Defending broad neutrality

ABSTRACT

This paper interrogates Cécile Laborde’s account of the proper role of religion in the liberal state. It begins by examining Laborde’s claims that prevailing liberals are not committed to broad neutrality about the good, but rather only restricted neutrality about the good—and that they are right to do so. It argues against Laborde on both exegetical and substantive grounds. It then turns to Laborde’s minimalist conception of secularism, according to which the state must be justifiable, inclusive, and limited, and it argues that it is not sufficiently demanding. Finally, it argues that the classical liberal presumption of skepticism toward religious establishment is warranted.     

Religion and discrimination: extending the ‘disaggregative approach’

ABSTRACT

Cécile Laborde’s disaggregation strategy, which is convincingly applied to religion, liberal neutrality, and freedom of association, should be extended to discrimination, in order to more systematically determine whether, when, and why indirect religious discrimination is unfair. Moreover, while Laborde’s distinction between the ‘Disproportionate Burden scenario’ and the ‘Majority Bias scenario’ is a powerful alternative to the discrimination-focused account of the justifiability of religious exemptions, the epistemic status of that distinction is not immediately clear. A case can be made that Disproportionate Burden and Majority Bias do not map onto different types of minority exemption claims. They are perspectives or analytical frames that may jointly and usefully be applied to most instances of such claims.     

The integrity of religious believers

ABSTRACT

According to Cécile Laborde, persons with religious commitments that are incidentally burdened by generally applicable laws should, under certain circumstances, be provided with an exemption from those laws. Laborde’s justification for this view is that religious commitments are a type of commitment with which a person must comply if she is to maintain her integrity. I argue that Laborde’s account is insufficiently demanding in terms of the other-regarding attitudes it expects people to have before they can make claims to exemptions based on their integrity. The reason it is insufficiently demanding is that Laborde’s account rests on what I call a ‘non-moralised’ view of integrity. I raise some criticisms of this view and defend the alternative, ‘moralised’ view of integrity, according to which the value of a religious person’s integrity depends on whether the practice she wishes to perform complies with certain moral constraints.     

Laborde’s religion

ABSTRACT

Cécile Laborde’s Liberalism’s Religion proposes liberal principles to address political controversies over religion. One is the public reason requirement that reasons for state policies should be accessible. Another is the civic inclusiveness requirement according to which symbolic religious establishment is wrong when it communicates that religious identity is a component of civic identity. A third is the claim that liberal states have meta-jurisdictional authority to settle the boundary between what counts as religion and what counts as non-religion. The article considers whether Laborde has managed to articulate these three principles in a way that is operationalisable and can serve to provide solutions to practical controversies over religion. It is argued that Laborde’s formulations leave important issues open, and some ways of settling these issues are considered.     

On Liberalism’s Religion

ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses two crucial issues raised by Laborde’s superb Liberalism’s Religion. The first pertains to where the liberal democratic modern state draws the line between the self-governing prerogatives of religious nomos communities and their regulation by the civil law; the second pertains to the prerogative of the state to do the relevant line drawing. Theorists concerned with religious freedom focus on the first set of questions under the rubric of ‘accommodation.’ The issue is unfair discrimination. I focus on Laborde’s approach to the second. This is again an important issue due to the recent revival of jurisdictional political pluralism: an approach that challenges the supremacy of the civil law and of the authority of the sovereign state over domestic religious authorities. I suggest more work must be done to parry those challenges.     

Multicultural accommodation and the ideal of non-domination

What normative principles should multicultural states be guided by in responding to minority claims for the accommodation of cultural and religious social practices? This article explores how theories of non-domination can contribute to debates on this question in the multiculturalism literature. It examines Philip Pettit’s, Cecile Laborde’s and Frank Lovett’s republican theories and argues that non-domination-based approaches to multicultural accommodation are more suitable to assess the dynamic of intra- and inter-group relations than the prominent liberal–multiculturalist alternative. However, their advantages are not contingent on the wider theories from which they emerge, but rather related to generalizable features of the non-domination ideal. This suggests that non-domination should also be appealing to non-republicans, who can adopt it minimally as a critical principle to determine illegitimate policies.     

The Face of the State

From a liberal perspective, policies designed to permit the participation of minorities in national institutions while retaining their cultural particularities are justified either on the grounds that culture has a particular importance or on the basis of equal treatment of individuals. This paper argues that such policies, while not without benefits, have at least the potential to compromise the perceived neutrality of an important state institution. It focuses on the Canadian decision to permit the use of religious symbols as part of the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Advocates of such policies focus only on their benefits and ignore the potential difficulties; the paper argues that a more balanced assessment is required, one which weights advantages and disadvantages.     

Neutrality of what?

