by Phil Parvin
It is difficult to know what the liberal position on these or similar cases should be. In general, the political liberal approach is to allow people to choose a non-autonomous life but to make sure that they still enjoy the basic constitutional rights and freedoms associated with democratic citizenship. So, for example, they are considered autonomous from the point of view that no group of which they are a member can deny their basic liberal right to vote, etc. Comprehensive liberals, on the other hand, are much more sceptical of the idea that people should be allowed to live lives that are non-autonomous. For them, the value in a life arises out of the fact that it is autonomous. Hence, they would be more sympathetic to the idea that such lives should not be permitted. Neither approach is unproblematic, and neither seems to provide a clear answer to the question of what should be done about people who voluntarily give up the freedom that a liberal state is supposed to protect.
Liberalism is political not metaphysical
The final contrast is between the political and the metaphysical.
Sandel’s critique of Rawlsian liberalism, remember, was that it was a metaphysical theory, grounded in a particular (and philosophically controversial) conception of the self as an autonomous chooser of ends. This, Sandel believed, meant that the theory could not satisfy its own requirement that the liberal state remain neutral with regard to the good. Rawls disagrees. The idea that the self is the autonomous chooser of ends is not supposed to be understood as a metaphysical claim about the nature of personhood, he says, but as a political claim. It is a claim about how we should regard people for political purposes. In other words, even if it is true in any particular case that an individual is constituted by her conception of the good, the state and other political institutions should not treat her in that way. They should not impose that conception of the good on her. They must still respect her as someone who may choose her conception of the good. The political institutions provide this respect by allowing her the equal basic liberties to continue pursuing her particular conception of the good or, should she wish, to change her conception of the good – even if such a change would mean a change in her identity.
Why should we treat people as choosing their conception of the good for political purposes, even if this is not how people really are? There are several possible answers to this question. The first answer would simply be to say that at least some people are autonomous choosers of their conception of the good, even if not everyone is like this. So, for example, someone who is brought up in a very religious household and who keeps that religion is not an autonomous chooser of her conception of the good – it is and has always been part of who she is. But another individual who is brought up in a very liberal household, given no clear direction about what she ought to do in life or what she ought to believe, might well settle on her conception of the good through choice. She might well try out a variety of lifestyles and values, and have a different conception of the good at different times. Such a person would be an autonomous chooser of ends, and so should be respected as such.
This answer goes some way to explaining Rawls’s theory, but it does not go far enough. Firstly, it does seem to engage with Sandel’s argument, which denies that people can be autonomous choosers of ends. In other words, it seems to involve us in an alternative metaphysical argument, rather than a distinctly political one. Secondly, it is not normative. It tells us what some people are like, but it does not tell us what our attitude to such people should be, and why the state should respect their choices rather than try to encourage or even coerce them to follow a particular way of life. We still need to know why the state should consider people as unencumbered selves for political purposes.
The answer to this question rests on the fundamental value of freedom, and the fact that, as a first premise, freedom is one of the most important principles in Rawls’s theory (and in liberalism generally). The alternative to considering people as unencumbered for political purposes is, Rawls thinks, a coercive state, one which imposes a particular conception of the good on people and does not allow them to follow their conception of the good freely. In Justice as Fairness: A Re-Statement, he defines a community as ‘a body of persons united in affirming the same comprehensive, or partially comprehensive, doctrine’ (Rawls 2001: p. 3). The problem with a community, Rawls argues, is that it does not leave room for people to follow different conceptions of the good. It must coerce people into following the one particular conception of the good that the community is supposed to share. The reason that this would involve coercion is that societies inevitably, according to Rawls, contain what he calls ‘reasonable pluralism’. In other words, people are always going to disagree about which conception of the good is best, and they will disagree for acceptable and understandable reasons. People have different values, and different ideas about how they should live their lives, and these differences cannot and should not be suppressed. As a result, we cannot unite around a particular conception of the good without limiting people’s freedom, and coercing those who do not share it. Because freedom is a foundational liberal value, such coercion would not be acceptable. Our only alternative is to treat people, for political purposes, as people who do, may and should be allowed to choose their own ends.
