentation and the ‘harvesting’ of embryonic organs; human genetic engineering and the cloning of human beings. What all of these issues have in common is that their just resolution demands a judgment concerning the worth of a human being; and a theory of the human good which is powerful enough to yield practical and authoritative conclusions on controversial moral questions. One possible response to this dilemma often suggested by neutralist liberals is to ‘bracket’ these highly contested issues which demand a judgment of the value of human life, and get on with the business of government on the basis of our shared cultural and moral beliefs. Thus, Ackerman writes,

 

This, however, is an inadequate response, not only because it appears morally arbitrary in that it tends to favour the status quo on crucial human rights issues, but because this strategy, however neutral it may appear, is anything but  neutral in reality. It is sufficient to consider one of the most contested and controversial moral issues facing the contemporary liberal polity: abortion. This issue is paradigmatic of a whole range of ‘life’ issues because it forces deep metaphysical and moral issues onto the ‘conversational agenda’ of the liberal state whether citizens or government like it or not. That is to say, consistent abstention on the issue of the intrinsic value or worth of the foetus is impossible. In every case, a declared attitude of ‘neutrality’ or indifference will be betrayed by actions that are de facto  readily identifiable with one of the contested positions. If a government prohibits abortion particularly in a situation where there is significant demand for it, it is thereby committed to the proposition that the value of a human embryo or foetus is such as to make its destruction amount to murder, if not at least to a serious human rights violation which cannot be tolerated by a liberal state. If, on the other hand, a government simply permits  abortion, even if it neither promotes it nor funds it, it is committed by that very act to the proposition that an unborn human being (say, for the sake of argument, up to five or six months) has an inferior moral status or weaker moral entitlements than those of a born human being. To put it negatively, a liberal state which permits abortion but not infanticide or other forms of homicide is declaring by its actions that, at the very least, abortion is not murder. For if it were considered to be murder by legislators and courts or putatively neutral liberals, it would never be permitted, as a matter of principle. In other words, the liberal who attempts to take a ‘neutral’ line on abortion must assume from the start the very proposition which is most contested by opponents of abortion, namely, that a foetus is not a person with a right to life. Galston expresses the dilemma of the putatively neutral liberal state confronted by this issue quite succinctly:

 

In other cases where the value of a life is at stake, such as euthanasia, foetal experimentation and in vitro fertilisation, similar issues of value arise, and they can never be evaded in practice, however much theoreticians attempt to steer clear of them. For example, in deliberating about whether and to what extent to allow euthanasia or assisted suicide, legislators and other public servants must reflect upon deep questions such as whether a human life has an intrinsic value or whether its value depends upon other considerations such as the capacity for autonomy and the preferences of the patient. I am not suggesting that these issues are easy to resolve, but I am suggesting that no matter what position the state adopts, it will violate the injunction of neutrality.

What these observations suggest is that there simply is no  neutral response available to the liberal theorist to the ‘life’ issues which are pressing upon liberal governments for a just resolution. Our discussion so far points to the necessity of developing an objective theoretical foundation for the equal status of human beings in the liberal state. Thus far, no such foundation seems to be forthcoming, at least not from the neutralist camp of liberalism. Putatively neutral theories of justice consistently either ignore these issues or adopt a permissive attitude on the assumption that permission equals neutrality. Nevertheless, as I have argued, neutrality is in principle impossible on such issues. Thus, neutrality is not merely an unrealistic ideal as far as these issues are concerned: it is a logical fallacy.

So far, I have argued that a liberal theory of justice capable of practical application - given our knowledge of the basic conditions of political life, which no political theory can afford to ignore - must make certain moral commitments which violate the principle of neutrality. I have given examples of issues upon which the liberal state, whatever position it adopts, will necessarily embrace a non-neutral theory of the good. Now, I propose to show how neutralist liberalism, as a matter of fact, itself presupposes an eminently contestable theory of human well-being, and thus betrays its own promise of neutrality.

