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A Liberal Theory of the Good?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Patrick Neal
Patrick Neal*
Affiliation:
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY13323, U.S.A.
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Extract

One argument often made in support of liberal political morality is that liberalism, both as a theory and as a practice, is neutral in regard to the question of the good life. In this essay, I shall criticize and reject this argument. Now this conclusion is anything but novel; one would have almost as much difficulty finding a critic, of whatever perspective, granting that liberalism is indeed neutral with regard to the good as one would have finding a liberal denying it. It is this phenomenon that I find especially interesting, and which serves to set the context of my discussion. If, as I aim to show, it is a relatively straightforward path of argument which leads to the conclusion that liberalism is not neutral with regard to the question of the good life, then why do so many liberals remain convinced that it is? Why, when liberals and their critics debate the issue of neutrality, do they so often seem to talk beyond one another? It seems to me that instances of these debates ought to come off better than they do, and so I shall attempt here to describe how they might.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 567 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 See, for example, Dworkin, Ronald ‘Liberalism,’ in Hampshire, S. ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978) 113–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 One liberal who does not endorse neutrality is Galston, William ‘Defending Liberalism,’ American Political Science Review 76 (1982) 621–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The practice of liberal states with regard to neutrality raises some issues which will not be discussed in this essay, which focuses upon liberal theory; I have treated the issue of neutrality in regard to some of these practical issues in ‘Liberalism and Neutrality,’ Polity 17 (1985) 664-84.

4 On perfectionism, see Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971), 325–32Google Scholar.

5 Dworkin, Ronald Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977), 231–9Google Scholar

6 These criticisms are developed at length in Rawls, A Theory of Justice and Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974)Google Scholar.

7 I would argue that liberals need not (though some do) hold the (untenable) view that the substance of individual preferences is unaffected by the social or historical context within which the individuals holding them happen to live. What is distinctive about liberalism is the ontological thesis that individuals are the primary bearers of preferences; I take it that one may, without contradiction, maintain this thesis and yet grant that the particular substance of these preferences is intimately affected by the prevailing social and historical context. The difference between the two types of ‘individualism’ at issue here is artfully elaborated in Sandel, Michael Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press 1982)Google Scholar.

8 See, in this regard, Carmichael, D.J.C. ‘Agent-Individualism: A Critique of the Logic of Liberal Political Understanding’ (Dissertation, University of Toronto 1978).Google Scholar

9 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan, Macpherson, C. B. ed., (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1968), Pt. I, ch. 15, 216Google Scholar

10 Hobbes speaks explicitly of the Foole in Chapter 14. ‘Rebel’ and ‘Saint,’ however, are my terms; were Hobbes to give a personified label to his arguments, he would surely choose different terms, i.e. what I have labelled the argument of the saint, he would label the ravings of a (dangerous) fanatic.