So, justice is fairness is political in that its conception of the person applies only for political purposes. In this sense, it is contrasted with a metaphysical conception of the person. Rawls is not making any assertions about the metaphysical nature of personhood. His theory applies only to the way that people should be considered for political purposes. Specifically, people should be treated as free (and equal) in the political sphere or, as Rawls puts it, as citizens. This is why the process of public reasoning used to model the public justifiability of constitutional essentials is understood by Rawls and other political liberals to be conducted between citizens, rather than metaphysical persons. Principles of political association must be publicly justifiable to all those citizens who are to be bound by them, regardless of their wider conception of the good life. In return, all citizens, irrespective of their wider conceptions of the good, enjoy the same basic freedoms which are protected by institutions which draw their legitimacy from the shared notion of fairness rather than any particular comprehensive doctrine.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have set out three ways in which theorists such as Rawls have argued that liberalism can and should be political. Firstly, liberalism is political not general: it is supposed to apply only to the basic structure of society and not to all spheres of life. We will critically examine this idea when we consider feminism. Secondly, it is political and not comprehensive: it is supposed to be independent from any conception of the good, and to be acceptable to people who hold a wide variety of conceptions of the good. Thirdly, it is political not metaphysical. Political liberals reject Sandel’s assertion that liberalism relies on a metaphysical conception of the self.
We have therefore seen that the idea of neutrality is important and desirable to many liberals. However, not all liberals agree on its importance or its desirability. Indeed, many liberals reject political liberalism entirely, arguing that liberalism should not seek to be neutral with regard to non-autonomous ways of life but should, instead, encourage individuals to pursue certain kinds of lives over others. We will explore this issue in the next chapter.
‘Montesquieu said that a bad book by a famous author causes a lot of trouble. In Rawls’s case, the trouble arises because it is almost universally assumed that, if he now says that there were fundamental flaws in A Theory of Justice, he must… be right about that. Since there is also a widespread feeling that Political Liberalism does not succeed in fulfilling its stated task, the conclusion is naturally drawn that the whole Rawlsian project is fatally flawed. I have argued that Rawls’s sweeping recantation is uncalled-for, and that the failure of Political Liberalism does not discredit A Theory of Justice. I believe that, as time goes on, A Theory of Justice will stand out with increasing
clarity as by far the most significant contribution to political philosophy produced in this century. Only one thing threatens to obscure that achievement: the publication of Political Liberalism.’
Brian Barry, ‘John Rawls and the Search for Stability’, Ethics 105, pp. 874–915, p. 915.
Key ideas
Political liberalism: A conception of liberalism which holds that liberal principles should not be grounded in any particular conception of the good or ‘comprehensive’ doctrine. Rather, it should ground the authority of the liberal order in principles which are agreeable to all citizens regardless of their particular conceptions of the good life.
Comprehensive liberalism: An alternative conception of liberalism which holds that the authority of liberal principles is grounded in certain substantive principles (for example, personal autonomy), and that it is the role of a liberal state to encourage and protect these values.
Public reason: The hypothetical process of public deliberation envisaged by political liberals, and by Rawls in particular, in which citizens decide on the constitutional essentials of the political order. Used to model and clarify the notion of public justifiability and fairness.
Reasonableness: The requirement that citizens respect the norms of society as a system of fair co-operation, engage in the appropriate form of (public) reasoning about principles of political association, and accept the constraints laid down in the constitution. Those conceptions of the good which require their members to reject the requirements of reasonableness are, Rawls believed, beyond the scope of what a liberal democratic theory could tolerate.
Dig deeper
Brian Barry, ‘John Rawls and the Search for Stability’, Ethics 105 (1995), pp. 874–915.
William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Martha Nussbaum, ‘A Plea for Difficulty’, in J. Cohen, M. Howard, and M. Nussbaum (eds), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Martha Nussbaum, ‘Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 39/1 (2011), pp. 3–45.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Re-Statement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Fact-check
