A Title I Don't Want To Share in Case I Get in Trouble

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism Author(s): Joseph Chan Source: Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 29, No.
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CHAN JOSEPH
Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism
I. INTRODUCTION
This article is an attempt to defend perfectionism by clarifying its nature and challenging some popular criticisms of it. Understood in its broadest sense, perfectionism is the view that the state should promote valuable conceptions of the good life. If one takes a long view of the development of Western political thought, perfectionism seems to be the standard view of the state., Many political thinkers from Plato to T. H. Green were perfectionists in this sense.2 To take a representative example, Aristotle believed that the polis is the place where people pursue virtues and excellence by actively participatingin social groups and political institutions. The polis should be responsible for fostering social groups and political institutions so as to best promote the good life of its citizens. It seems that perfectionism is not only a standard but a naturalview. People care about the quality of their lives and have an interest in leadI am indebted to Simon Caneyfor his extremelyhelpful and detailed suggestions on an earlier draft. I also thank Jonathan Barnes, Cheung Chor-Yung, Matthew Clayton,Alon Harel,Thomas Scanlon, MartinWilkinson,AndrewWilliams,members of a political theory discussion group in Hong Kong, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affaiis for many helpful criticisms.My work on this articlewas supported by a visiting fellowship at the Harvard-Yenching Institute,HarvardUniversity,and a sabbatical leave from the University of Hong Kong. 1. A number of traditionsof Easternpolitical thought are also perfectionist, a clear example of which is Confucianism. 2. Perfectionism has appeal also to politicians. A contemporary example is Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic.See his Disturbing the Peace (London:Faberand
Faber, 1990), especially pp. 13-18.
2000
by Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs
29,
no. 1
Philosophy & Public Affairs
ing a good life. If the state's existence is to help citizens pursue their interests, it seems natural that the state should assist citizens by promoting valuable conceptions of the good life, just as it should assist the lives of citizens by promoting the economy, offering education and health services, and protecting their rights and justice.3Another way to put this point is that since states can have a powerful impact on our lives, would it not be sensible to choose a state that promotes the conditions enabling people to lead a worthwhile life? Isn't a state that promotes worthwhile conceptions of the good more desirable than one that fails to do so? The perfectionist view of the state has recently been seriously challenged. The challenge comes from a certain strand in contemporaryliberalism, which is usually called liberal neutrality.Many contemporary liberal neutralists do not deny that people have an interest in leading a worthwhile life. But they draw a sharp and deep distinction between the state and civil society: while social groups and associations in civil society can, and perhaps should, actively promote the good life, the state should not. They believe that the state should not make laws or policies on the basis of any conceptions of the good life.4This group of liberal neutralists endorses social perfectionism, but rejects state perfectionism.5 However, given the apparent naturalness and dominance of the perfectionist view, liberalneutralityor antiperfectionism6requiresespe3. For an interesting argument for the naturalness of perfectionism, see Joseph Raz, "FacingUp: A Reply,"SouthernCaliforniaLaw Review62 (1989): 1230-32. 4. Some neutralists confine the scope of neutralityto issues about the basic structure of society, leaving ordinarylaws and policies unconstrainedby the principle of neutrality. See note 7 for furtherdiscussion. 5. This distinction is fromWillKymlicka, "Liberal Individualismand LiberalNeutrality," Ethics 99 (1989): 895. For another similar view, see Stephen Holmes, "The Permanent and the MoralLife Structureof AntiliberalThought,"in Nancy Rosenblum,ed., Liberalism (Cambridge, MA:HarvardUniversityPress, 1989), p. 248. 6. There can be differentversions of liberal neutrality.The one I discuss here, commonly adopted and defended by liberals, holds that the state's constitutions or policies should not be grounded on any particularconception of the good life. An implication of this is that the implementationand promotion of valuableconceptions of the good life are not a legitimate matter for state action, and hence antipe7fectionism. For simplicity sake, I shall interchangeablyuse "liberalneutrality" and "antiperfectionism." For discussion of versions of liberalneutrality,see Joseph Raz, TheMoralityof Freedom(Oxford: Clarendon Press,1986), ch. 5; John Rawls,Political Liberalism(New York: ColumbiaUniversityPress, Cam1993), pp. 192-95; and CharlesLarmore,Patternsof Moral Complexity(Cambridge: bridge UniversityPress, 1987), pp. 42-47.
Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism
cially strong justifications. Moreover,as we allow individuals and social, cultural and religious associations to further their conceptions of the good and influence citizens' thinking and lives, why should we not allow states to do the same? The central questions for antiperfectionists are, then, these: As far as the pursuit of perfectionistgoals is concerned,are there any strong reasons for a sharp and fundamental distinction between the state and civil society in a political community? What arguments can be given to justify the exclusion of the state from the pursuit of perfectionist goals?What is it about the state that morally disqualifies it from such a pursuit? To liberal neutralists, the answers lie in the contestable nature of conceptions of the good life and the coercive nature of the state. Most, if not all, conceptions of the good life are disputable even among rational, reasonable people. A perfectionist state would seem to suffer from two problems. First,it falls far short of the liberal standard of political legitimacy. Second, it leads to intolerance and instability.For the legitimacy problem, one common liberal argument, very briefly put here and to be elaborated later, is that a state's legitimacy is based on people's reasonable agreement on its constitution and/or main laws and policies.7 A perfectionist state would fail to obtain reasonable agreement from citizens, since whatever particularconception of the good life the state pro7. Liberalsdisagreeamong themselves on the proper scope of the principle of reasonable agreementor the principle of neutrality.Rawls,for instance, takes a narrowview. For him, the requirementof reasonable agreement applies only to "constitutionalessentials" and questions of basic justice, and not to laws and public policies such as those which protect environment,establish national parks,and regulateproperty.See his Political Liberalism, p. 214.Rawlsclaims that as faras the formertype of issues is concerned, there may not be any reasonable disagreement.As for the latter type of issues, while there may be reasonable disagreements, this does not violate Rawls'srequirement since the requirement does not applyto this type of issues. My response to this narrowversion of the scope of neutrality is threefold. First, the distinction between "constitutionalessentials" and other lower-levelpolitical mattersis vague to say the least, and many issues do not clearly fall on either side of the line. This is especially so if a country, the United States for instance, adopts in its constitution a bill of rights,which has the effect of bringing political issues that are lower-levelbut highly substantive and controversial,such as abortion, employment opportunities,and school curriculum,up to the constitutionallevel. Second, it is not at all clear that there is no reasonable disagreementover constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice. For example, whether to entrench a bill of rights and empower the courts to overruleany other agency that violates individual rights is clearly a very controversial constitutional issue over which reasonable persons may disagree. Third,Rawlsgives no reason to support the limit of the scope of reasonable agreement. He writes, "my aim is to consider first fundamental matters. If we should not honor the
motes is bound to be disputable by reasonable people. As for the problem of intolerance and instability, one common argument, again very briefly put, is that a permanent feature of modern liberal-democratic societies is the diversity of conceptions of the good life. In these societies a single conception of the good life can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power. Such a use of power not only goes against the spirit of tolerance but would also endanger the social unity and stability of these societies. The case for antiperfectionist liberalism that I consider in this article rests on the above two claims and their supporting arguments. I shall argue, however, that both the claims and arguments fail. In the second section, I contend that the liberal case against perfectionism is often based on an unclear and shifting notion of "a conception of the good life"and a vague picture of a perfectionist state. Manyliberals do not use this term consistently.8I provide what I hope to be a more refined analysis of the notion of "a conception of the good life" and a clearer description of the nature of perfectionism, in the hope of showing how conceptions of the good life can be quite agreeable,and how perfectionism can be free from the image, often ascribed to it by liberals, of an oppressive state. In the third and fourth sections, I argue that the liberal case against
limits of public reason here, it would seem we need not honor them anywhere. Should they hold here,we can then proceed to other cases" (PoliticalLiberalis7n, p. 215). However, one could begin the search from the other end-if one can show that the requirementof reasonableagreementshould not apply to laws and public policies, what reason can one give to think that it should nonetheless apply to constitutional matters,even though both types of issues involve the power of the state and the use of public resources?Rawlsowes us a reason of principle,not one of tactic, to explain the apparentlyartificiallimitation of the principle of reasonable agreement.Note that Thomas Nagel, whose views will be examined in the next section, does not observe such a limitation. Neither does my case for perfectionism to be defended here. In my view, it may be legitimate for a state to make decisions with which reasonable people may disagree, whatever the subject matter into which these decisions fall (except certainsubject matterslike religion).Forfurtherdiscussions on the proper scope of neutralityby defenders of perfectionism, see Steven Wall, Liberalism, Peifectionism and Restraint (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), pp. 41-42; and George Sher, Beyond Neutrality:Peifectionism and Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.
