The Study On Liberal Neutrality: For And Against

Since the liberalism came arise,liberal neutrality has been always the topic of the liberalism.The theory of religious tolerance of John Locke,the theory of liberty of Mill,especially the theory of rights prior to the good of Kant all express the main point of the liberal neutrality.Up to modern times,especially after Berlin,pluralism has been more and more popular and it has been making a great influnce on the traditional theory of universal and metaphysics liberalism.The liberal legitimacy has been challenged by the people who does not believe liberalism.It has been called the crisis of the modernity.With the pluralism context,it has been a problem that how to make consensus.Because people is not satisfied with the traditinal way of justifying liberalism,modern politial philosophers have to find a new way that everone may agree to justify it.In the end they bring forward the priciple of liberal neutrality to resove the difficult problem.The politial philosophers lay the foundation of liberal neutrality with equality.Starting from the theory of all people should be treated equally,they come to the result of liberal legitimacy,and if we want to realize the ideal the state has to remain neutral between all the controversial comprehensive doctrines or conceptions of the good.If doing so,the liberals could say they have successfully achieved the goal of treating every people equally,so we can conclude that the liberal neutrality is the best response to the pluralism.Of course,in the same time,liberal neutrality is criticized by other political philosophers,they figure out that liberal neutality is not neutral actually and it rely on some special conceptions of good in the behind.This aticle will try to introduce comprehensively the main debate of the two sides of the liberal neutrality.The article consists of five main parts.The first part analyses the thoeretical background that the liberal neutrality come into being.But we can`t separate liberal neutrality from the history of liberalism,so we need to understand the requirements that liberalism needs.we use the words"community"and"society"to refer to the conditions that liberalism come into being.In the community,such as the Ancient Greece,the politial activities were guided by the moral priciples,everyone`s moral was conformed to the state`s moral.Otherwise, although people live together in society,in fact,they detached from each other.The binary divide of the public and private spheres is very important to liberal neutrality,the state remain neutral between the conceptions of good in the public sphere and permit people pursue his/her own life.Pluralism is the direct factor that leads to the creation of liberal neutrality,but different theorists interpretate it in different way.Some call it value pluralism and emphasize the incommensurability of the different value,the result is that pluralism is not compatible with liberalism.The neutral liberals call it reasonable pluralism and it is the main task that liberalism will resove.The second part mainly talk about the meaning of the liberal neutrality.we will analyse it from three different aspects.Fisrt,who should take the neutral attitude?The state or the individuals?And we should be neutral between what?At which political levels does the principle apply?Does it apply only to the basic social institution or to all the social lives?Second,what types does liberal neutrality has?Is consequential neutrality or defensive neutrality the appropriate understanding of the liberal neutrality?Third,is liberal neutrality consistent only with liberalism or it can be consistent with other theory.There is one important thing we should keep in mind that liberal neutrality is not neutral between all moralities and it has it`s own moral foundation: equality.Of course,it`s just a minimumal moral foundation,that is ,every person could admit it despite they have different conceptions of good.At last,we analyse the different ways liberals use to justify the liberal neutrality,such as appealing to the values of individual autonomy,skepticism,or experimentation.But all the ways are not satisfying,we have to develop a neutral justification of liberal neutrality.The third part mainly discuss the defense of the liberal neutrality. We select some most famous neutrality liberals and analyse the same and the different point of their defense.John Rawls presents his theory of justice as fairness,he claims that the principle of liberal justice should independent with the controversial comprehensive doctrines.He devises the original position and some important ideas,such as citizens as freedom and equality,veil of ignorance,primary goods,overlapping consensus, which makes up his political liberalism. Charles Larmore insists we should justifying the liberal neutrality by a neutral way.He develp the norm of rational dialogue and equal respect,the former guarantee the people persuade others with neutral reason and the latter guarantee people will continue to talk with eath other when they have different conceptions of the good.Bruce Ackerman relates the liberal neutrality with the power, because he thinks the struggle for power is the primary issue of the mankind.Different from others,he uses the liberal neutrality to examine the social institution,only the ones which pass the examine can be justice.Ronald Dworkin claims that liberal neutrality is the outcome of equality,equality is the basis of the liberal neutrality. liberal neutrality is the only way to apply equality to everyone. Thomas Nagel and Robert Nozick also express their views of liberal neutrality.The fourth part mainly discuss the criticism on the liberal neutrality of other liberals.Not all the liberal political philosophers are satisfied with the liberal neutrality,there is another important school of liberalism-perfectionism liberalism. Joseph Raz criticizes two kinds of anti- perfectionism,which consists of neutral politics and exclusion of the ideal,and develops a special autonomy conception of good.He insists it the most important one and permits government takes measures to apply it.George Sher criticizes the three defence types liberals use to justify liberal neutrality:appeal to the value of autonomy,prophylactic device, and skepticism.Stephen Maccedo,Joseph Chan, Stephen Gardbaum,William Galston also criticize the liberal neutrality from perspective of perfectionism.John Gray insists the clash of the values is absolute and the liberal neutrality is impossible.People can`t escape from the natural state which Hobbes depicts and liberal state is just a modus vivendi.Richard Bellamy maintains that we should replace liberal democracy with Democratic liberalism and that replace consensus politics with compromise politics. The last part mainly analyses the criticism on the liberal neutrality of anti-liberals.The communitarianism criticizes the liberal neutrality from different aspects.Communitarianism claims that liberals rely on one conception of unencumbered self which insists the self is prior to it`s purpose,but this conception of self is totally wrong. Communitarianism is not agreed to the theory of right prior to good,it come to the converse conclusion. Communitarianism especially stresses the value of the community and insists that only in the community we can get a principle of justice,liberal principle of justice can`t become universally corrected. Communitarianism firmly believes that liberal neutrality will cause non-neutral results.The rival politics insists the liberalism misunderstands the essence of the politics.Politics means rival,it can`t compatible with liberal neutrality.The feminist politics claims that liberal neutrality does no good to gender equality and the binary divided of the public and private spheres is absolutely dogmatical because it represent the man`s interest.