1 What is political about political liberalism?
A It is political not metaphysical
B It is political not comprehensive
C It is political not general
D All of the above
2 What is political liberalism usually contrasted with?
A Comprehensive liberalism
B Complete liberalism
C Controversial liberalism
D Communitarian liberalism
3 What would Rawls say justifies the political values of freedom and equality?
A They are true
B They are the values of liberal democratic societies
C They are the values that will bring about the greatest utility
D They are his favourite values
4 What is a public reason?
A A reason that does not rely on a comprehensive conception of the good
B A reason that everyone agrees with
C A reason that persuades everyone
D A reason that is objectively true
5 What makes a conception of the good unreasonable?
A It is based on false facts
B It is based on faulty reasoning
C It cannot coexist with different conceptions of the good
D It does not prioritize autonomy
6 What makes a person unreasonable?
A She is unwilling to co-operate fairly with others
B She is unwilling to change her mind
C She is not good at reasoning
D She is not a liberal
7 What would a political liberal say about cultural diversity?
A It undermines liberalism
B It is the basic premise of liberalism
C It has nothing to do with liberalism
D It is the same thing as liberalism
8 Why should the state treat people as autonomous, according to political liberals?
A Because autonomy is the highest value
B Because people are in fact autonomous
C Because people want to be autonomous
D Because coercion should be avoided where possible
9 What does Rawls mean by saying that his liberalism is political not general?
A It only applies to the basic structure
B It only applies to voting
C It only applies to politicians
D All of the above
10 Why, according to Rawls, is public reason a good thing?
A Because it contributes to social stability
B Because it contributes to public justifiability
C Because it enables deliberation between diverse people
D All of the above
15
Perfectionism and state neutrality
Should the state be neutral between conceptions of the good, leaving it totally up to citizens to decide what sorts of lives to lead and activities to pursue? Or is it the job of the state to encourage citizens to pursue better ways of life rather than worse ones, and to provide or subsidize valuable activities? We have already seen that political liberals argue that state neutrality is required, since that best promotes people’s freedom to frame, revise and pursue their own conceptions of the good. We have also seen that communitarians criticize this aspect of liberalism, and argue that the state should promote the shared traditions of the community.
In this chapter, we consider objections to state neutrality from within liberalism. Liberals who reject neutrality are called comprehensive, or perfectionist, liberals.
‘[T]he ideal of impartiality in moral theory expresses a logic of identity that seeks to reduce differences to unity. The stances of detachment and dispassion that supposedly produce impartiality are attained only by abstracting from the particularities of situation, feeling, affiliation, and point of view… [It is] an impossible ideal, because the particularities of context cannot and should not be removed from moral reasoning. Finally, the ideal of impartiality serves ideological functions. It masks the ways in which the particular perspectives of dominant groups claim universality, and helps justify hierarchical decision-making structures.’
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 97.
The policy implications of Rawlsian neutrality
Rawlsian state neutrality requires that the state does not make judgements about the relative value of competing ways of life. Policy and laws, according to political liberalism, cannot be justified by appealing to any comprehensive conception of the good. So the state may not fund particularly valuable ways of life, cultures, art forms, sports and so on, because they are valuable.
Let us now consider how Rawlsian neutrality would work in practice by comparing opera and pop music. Opera is both highly valued and under-supported. The cost of putting on opera is extremely high, and cannot usually be met by even expensive ticket prices. As such, opera is heavily reliant on state funding. It is quite possible that opera would not be performed if it were not for state funding, and very likely that, if it could be funded by ticket prices alone, prices would have to be too high for most people to afford. On the other hand, live popular music is an art form that can support itself through ticket prices alone. The potential audience is much greater than it is for opera, in that demand for tickets is much higher. As a result, then, the state does not usually fund the tours of pop and rock artists, and yet
tours continue and make money regardless.
Most existing liberal states such as the UK, faced with these differences between pop music and opera, decide to provide public funding for opera and not for pop music. Such liberal states justify their decision by arguing that opera is an important and valuable art form, and that it must not be allowed to die out. Therefore, if opera cannot support itself through ticket sales, it must be publicly funded. Opera is an important good, such that it merits state funding. Pop music may or may not be an important good, but in any case it is able to fund itself. As such, there is no need for state funding of pop music.
This kind of reasoning is not, of course, peculiar to opera. Most existing liberal states fund many other valuable cultural activities: art galleries, museums, national sports teams, orchestras and so on. However, this sort of state funding is a violation of Rawlsian state neutrality. Funding opera requires the state to make value judgements about the worth of opera, and thus to promote a conception of the good that holds opera to be important. But not everyone agrees that opera is valuable, so by funding opera the state is not being neutral between those who value opera and those who do not. Whereas opera-lovers have their preferences subsidized by the state and thus by other members of society, pop-lovers have to bear the full costs of their preferences. By funding opera and not pop, the state is giving preferential treatment to opera-lovers. It is effectively giving their claims more weight than those of pop-lovers, and this violates the Rawlsian principle of state neutrality between comprehensive conceptions of the good.