8.
31-34.
Even though Rawls is perhaps the most self-conscious liberal in dealing with the notion of the good, his definition and its associated argumentsare only effectivein excluding an extreme version of perfectionism, leaving intact a more plausible version that I outline. See the second section of this article.
perfectionism faces a serious internal challenge: the issue of conceptions of the good life is not the only public issue that arouses reasonable disagreements; many other public issues also do-for instance, social justice, criminal justice, education, and national defense. Why does the state's pursuit of controversial conceptions of the good life alone, but of controversialconceptions of other matters, lead to instability and not illegitimacy?Some liberals believe that if the state forces people to serve a goal that they cannot be given adequate reason to share, the state is treating them not as ends in themselves. Now, according to this very principle, should we not also say that a state would treat people who reasonably disagree with its national defense or social justice policies not as ends but merely as a means? In short, why is there an asymmetry between the issue of the good life and other issues? Many liberals do not face up to this challenge. Thomas Nagel is one of the very few who do, and he provides an ingenious answer.9 I shall examine his two arguments to justify the asymmetry, which I call the argument of higherorder unanimity and the argument of negative responsibility. In the third section, I claim that the first argument fails, because the requirement of higher-order unanimity is either so strong that it excludes not only conceptions of the good life but also conceptions of national defense, justice, etc., or it is so weak that it excludes none of them. In addition, I offer what I hope to be a more reasonable and realistic account of how the state should deal with disputable issues. In the fourth section, I contend that the argument of negative responsibility fails to exclude perfectionism. The examination of these two arguments, as we shall see, will lead to one surprising conclusion: the arguments not only fail to reject perfectionism, but actually vindicate it. Specifically, the argument of higher-order unanimity can be used to show that state perfectionism is a legitimate political arrangement, and the negative responsibility argument can be used to strongly support the claim, often made by anti-neutralists, that the state cannot be neutral in many issues which have implications for the question of the good life, and therefore that state perfectionism is unavoidable. All these points push us toward the conclusion that state perfectionism is desirable, legitimate, and unavoidable.
OxfordUniver9. See Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (hereafterEP) (New York:
sity Press, 1991), ch. 14.
10
II. Two FORMS
OF PERFECTIONISM
For liberal neutralists, the state should exclude conceptions of the good life as a basis for judgment or as an aim to be pursued. We need to deal carefullywith the concept of "a conception of the good life" in order to see what precisely liberal neutralists believe should be excluded. This is an extremely important issue highly relevant to the validity of liberal arguments,for the liberalneutralitythesis stands and falls with a varying description of the kind of objects it is illegitimate for the state to promote. For example, the liberal arguments may gain plausibility if conceptions of the good life are treated on a par with religious doctrines.'0 We know that religious doctrines are usually comprehensive and exclusive in nature, and many religions requiretotal commitment and loyalty from their believers. History shows clearly that the clash of religions has been one of the deepest sources of conflict, cruelty, and war. The West has paid a high price in learning the importance of religious toleration. Now if the controversies between the conceptions of the good life were to generate conflicts as deep and damaging as those of religions, then this would indeed be a matter of grave concern. But would the state's perfectionist pursuit of particularconceptions of the good life cause the same kind of serious problems? Should the state adopt a "method of avoidance" in dealing with conceptions of the good life? The answer depends on two questions: How should we understand a conception of the good life?And what would be the means that the perfectionist state uses in order to promote a conception of the good life? Liberalstend to use the following phrases in a highly indiscriminate manner: "conceptions of the good," "the good life," "human flourishing," "ways of life," "meaning of life," and "ultimate significance." For instance, in elaboratinghis arguments against perfectionism in Equality and Partiality, Nagel interchangeably talks about the "convictions," "conceptions," or "ideas"of "the good for human beings" (EP, p. 154), "whatis truly valuable" (EP, p. 154), "values"(EP, p. 155),"the ultimate meaning of life" (EP, p. 155), "the good" (EP, p. 155), "moralor religious conceptions" (EP, p. 156), "a good life" (EP, p. 158), "religiousor moral
lo. For this tendency, see, for example, Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. xxii-xxv, 58-59, Nagel, EP, pp. 154-55, and Brian Barry, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 168-73.
