Metaphysics postponed: Liberalism, pluralism, and neutrality

Political Studies

Volumn 45, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 296-311

  Newey, Glen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039415727     PISSN: 00323217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9248.00082     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 23.
2. J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 398. Raz offers a different set of formulations in his 'Autonomy, Toleration, and the Harm Principle' in S. Mendus (ed.), Justifying Toleration (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 155-75. There he defines what he calls 'weak' moral pluralism as the claim that 'there are various forms and styles of life which exemplify different virtues and which are incompatible'; forms of life are incompatible 'if, given reasonable assumptions about human nature, they cannot normally be exemplified in the same life' (p. 159). But it is hard to see why the incompatibility between the forms of life should be thought to matter unless the virtues themselves are incompatible (as the mention of assumptions about human nature perhaps acknowledges). Compare the incompatibility between a life of courage as a soldier, and as a racing driver: these may be incompatible despite demanding (as such) similar moral qualities. It looks as though Raz's definition gestures towards a (psycho-)logical tightening capable of removing the contingent look of the incompatibility - a move similar to that discussed in relation to 'tragic conflicts' below.
3. J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 398. Raz offers a different set of formulations in his 'Autonomy, Toleration, and the Harm Principle' in S. Mendus (ed.), Justifying Toleration (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 155-75. There he defines what he calls 'weak' moral pluralism as the claim that 'there are various forms and styles of life which exemplify different virtues and which are incompatible'; forms of life are incompatible 'if, given reasonable assumptions about human nature, they cannot normally be exemplified in the same life' (p. 159). But it is hard to see why the incompatibility between the forms of life should be thought to matter unless the virtues themselves are incompatible (as the mention of assumptions about human nature perhaps acknowledges). Compare the incompatibility between a life of courage as a soldier, and as a racing driver: these may be incompatible despite demanding (as such) similar moral qualities. It looks as though Raz's definition gestures towards a (psycho-)logical tightening capable of removing the contingent look of the incompatibility - a move similar to that discussed in relation to 'tragic conflicts' below.
4. Cf. Plato, Republic 439e-40a.
5. See e.g. N. P. Lande, 'Does Pluralism Imply Nihilism?' in L. Foster and P. Herzog (eds), Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Pluralism and Multiculturalism (Amherst, University of Massachusetts, 1994), p. 170.
6. Cf. J. Dancy, 'On moral properties'. Mind, XC (1981), 367-85.
7. I say more about the issues in this area in my 'Value-Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism', forthcoming in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review. Dancy makes clear that a certain property or properties may give rise to an evaluative property in one situation but not in another, provided that the second has other relevant properties. See 'On moral properties', p. 377.
8. I say more about the issues in this area in my 'Value-Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism', forthcoming in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review. Dancy makes clear that a certain property or properties may give rise to an evaluative property in one situation but not in another, provided that the second has other relevant properties. See 'On moral properties', p. 377.
9. Some versions of the tragic conflict argument maintain that the agent in cases of tragic conflict unavoidably acts wrongly. But far from providing support for neutrality, this sort of situation, if relevant to political decisions, seems to prove its impossibility. For if the politician cannot but act wrongly, that means (assuming the 'tragic conflict' model applies) that only one of the competing values can be satisfied, while the other(s) are flouted.
10. Larmore claims to have produced a distinct argument from pluralism to neutrality (Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 50ff). This is that given the variety of competing conceptions of the good life, their proponents will have to resort to neutral principles of rational justification in trying to persuade partisans of others that a given set of political principles or policies should be adopted. But this amounts to saying that there is no sufficient reason, given VP, for adopting policies which favour one conception over another unless it is one acceptable to all parties. It will also be asked who has put an argument along the lines set out in (1) to (5). It seems to me that Rawls' argument to establish the 'priority' of the right over the good is of this form: deontic principles apply above the mêlée of competing civil society conceptions of the good life, and part of their justification is precisely that they provide rational and neutral (anti-perfectionist) principles of adjudication (cf. e.g. the exposition of the 'thin theory' of the good in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 433). Again, Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974) argues for a neutral, purely transactional framework for regulating the commerce of diverse conceptions of the good life, the point being that there is no independent standpoint from which their relative worth can be judged. Similarly, Kymlicka in his Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989) argues that a neutral order, albeit with 'positive' duties of social intervention, is the best method of recognizing and promoting the diversity of conceptions of the good life in civil society. E.g. p. 95: 'neutral concern is the most likely political principle to secure public assent in societies like ours, which are inherently diverse ...'.
11. Larmore claims to have produced a distinct argument from pluralism to neutrality (Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 50ff). This is that given the variety of competing conceptions of the good life, their proponents will have to resort to neutral principles of rational justification in trying to persuade partisans of others that a given set of political principles or policies should be adopted. But this amounts to saying that there is no sufficient reason, given VP, for adopting policies which favour one conception over another unless it is one acceptable to all parties. It will also be asked who has put an argument along the lines set out in (1) to (5). It seems to me that Rawls' argument to establish the 'priority' of the right over the good is of this form: deontic principles apply above the mêlée of competing civil society conceptions of the good life, and part of their justification is precisely that they provide rational and neutral (anti-perfectionist) principles of adjudication (cf. e.g. the exposition of the 'thin theory' of the good in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 433). Again, Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974) argues for a neutral, purely transactional framework for regulating the commerce of diverse conceptions of the good life, the point being that there is no independent standpoint from which their relative worth can be judged. Similarly, Kymlicka in his Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989) argues that a neutral order, albeit with 'positive' duties of social intervention, is the best method of recognizing and promoting the diversity of conceptions of the good life in civil society. E.g. p. 95: 'neutral concern is the most likely political principle to secure public assent in societies like ours, which are inherently diverse ...'.