In what sense should a liberal state be neutral between the conceptions of the good held by its citizens? Traditionally, liberals have provided two different answers to this question. Some have adopted a conception of neutrality of justification, while others a conception of neutrality of effects. Recently, Alan Patten has defended an alternative, novel and sophisticated, conception of neutrality – neutrality of treatment. In this article I assess whether neutrality of treatment is, in fact, a superior conception of neutrality. I try to show that neutrality of treatment suffers from the very same weaknesses that Patten attributes to its alternatives and that, overall, neutrality of justification, properly construed, provides a more promising account of both the sense in which a state ought to be neutral and of the object of neutrality. Finally, I argue for a broader account of the normative bases of liberal neutrality than the one proposed by Patten. This account includes, beyond considerations of fairness, a relational principle of equal standing.     

Metaphysics Postponed: Liberalism, Pluralism, and Neutrality

Many recent liberal theorists have argued that state neutrality is supported by a metaphysical thesis about value, namely pluralism , which asserts that there are some conceptions of the good life which neither form a hierarchy nor represent versions of a single good. It is however doubtful whether neutrality is supported by pluralism; indeed, it may in some cases be precluded by it. Arguments for pluralism can, in many cases, be reconciled with a monistic metaphysics of value, and pluralism itself fails to support neutrality. This is particularly true of traditional liberal policy positions such as religious toleration and opposition to censorship, where attention to diverse conceptions of the good may favour, or demand, non–neutral policies. The political problems which neutrality addresses arise before we accept the metaphysical 'truth' of pluralism, and often remain even if the parties to a political conflict have false conceptions of value. A sharp question for the pluralist neutralist is why conflicting conceptions of the political cannot themselves feature in plural conceptions of the good life. Dispensing with pluralism may not, however, be enough to rescue neutrality, since the disputes which neutrality was designed to deal with may not be resolvable neutrally; and more particularly, some of the traditional liberal policies may be incapable of neutral justification. If so, liberals may find a more traditional form of non–neutral liberalism more attractive.     

Jürgen Habermas on public reason and religion: do religious citizens suffer an asymmetrical cognitive burden,and should they be compensated?

In his recent writings, Jürgen Habermas asks how the liberal constitutional principle of separation between church and state, religion and politics, should be understood. The problem, he holds, is that a liberal state guarantees equal freedom for religious communities to practise their faith, while at the same time shielding the political bodies that take collectively binding decisions from religious influences. This means that religious citizens are asked to justify their political statements independently of their religious views, resulting in a burden that secular citizens do not experience. To compensate, Habermas demands from secular citizens that they open their minds to the possible truth content of religion, enter into dialog and contribute to the translation of religious reasons into generally acceptable reasons. This article focuses on Habermas’s assumption that religious citizens suffer an asymmetrical cognitive burden that should be compensated, and his claim that his approach to religion in the public sphere is less restrictive than that of John Rawls.     

On David Miller on immigration control

David Miller offers a liberal realist defence of immigration control grounded in cosmopolitan ideals of self-determination, fairness and integration. But a commitment to liberal values requires a commitment to more open borders than he admits. A part of the problem is that the notion of open borders Miller criticises is under-theorised. A deeper problem is that immigration control itself is inconsistent with important liberal values – notably the values of freedom and equality. This is a concern because it is the freedom and equality not only of immigrants but also of citizens that is threatened by the closing of borders.     

Is epistemic accessibility enough? Same-sex marriage,tradition, and the Bible

ABSTRACT

In Liberalism’s Religion, Cécile Laborde argues that a liberal state has to be a justifiable state: state action can only be legitimate if it is publicly justified, that is, if it is based on accessible reasons. These accessible reasons, she argues, are reasons that can be understood by all citizens. She defends a purely epistemic conception of accessibility. On Laborde’s account, accessible reasons are identified by particular epistemic features, and not by their substantive content. In this paper, I argue that Laborde’s account of epistemic accessibility cannot deliver on its promise of public justification. To illustrate this argument, I examine the case of the prohibition of same-sex marriage and look at two potential reasons that could be used to justify this prohibition: the non-accessible reference to the Bible and the accessible appeal to the value of tradition.     

Accommodating toleration: on Balint’s classical liberal response to the multiculturalism challenge

ABSTRACT

Peter Balint identifies three challenges to toleration, one of which is the multiculturalism challenge. This is the charge that liberal toleration fails to accommodate minorities adequately, which requires positive recognition rather than negative toleration. I discuss his response to the multiculturalism challenge and its connection to a classical liberal view of toleration. This involves Balint’s claim that liberal neutrality should be understood as reflective and ‘difference-sensitive’, which should be realised by the state being ‘hands-off’ in the sense of withdrawing support for privileged ways of life. I argue that Balint’s classical liberal view that the state needs to be ‘hands-off’ is in need of specification and that it does not fit well with his claim that neutrality needs to be reflective and difference-sensitive.     

Individual integrity,freedom of association and religious exemption

ABSTRACT

Of the many questions Cécile Laborde addresses in her magisterial Liberalism’s Religion, several relate to what she describes as ‘the puzzle of exemptions’. I examine some of the issues raised by her efforts to solve that puzzle: whether her ideal of moral integrity squares with the nature of religious belief; whether we should find the case for collective religious exemptions in freedom of association and the ‘coherence interests’ of associations; how much significance we should give to the ‘competence interests’ of organised religions; and by which criteria we should assess individual claims to religious exemption.     