or cultural values" (EP, p. 158), and "meaning of life" (EP, p. 167). These phrases have different emphases and shades of meaning. In my view, "the good" is the broadest term, which may referto judgments not only of a person's life, but also specific activities, values, experiences, and states of affairs. "Thegood life" and "human flourishing"refer to judgments of the quality of a person's life as a whole. "Waysof life" often refers to people's concrete patterns of living, which seek to realize particularvalues and long-term goals in a coherent manner. "Themeaning of life" refers to the spiritual or religious aspect of people's lives, the aspect which for many gives ultimate significance to the human lite. Such a quick analysis is by no means definitive, but it shows that there are many different aspects and shades of meanings that may be conveyed by this cluster of terms. It also raises an important question: What does a conception of the good life involve?What sorts of judgments are implied by such a conception? Until we have developed a clearer analysis of this notion and its associated kinds of judgments, little will be gained by discussing whether the state should exclude conceptions of the good life as the basis of the state'sjudgments and actions. In what follows, I provide a description of what constitutes a conception of the good life. First of all, a good life may include the following
constituents"1: (i) Agency goods-virtues or dispositions that constitute the good life: e.g., reason (especially practical wisdom), courage, justice, temperance, integrity,and sincerity. or values that contribute to a person's (2) Prudential goods-goods good life: e.g., aesthetic experience (music and beauty), human relationship (friendship,family), amusement and play, knowledge, etc.12 (3)A way of life-this is a person'spattern of living, which embodies a particularranking of agency and prudential goods and a particular way of realizing them.
11. The distinction between agency good and prudentialgood is adapted fromAristotle, who uses the term "externalgood" instead of "prudentialgood." ForAristotle,any good that does not belong to the good of human virtue or capability of the agent is classified as externalgood. See NicomacheanEthics1oggb1-8; and T. H. Irwin, "PermanentHappiness: Aristotle and Solon," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York: Oxford
UniversityPress, 1985).For a modern list of prudential values, see James Griffin, Wellbeing (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1986), pp. 67-68. 12. The lists of agency and prudential goods are not exhaustive, though they already
12
Conceptions of the good life may thus involve judgments about agency goods, and/or prudential goods, and/or ways of life. Are these sorts of judgment all highly and equally controversial?Are serious, reasonable disagreements about them inevitable? Judgments about agency and prudentialgoods do not seem to be very controversial.13 The agency and prudentialgoods listed above seem to be generallyregardedas desirable for their own sake, although people usually differ about the relative weights of these goods. Note that I have not provided any independent justification for the lists, other than by appealing to the fact that these values are widely shared by human beings across cultures and traditions. Value subjectivism would, of course, deny that these values have any objective standing at all. But this challenge raises issues so fundamental that to give them adequate consideration here would distract from the main discussion.14However, it is important to stress that my argument here is directed to liberals;interestingly,many of them, such as Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Scanlon, and John Rawls, are not value subjectivists or skeptics, nor do they base liberalism on this doctrine. In many of their writings they have denied value subjectivism or Thus the challenge would not be forthcoming from liberskepticism.15 als. Moreover,I believe, though I cannot argue here, that value subjectivism or skepticism would undercut the very foundation of liberalism.16 For many liberals, liberalism is based on major substantive values such as personal autonomy, respect for persons, equality, and Rawls'sown ideal of reasonableness as a virtue of persons.17But if liberals were to
cover a wide varietyof goods. These goods are generallynot specific to particularcultures and traditionsbut are widely accepted by human beings across cultures. 13. Althoughit is possible that certain items might be questioned by some people. 14. Sher directlyargues for the claim that a perfectionist theory of value is superior to subjectivismin his Beyond Neutrality, chs. 8-9. 15. See Thomas Nagel, The Viewfrom Nowhere, (New York:Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 8; RonaldDworkin,"Foundationsof LiberalEquality," in GrethePetersen, ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 11. (SaltLakeCity:Universityof Utah Press, 1990), pp. 1-119; Thomas Scanlon, "Value, Desire, and Qualityof Life,"in MarthaNussbaumn and AmartyaSen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1993), pp. 187-207, and Rawls,Political Liberalism, pp. 62-64. 16. For an interestingargumentto this effect, see Joseph Raz, "Liberalism, Scepticism, and Democracy,"in his Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1994), ch. Liberalis7n, Community, and Culture (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 5; see also Will Kymlicka,
1991), pp. 17-19. 17. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 48-54, p. 395.