Neutralist liberalism, as represented by such thinkers as Rawls, Ackerman, Larmore, Nozick and Dworkin, rests upon a theory of the good in which the value of autonomy, understood as the free and (relatively) independent pursuit of one’s plans and preferences, is so central that it very often ‘trumps’ other values such as the value of personal moral improvement and communal goods such as family stability and ‘public morality’ (difficult as this term is to define in practice). If we inquire why this is the case, it is sufficient to consider the conception of the person implicit in neutralist liberal theories, which is of course not merely descriptive, in a scientific and uncontroversial sense, but prescriptive, in the sense that it proposes a particular ideal of the ‘good life’ and lays down a structure which is thought to capture in its bare essentials the nature of human action and deliberation. Rawls, for example, attributes to persons two fundamental moral powers, namely, a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good:

 

But Rawls goes further than singling out these two moral powers as fundamental to personhood. He also posits "two corresponding higher-order interests in developing and exercising these powers." By ‘higher-order’ interests, Rawls means "interests that are viewed as basic and hence as normally regulative and effective." Somebody who lacks these interests or fails to develop the two moral powers "cannot be a normal and fully cooperating member of society over a complete life", and principles (of justice) should be adopted which guarantee "conditions securing for those powers their adequate development and full exercise." [14]

What Rawls is suggesting in this description of the human person is that a ‘normal’, healthy moral life which can be integrated into the political community must be capable of exercising and developing the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity to pursue a conception of the good life. This may seem to present a fairly minimal picture of moral life, to which most if not all of us would assent without compromising our principles or individual conceptions of the good. Nevertheless, upon closer inspection it presents an ideal of the good life which is distinctively liberal and certainly not one which all ‘reasonable’ people, even people participating in a liberal public culture, would feel obliged to assent to. As Galston puts it, "The gap separating this conception of moral agency from the perfectionism Rawls elsewhere castigates is exceedingly narrow." [15]

The centrality of the capacity for a conception of the good in the neutralist model of moral deliberation should not be taken lightly. It is the consequence of a particular view of human freedom and moral deliberation, which stresses above all the autonomy or self-determination of a moral agent. [16] As Rawls puts it, "the description of the parties [in the original position] models citizens’ rational autonomy." [17] What makes the Rawlsian model of moral deliberation a contestable one, or one which is not merely expressive of the "public conception of justice" [18] of a liberal culture, is not   that it incorporates within itself the value of rational autonomy (for that is a value which practically all citizens of liberal societies invoke in some form, whether conservatives or liberals, believers or atheists, Marxists or capitalists), but that it embraces a particular conception  of the nature and role of rational autonomy in the moral life which is not  a common ingredient of the political and philosophical inheritance of Western countries, and stretches the category of neutrality to, and beyond, breaking point.

That this is the case should become clear if we consider the function of Rawls’s second moral power the capacity to have a conception of the good in the neutralist model of the moral life. The category of a ‘conception of the good’, deliberately designed to be non-judgmental or indifferent to content, is not as neutral as it appears. It involves a particular way of viewing the pursuit of human goals and interests, which is strongly individualist and preferential or ‘voluntarist’ [19] rather than cognitivist. In other words, the person is conceived as given prior to his or her ends, and the person embraces his or her ends by an act of the will (rather than of cognition) or by a rational choice.

 

For Rawls and other neutralist theorists, there is a radical difference, not only in content, but in form, between a conception of justice or the right on the one hand and conception of the good on the other. This difference is brought out by Sandel’s analysis:

 

Conceptions of the good are conceived as interests or preferences rather than progressive insights into the truth of one’s moral existence. The very term, ‘competing  conceptions of the good’, and the attempt to exclude them from political debate, suggests that they are treated by the neutralist liberal as competing interests  rather than rational truth-claims.

