Neutralizing Perfection: Hurka on Liberal Neutrality

Dialogue-Canadian Philosophical Review

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 45-62

  Weinstock, Daniel M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85011525698     PISSN: 00122173     EISSN: 17590949     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0012217300010143     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 159. Hurka makes the case for state perfectionism out more fully in an article published shortly after Perfectionism.
2. See Thomas Hurka, “Indirect Perfectionism: Kymlicka on Liberal Neutrality,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, 3, 1 (March 1995)
3. After this article had been accepted for publication, George Sher's Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) appeared. It now constitutes the most systematic and thoroughgoing perfectionist critique of the doctrine of liberal neutrality. I regret that I have not been able to take account of it in this article, but I hope to do so in future work
4. I am using the term quite differently from the manner in which Hurka himself uses it in Perfectionism, pp. 62ff
5. See, for example, Hurka's discussion of the case of T. S. Eliot in Perfectionism, p. 56
6. This formulation actually belongs to Charles Taylor, another philosopher who has mistakenly taken liberals to be putting the principle of neutrality forward as a principle of unrestricted scope and force. See his “Reply and Re-articulation,” in Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question, edited by J. Tully (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 250
7. For example, see Perfectionism, p. 100
8. “Extent” and “dominance” are defined by Hurka, respectively, as the degree to which an intention “stretches across time and objects, including persons,” and that to which “it has many others subordinate to it in a rational hierarchy.” See Hurka, Perfectionism, p. 116
9. See Perfectionism., pp. 137–38
10. The distinction presented in the following paragraph can be found in slightly different forms in the following works: John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
11. Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,” Ethics, 99 (1989): 883–905;
12. and Peter De Marn-effe, “Liberalism, Liberty and Neutrality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 19 (1990): 253–74
13. For example, see Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,” pp. 884–85
14. and Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 192–93
15. A further restriction on the principle of neutrality, one which would allow an even broader range of substantive values into the justification of political and legal norms, has been proposed by some writers. According to John Rawls, for example, the justification of norms and principles need only proceed neutrally when issues of basic justice or of constitutional essentials are concerned. See his Political Liberalism, p. 214.
16. The restriction, however, strikes me as implau sible. For decisive criticism, see Kent Greenawalt, “On Public Reason,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, 69 (1994): 669–89.
17. Some of the principal recent discussions are: John Rawls, Political Liberalism, chap. 6; Lawrence B. Solum, “Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason,” San Diego Law Review, 30 (1993): 729–62
18. and “Inclusive Public Reason,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 75 (1994): 217–31;
19. Kent Greenawalt, “On Public Reason”; Joshua Cohen, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference, edited by Seyla Benhabib (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 95–119;
20. and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)