Reconstructing Galston's conception of state neutrality.

• Author: Harris, George W.
• Position: Response to article by William A. Galston in this issue, p. 869

I.

Any conception of political morality applying to modern western societies will reflect a conception of state neutrality, whether that morality be liberal, utilitarian, or perfectionist. Articulating a conception of state neutrality becomes especially crucial to liberalism, however, because, according to liberalism, the problem of a well-ordered society for western states is the problem of what principles of social cooperation are rational for a society in which central kinds of conflicts involve a plurality of competing conceptions of how it is best to live.(1) Different versions of liberalism, then, can be distinguished from each other in terms of the different conceptions of state neutrality they reflect. My purpose here is to contrast the conception of state neutrality reflected in William Galston's recent work(2) with one of its major competitors. The result will be a clarification of Galston's reconstruction of state neutrality.

Before turning to that task, I first want to clarify the notion of neutrality I wish to discuss. Much has been written about the structure of liberal arguments for particular conceptions of political morality as to whether theory should begin with the "right" or the "good."(3) Some have argued that to begin with the right is to construct a political morality in a way that is neutral regarding any conception of what makes a life good.(4) Others, including Galston, have argued that political theory must begin with a conception of the good and derive a conception of liberalism from it.(5) I believe that Galston is correct on this issue, but this is not the issue I wish to discuss. The issue of the neutrality of philosophical theory is different from the issue of how neutral the state should be regarding the different conceptions of the good life its citizens pursue. Whatever structure political theory takes, the political morality it produces will reflect a normative conception of state neutrality, a conception of how the state is morally restricted from taking sides on competing conceptions of the good life.(6) For my purposes, it does not matter how the conception of state neutrality is derived from its theoretical base, from the right or from the good; all that matters is what it is. I simply am interested in getting a grip on how competing conceptions of liberalism differ in terms of their conceptions of state neutrality. Were we able to isolate all the major liberal competitors in these terms, we would improve our understanding of the philosophical options before us, as we would by isolating the nonliberal competitors for our assent. No view that fails to recognize the facts of pluralism is a real competitor, which means that any plausible political morality must require some normative notion of state neutrality. Until a conception is refined to bring its version of state neutrality into focus, the option it represents will not be entirely clear to us.

II.

Consider two liberal competitors. The first has a Kantian lineage, and the second a lineage to Isaiah Berlin. The idea is to understand how beginning with fundamentally different conceptions of the foundations of morality can yield fundamentally different conceptions of liberalism and state neutrality.

The Kantian lineage I have in mind begins with the thought that what is important about political principles is how they apply to persons in terms of what is most important about persons.(7) Persons have a certain kind of value, and it is this particular kind of value that is the foundation for morality, even political morality. We first need to understand the kind of value persons are supposed to have on this view and, second, what it is about persons that gives them this kind of value.

The kind of value in question is the special value that attaches to dignity. What is it to value something as possessing dignity? Barbara Herman, a contemporary Kantian, put it this way in the context of explaining the value of our rational nature:

Rational nature as value is both absolute and nonscalar. It is absolute in the sense that there is no other kind of value or goodness for whose sake rational nature can count as a means. It is nonscalar in the sense that (1) it is not the highest value on a single inclusive scale of value, and (2) it is not additive: more instantiations of rational nature do not enhance the value content of the world, and more instances of respect for rational nature do not move anything or anyone along a scale of dignity. There is no such scale.(8) Thomas Hill expressed a similar thought when he wrote, "[D]ignity cannot morally or reasonably be exchanged for anything of greater value, whether the value is dignity or price. One cannot then, trade off the dignity of humanity in one person in order to honor a greater dignity in two, ten, or a thousand persons."(9)

To think of something as having the kind of value worthy of dignity is to think of it as a qualitatively different kind of value from all other values. The fundamental Kantian thought is that whatever possesses dignity is recognized as having a value that cannot be calculated in terms of its benefits.(10) To recognize dignity in terms of its benefits would imply one of three possibilities, all of which fail to grasp--according to the Kantian account--the particular kind of value dignity has.(11) The first possibility is that dignity is an instrumental value to the production of some intrinsic value, perhaps the intrinsic value of happiness. The value of dignity, however, is not to be found in its instrumental properties to produce happiness in us or to produce anything else. To think this is simply to fail to recognize that dignity is an intrinsic value. The second possibility is that although dignity is an intrinsic value, there is some greater intrinsic value in terms of which the intrinsic value of dignity can be traded off. Again, however, to think of dignity in this way is to misunderstand the kind of value dignity retains. Dignity is the most fundamental kind of intrinsic value. That we would not sacrifice the dignity of one person for the happiness of many is evidence of this, as is the value we place on human beings as opposed to lower animals. We might care deeply and intrinsically about the well-being of both human beings and lower animals, but the reason the concern for human well-being is more fundamental than the concern for the well-being of lower animals is that we have a dignity that lower animals do not.(12) From these first two points, then, we can see that dignity is neither a means to happiness nor a kind of intrinsic value that can be traded off for other intrinsic values, especially the intrinsic value of happiness--our own or that of others. Finally, if dignity could be calculated in terms of its benefits, this might allow one to trade off some dignity for the benefit of more dignity. The comments of both Herman and Hill suggest that if we think of dignity as allowing quantitative tradeoffs within dignity, we have not yet understood the special kind of intrinsic value dignity retains.(13)

What is it about persons, according to the Kantian tradition, that gives them their dignity? This is where the concept of autonomy enters both the moral and the political arena. Dignity is conferred upon persons by their higher order capacities, capacities that distinguish persons as autonomous agents who are rational choosers, from other animals.(14) To recognize the dignity of persons, then, is to respond with respect for their autonomy. We can understand autonomy by understanding what the higher order capacities of persons are said to be, in terms of which respect is the proper evaluative attitude toward beings who have dignity. First, we, as persons, have the higher order capacity to set ends for ourselves in a way that reflects our own distinctive conception of a good life.(15) Second, we have the higher order capacity to take responsibility for our lives and our own happiness in a way that is...