Given that the neutralist holds this view, it is hardly surprising that the state should be advised to be impartial among conceptions of the good, just as it is expected to be impartial between the private interests of citizens. However, this conception of neutrality would not be defensible in the absence of a voluntarist account of moral agency, that is, an account which treats human ends as preferences  rather than as elements of one’s moral identity to be discovered or learned over time. I am not suggesting that choices of ends are purely mechanical or non-voluntary, however, the liberal conception of rationality tends to downplay the cognitive and ethical aspect of agency - the possibility that a choice may be made in the light of pre-existing ends and moral truths independent of the will of the moral subject. That Rawls holds a strongly preferential rather than cognitive or ethical understanding of conceptions of the good is confirmed by the bold claim that the content of plans of life or conceptions of the good is "not relevant from a moral standpoint." [22]

What I hope to have shown by the foregoing remarks is not that the Rawlsian/neutralist conception of human agency is mistaken or flawed (though that may be the case), but that it embodies a certain ideal of the good life which stresses the primacy of the subject over his ends, and the value of rational autonomy, in such a way as to exclude conceptions of the good life which allocate a less important role to autonomy and treat moral ties in general as "hav[ing] a sanction independent of the mere fact that I happen to hold them with a certain intensity." [23] That is to say, neutralist liberalism presupposes a theory of human flourishing which is anything but neutral, both in its derivation and  in its political consequences: it is derived from a contestable conception of the good, and as a direct result, it rejects certain kinds of conception of the good and accepts others. I must, therefore, concur with Alasdair MacIntyre when he says that "liberal individualism does indeed have its own broad conception of the good, which it is engaged in imposing politically, legally, socially and culturally wherever it has the power to do so... [I]n so doing its toleration of rival conceptions of the good in the public arena is severely limited." [24]

Given the non-neutrality of neutralist liberalism, it seems implausible to suggest that any amount of neutralist rhetoric will, in the long term, make liberal policies and laws less divisive than they would be, were they to be justified on the basis of a liberal conception of human well-being. The only effect a neutralist strategy is likely to have upon state actions is to make them blind to their own significance. Above all, a neutralist approach to moral conflict, if it comes to dominate politics, will tend to stifle honest and open discussion of issues with deep philosophical and moral implications, and will postpone rather than contribute to a political and moral resolution of such issues. All the while, the state will continue to tacitly recognise the validity of some philosophical or ideological positions, though refusing to acknowledge this explicitly. Thus, the net result of the neutrality constraint is to rob liberal discourse of intellectual transparency and rigour, and to impose unreasonable constraints upon political discourse in the liberal state.

Charles Larmore argues that the (neutralist) ‘recasting’ of liberalism is a response to a distinct danger inherent in certain conceptions of liberalism: "The danger of making liberalism yet another controversial and partisan vision of the good life is that it will cease to be a plausible solution to one of the most pressing moral and political problems [profound and widespread moral disagreement among citizens] in modern times. It will become just another part of the problem." [25] Here Larmore is expressing a typically liberal aspiration to rise above moral and philosophical differences, and become a universalist, rational doctrine, impartial among lifestyles and individual conceptions of the good, a theory of justice rather than of the good life, a theory which can be espoused in good conscience by the vast majority of citizens, even citizens whose moral visions stand worlds apart. The mainstay of contemporary liberal theory, the one constant factor perhaps, is the aim of securing agreement and avoiding controversy. Constructing a liberal theory in such a way that it must be seen as "yet another controversial and partisan vision of the good life" [26], the anti-perfectionist argues, is not a viable response to moral and social disagreement as we encounter it today. This argument is not without its merits. However, the liberal cannot have it both ways. If his theory is really something worth defending, something which can provide a plausible justification for concrete laws, institutions and governments, then the liberal must be prepared to abandon his neutralist pretensions and enter into the foray of debate with his distinctive ‘vision of the good life’. By continuing to conceive itself as a ‘neutral’ doctrine, liberalism fails to, or fears to, expose its deepest philosophical foundations. In the short term, this evasion may succeed in creating an illusion of neutrality. But in the long term, it is sustaining a false self-understanding and preventing liberalism from excavating its foundations, in order to renew them, modify them and adapt them to a changing political and philosophical landscape.

