Essays on neutrality, perfectionism, and public reason liberalism

Abstract

The six essays in this thesis all focus on the neutrality-perfectionism debate within contemporary liberal political philosophy. In the first paper, “Pluralist Neutrality”, I develop a novel account of the principle of state neutrality, according to which neutrality is a pluralist notion with consequential, justificatory, and intentional dimensions. In the second paper, “Deontic Perfectionism”, I distinguish between the claim that the state may promote the good life and the claim that the state must promote the good life, and I argue in favour of the latter, stronger thesis. In the third paper, “Does Edificatory Perfectionism Express a Quidnunc Mentality?”, I defend perfectionism against an intriguing and highly original objection that has recently been developed by Matthew Kramer, according to which perfectionist regimes that seek the edification of the citizenry are guilty of the mentality of a village busybody who meddles in matters that are none of her business. The fourth paper, “Perfectionism: Political not Metaphysical”, explores the idea of a “political perfectionism” — a view which combines the contractualist commitment to public justification favoured by political liberals with the perfectionist claim that the state may promote the good life. In the fifth paper, “Do the Reactive Attitudes Justify Public Reason?”, I argue against Gerald Gaus’s attempt to ground public reason in the kind of everyday reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation that seem impossible for us to renounce. In the sixth paper, “Does Social Trust Justify the Public Justification Principle?”, I criticize Kevin Vallier’s recent argument according to which adherence to the public justification principle is justified on the grounds that such adherence is necessary for sustaining a system of social trust within diverse and large-scale societies.