Engaging the reluctant taxpayer

Abstract

A commitment to political neutrality means that citizens have a legitimate complaint when the coercive power of the state is used to advance some particular conception of how it is good to live. In this paper I investigate how to address this complaint in the case of public funding for the arts. There are two promising ways to justify public arts spending. First, as Thomas Nagel argues, the arts are a source of intrinsic values and so command our respect. I reject this argument because intrinsic values are not automatically political values. Second, Ronald Dworkin argues that access to the arts is required to fully participate in social life. This argument draws a connection between the arts and citizenship and so fares better in establishing a political justification for the arts. However, Dworkin relies on the special value of high art relative to popular art, which undermines the neutrality of his argument. I show that a justification can be given that does not depend on the high value of the arts. I develop an account that shows how the arts can support just relations between citizens. This account is in keeping with a liberal commitment to neutrality.     

Liberal Justification: A Typology

Contemporary liberalism exhibits a broad agreement among its proponents as to its content but widespread disagreement on what fundamental values justify its principles. This paper provides a typology of ways in which liberals approach the task of justifying liberalism. It sets out a four-fold typology for categorising different liberal theories by distinguishing between the various reasons why liberals reject or accept neutrality. Such a typology is helpful in showing exactly how and where liberal theories differ in their approaches to the issues of justification, neutrality and pluralism, and in showing where their strengths and weaknesses lie.     

Perfectionist public space: a political philosophy approach

Public spaces are often sites of contention between competing conceptions of the good life. The potential for such conflicts increases in diverse societies where different ethnic, religious and cultural groups compete for space and representation in the public sphere. A paradigmatic example is the conflict between multiculturalism and conservatism towards the function and character of public spaces. A clear criterion is necessarily, in such conflicts, to determine which conception may be legitimately crowded-out, and which may prevail. The paper examines two strategies to justify such a criterion: a liberal approach and a perfectionist approach. According to the liberal approach, public spaces should reflect the pluralism of values in society, by combining multiplicity and coherence of values. Yet pluralism is too ambiguous a concept to determine, in practice, which conceptions of the good can legitimately be crowded-out, both physically and metaphorically, from the public sphere. Perfectionism, an ethical approach grounded in human developmentalism, holds that the good life is a life of developing and exercising our human capacities. This approach yields a substantive account of public space regulation: public spaces should promote the development and exercise of our human capacities. On this account, we can approach the conflict between competing claims on public spaces by asking whether crowding-out might harm the potential development and exercise of our capacities. The perfectionist approach also provides a finer distinction between different types of conservatisms, such that we may differentiate between conservatism that may be legitimately crowded-out from the spatial sphere, and conservatism which may prevail. This paper argues that a perfectionist approach—one which is explicitly committed to a view of the good life—is both necessary and timely.     

Environmental Commitment among the States: Integrating Alternative Approaches to State Environmental Policy

This article examines variation in state commitment to protectingthe natural environment. We contribute to theoretical and empiricalresearch in this area in two primary ways. First, our dependentvariable consists of a general measure of state commitment tothe environment. Second, we develop a causal model that integratessix major explanatory approaches to state environmental policy.Our results show that stales with liberal public opinion, strongenvironmental interest groups, liberal legislatures, and professionalizedlegislatures are the most committed to environmental protection.States' manufacturing interests and economic resources playa relatively minor role, and slates' environmental conditionsand the influence of the federal government play virtually norole in explaining variation in general state commitment toenvironmental protection.     

Does justice stand alone?

A common feature of leading liberal-egalitarian political theories is the sharp priority they attribute to justice, and to distributive justice in particular. In this article, I argue that liberal egalitarians have yet to offer a persuasive argument for prioritizing justice, and distributive justice in particular, in this way. I focus on assessing arguments advanced in the seminal work of John Rawls and employ the pluralist liberalism of Isaiah Berlin to illustrate that Rawls’ arguments are not even persuasive for reasonable liberals like Berlin, let alone for non-liberals. The upshot of my argument is not that liberals should abandon the pursuit of greater equality of wealth and income, but only that such goals should still be balanced against the claims of other fundamental values, such as individual liberty and the common good (contrary to those who want to give sharp priority to distributive justice).     

Campus Religious Life in America: Revitalization and Renewal

What role does organized religion play in the life of the American campus? Among both scholarly and popular observers, the university has long been regarded as secular territory. Contrary to the .cphsecularization thesis, the history of campus religion is not a declension narrative. This essay provides an overview of the student religious landscape in America, focusing most of its attention on schools that are not affiliated with a religious tradition. It identifies six signs of religious vitality on campus: 1) the expansion of evangelicalism; 2) the revitalization of Catholic student organizations; 3) the reinvention of campus Judaism; 4) the growth of new immigrant and alternative religions; 5) the beginnings of renewal in mainline Protestant campus ministries; 6) the embrace of spirituality by student affairs professionals. Noting several recent studies on education and religiosity, it concludes that college is not especially damaging to religious commitment.