12. Larmore claims to have produced a distinct argument from pluralism to neutrality (Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 50ff). This is that given the variety of competing conceptions of the good life, their proponents will have to resort to neutral principles of rational justification in trying to persuade partisans of others that a given set of political principles or policies should be adopted. But this amounts to saying that there is no sufficient reason, given VP, for adopting policies which favour one conception over another unless it is one acceptable to all parties. It will also be asked who has put an argument along the lines set out in (1) to (5). It seems to me that Rawls' argument to establish the 'priority' of the right over the good is of this form: deontic principles apply above the mêlée of competing civil society conceptions of the good life, and part of their justification is precisely that they provide rational and neutral (anti-perfectionist) principles of adjudication (cf. e.g. the exposition of the 'thin theory' of the good in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 433). Again, Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974) argues for a neutral, purely transactional framework for regulating the commerce of diverse conceptions of the good life, the point being that there is no independent standpoint from which their relative worth can be judged. Similarly, Kymlicka in his Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989) argues that a neutral order, albeit with 'positive' duties of social intervention, is the best method of recognizing and promoting the diversity of conceptions of the good life in civil society. E.g. p. 95: 'neutral concern is the most likely political principle to secure public assent in societies like ours, which are inherently diverse ...'.
13. Larmore claims to have produced a distinct argument from pluralism to neutrality (Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 50ff). This is that given the variety of competing conceptions of the good life, their proponents will have to resort to neutral principles of rational justification in trying to persuade partisans of others that a given set of political principles or policies should be adopted. But this amounts to saying that there is no sufficient reason, given VP, for adopting policies which favour one conception over another unless it is one acceptable to all parties. It will also be asked who has put an argument along the lines set out in (1) to (5). It seems to me that Rawls' argument to establish the 'priority' of the right over the good is of this form: deontic principles apply above the mêlée of competing civil society conceptions of the good life, and part of their justification is precisely that they provide rational and neutral (anti-perfectionist) principles of adjudication (cf. e.g. the exposition of the 'thin theory' of the good in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 433). Again, Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974) argues for a neutral, purely transactional framework for regulating the commerce of diverse conceptions of the good life, the point being that there is no independent standpoint from which their relative worth can be judged. Similarly, Kymlicka in his Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989) argues that a neutral order, albeit with 'positive' duties of social intervention, is the best method of recognizing and promoting the diversity of conceptions of the good life in civil society. E.g. p. 95: 'neutral concern is the most likely political principle to secure public assent in societies like ours, which are inherently diverse ...'.
14. Cf. G. Newey, 'Fatwa and Fiction: Censorship and Toleration' in J. Horton and S. Mendus (eds), Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration (London, Macmillan. 1993) pp. 178-92. The three-part structure comprises: principle(s) giving grounds for (a) disapproving of P; (b) not preventing P; (c) preventing other practices violating the principle(s). This structure is compatible with there being a single principle at work in all of (a) to (c).
15. W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), passim.
16. This should be extended to include possible conceptions of the good life, because certain such conceptions are excluded from practical consideration. But this strengthens the argument, since extending the range of conceptions of the good life in this way invites all the more strongly the external or pragmatic grounds for non-neutrality between non-hierarchic conceptions.
17. James Griffin isolates the lexical version of pluralism in his Well Being (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 5.
18. It should, of course, be noted that Raz's theory is explicitly anti-neutralist, since The Morality of Freedom (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986) espouses a perfectionistic liberalism which accords supreme value to autonomy. But here the only question is the persuasiveness of Raz's case for metaphysical pluralism, not the wider heuristic framework.
19. C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, p. 23.
20. These are facts of common observation, e.g. between advocates of different forms of voting system, or of different preconditions for negotiation in certain political conflicts. The problem is sharpened by the fact that the parties to the conflict are liable to have different perceptions not just of what counts as a neutral outcome (cf. liberals' and fundamentalist Muslims' contrasting attitudes towards the reform of the UK blasphemy laws in the Satanic Verses dispute) but even of what counts as a neutral procedure for resolving the conflict. Obviously, one ground on which the neutrality of a given procedure can be challenged is that it is known in advance that the procedure will yield a certain (non-neutral) outcome - compare Nationalist and Unionist attitudes towards a plebiscitary method of determining sovereignty in Ulster.
21. This is the position Larmore takes in 'Pluralism and reasonable disagreement', Social Philosophy and Policy, 11, 1 (1994) 61-79 e.g. p. 62. Thus he seems now to have repented of his views in Patterns of Moral Complexity, where he states that neutrality can be given a pluralistic foundation.
22. I take this point further in my as yet unpublished paper 'Recent Political Philosophy'. For arguments to a similar conclusion, see Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London, Verso, 1993).