 

END

 

NOTES

[1] This essay is based on a chapter of a thesis submitted by me in August 1998 to University College Dublin, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Masters degree in Philosophy.

[2] I use the term ‘perfectionist’ with some reluctance, especially considering its misleading association with the term, ‘perfection’, and the more popular meaning of ‘perfectionist’ - one who demands nothing less than perfection. Nonethless, the term is convenient if these misleading connotations are dismissed. Following Joseph Raz, I take ‘perfectionist’ to mean, guided by a substantive, objective conception of human well-being (cf., for example, Raz, The Morality of Freedom , 162).

[3] This point is made both by Goodin & Reeve (Liberal Neutrality ,  3: "[N]eutrality is an instrumental value.") and Jeremy Waldron (‘Legislation and moral neutrality’ in Liberal Rights , 153: "Neutrality is not a straightforward concept and we are in no position to say what conception of it we have adopted unless we have some idea already of why neutrality should be thought to matter.").

[4] Ronald Dworkin, ‘Liberalism’ in A Matter of Principle , 191.

[5] This is expressed by John Rawls’s first principle of justice: "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all." (A Theory of Justice, 302).

[6] Dworkin, ‘Liberalism’, 196.

[7] Jones, ‘The ideal of the neutral state’ in Goodin & Reeve, Liberal Neutrality , 32.

[8] The negative formulation of liberty is discussed by Isaiah Berlin in his essay, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty , 121-123.

[9] William Galston, Liberal purposes , 96.

[10] Jeremy Bentham, ‘Anarchical Fallacies’, republished in Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man , ed. Jeremy Waldron (London and New York: Methuen, 1987), 46-76 (53).

[11] Bruce Ackerman, ‘Why Dialogue?’, Journal of Philosophy , vol. 86, no. 1, January 1989, 16.

[12] Galston, Liberal purposes , 152.

[13] Rawls, Political Liberalism , 19.

[14] ibid., 74.

[15] Galston, Liberal purposes , 92.

[16] As Goodin and Reeve point out, "The value of autonomy is intimately linked to that of a self-chosen conception of the good life." (Liberal Neutrality, 6).

[17] Rawls, Political Liberalism , 75.

[18] ibid., 66.

[19] I borrow this term from Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , 154: "For Rawls, the good is conceived voluntaristically; it is founded on a choice."

[20] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 560.

[21] Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , 154. The page number in brackets refers to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971).

[22] Rawls, ‘Fairness to Goodness’, Philosophical Review ,  vol. 84, 1975, 537.

[23] Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , 165.

[24] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?,  336.

[25] Charles Larmore, ‘Political Liberalism’, Political Theory , vol. 18, no. 3, August 1990, 357.

[26] ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackerman, Bruce A., ‘Why Dialogue?’, Journal of Philosophy,  vol. 86, no. 1, January 1989

Berlin, Isaiah, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty  (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 118-172

Dworkin, Ronald, ‘Liberalism,’ in A Matter of Principle  (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 181-204

Galston, William, Liberal purposes: goods, virtues and diversity in the liberal state  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Goodin, Robert & Reeve, Andrew, Liberal Neutrality  (London and New York: Routledge, 1989)

Larmore, Charles, ‘Political Liberalism,’ Political Theory,  vol. 18, no. 3, August 1990, pp. 339-360

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  (London: Duckworth, 1988)

Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)

‘Fairness to Goodness’, Philosophical Review,  vol. 84, 1975, pp. 536-554

Political Liberalism  (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)

Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom  (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)

Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice  (Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1982)

Waldron, Jeremy, Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man  (London and New York: Methuen, 1987)

Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981-1991  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

 

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