Neutrality of what?

Abstract

In what sense should a liberal state be neutral between the conceptions of the good held by its citizens? Traditionally, liberals have provided two different answers to this question. Some have adopted a conception of neutrality of justification, while others a conception of neutrality of effects. Recently, Alan Patten has defended an alternative, novel and sophisticated, conception of neutrality – neutrality of treatment. In this article I assess whether neutrality of treatment is, in fact, a superior conception of neutrality. I try to show that neutrality of treatment suffers from the very same weaknesses that Patten attributes to its alternatives and that, overall, neutrality of justification, properly construed, provides a more promising account of both the sense in which a state ought to be neutral and of the object of neutrality. Finally, I argue for a broader account of the normative bases of liberal neutrality than the one proposed by Patten. This account includes, beyond considerations of fairness, a relational principle of equal standing.

Keywords:

• state neutrality
• liberalism
• secularism
• justification
• religious establishment
• equality

Notes

1. In spite of being a critic of neutrality, Raz (1990) believes that neutrality should include neutrality of effects.

2. Patten first formulates his conception of neutrality in Patten (2012).

3. Some forms of accommodation count as ‘recognition.’ To confer recognition the accommodation must be tailored to fit the specific features of an identity-related conception of the good (ER, p. 158).

4. Patten treats neutrality of justification, together with neutrality of aim, as a subcategory of neutrality of intention. I focus on neutrality of justification since I believe this is the dominant conception of neutrality among liberals. On this account, a state should refrain from adopting policies with the aim of making one particular conception of the good more or less successful, unless there are good, neutral reasons in support of those policies.

5. The same could be said of a policy that provides no forms of accommodation to any conception of the good on the grounds of Divine Egalitarianism. Also this policy would be, in my view, intuitively non-neutral (because perfectionist) and yet neutrality of treatment would be unable to detect its non-neutral character.

6. It is unclear whether Patten conceives of neutrality of treatment as a substitute for, or complement to, its alternatives. At times, he seems to hold that multiple conceptions of neutrality could be simultaneously deployed to assess a certain policy. If this is the case, however, it is not clear how different conceptions of neutrality should be weighted against each other, when they provide conflicting directives. In any case, I hope to show that neutrality of justification can overcome the weaknesses that Patten attributes to it and that, therefore, we may not need an alternative conception of neutrality in the first place.

7. I am assuming that these factors can diminish the agent’s subjective ability to take advantage of available opportunities, without diminishing her opportunities. But, even if we assume that the agent’s opportunities are diminished in a descriptive sense, they may not count as diminished in a normative, politically relevant sense.

8. I am assuming that symbolic establishment, even if non-coercive, triggers a requirement for public justification for two reasons. First, insofar as it may compromise individuals’ willingness to comply with just institutions, symbolic establishment should fall within the scope of public reason. Second, since political institutions are a shared good, commonly owned by all citizens, and since it is wrong for some people to shape a commonly owned good according to their own idiosyncratic preferences without permission from the other owners, it would be wrong for some citizens to imprint on political institutions their religious symbols, without justifying their action to their co-citizens.

9. Treating persons with equal respect means to treat them as equal participants in the practice of mutual justification. It is to see them as self-authenticating sources of claims and as bound only by moral requirements that can be validated from their own perspectives (Gaus, 2009).

10. E.g. the fact that loud rock music creates disturbance may be due to the fact that someone decided to build the facilities for rock concerts in proximity of residential areas, or the latter in proximity of the former.

11. This case is discussed by Patten (ER, p. 129).