13
subscribe to value subjectivism or skepticism, all these values would be seen as no less arbitrarythan the agency and prudential goods and would thus provide no foundation for liberalism.18 How about judgments on ways of life?Ways of life involve particular rankingsand means of realizing agency and prudential goods. There are two approaches to passing judgment on ways of life. One is to attempt a comprehensive rankingof the two kinds of goods, and then to use that as a standard for assessing ways of life. Rawls'snotion of "comprehensive doctrines" may be used to refer to this type of judgment. For him, a comprehensive doctrine covers all basic aspects of human life; it organizes, ranks, and balances values in a more or less coherent manner; and, it normally belongs to, or draws upon, a stable but evolving tradition of thought.19However, even perfectionists would agree that comprehensive doctrines in this sense are extremely difficult to establish. For one thing, there seems to be no good reason to rank comprehensively various agency or prudential goods in the abstract. It is very difficult to say that aesthetic experience as a value is more important than play, or marriage more important than the pursuit of knowledge, or so forth. In addition, a particularprudential good can be realized in a variety of ways and contexts. It would be hard to say which particularway of realizing goods is the best, which is the second best, and so on. A second approach to passing judgment on ways of life is more plausible, however. It involves no comprehensive rankingof goods and ways of life, but only specific judgments on specific ways of life. The idea is that our inability to make comprehensivecomparative judgments on ways of life does not imply that we are equally unable to make local comparative judgments. We do feel confident in affirming that those ways of life which possess a substantial range of goods are more valuable than those which are seriously lacking. Compare, for example, the lives of two persons: John, who is wise, upright, talented in music and philosophy, and has a good family and a few very good friends; Mark, a drug-addict, who spends all his time chasing after elusive drug pleasures at the expense of all other goods. I think no reasonable person
who arguesthat all conceptions of the good 18. One importantexception is BrianBarry, are inherentlyuncertain, and that this skeptical claim is the only way to establish liberal neutrality.See his Justiceas Imnpartiality, pp. 168-73.For criticisms of Barry'sskepticism, 276-80. and LiberalNeutrality,"Utilitas8 (1996): see Simon Caney,"Impartiality
19. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 59.
14
would dispute the judgment that John'sway of life is more worthwhile than Mark's. This sort of local comparativejudgment need not presuppose any comprehensive doctrines. There are numerous other local comparative judgments one is confident to make. Consider a person whose life-time job consists "simply of the ceaseless repetition of the same monotonous task all day six or seven days a week," and thus "allows for no creativity, contact with other human beings, intellectual stimulation, emotional rewardor financial compensation."20 This life is surely much worse than, say, an artist'slife which normally allows for creativityand human contact. The above analysis shows that the term "conceptions of the good life" may refer to four kinds of judgment: (i) specific judgments on agency goods, (2) specific judgments on prudential goods, (3) local comparative judgments on particularways of life, and (4) comprehensive doctrines that involve comprehensive ranking of goods and ways of life. It seems quite clear that while the fourth type of judgment is highly controversial and probably untenable, the first three types are not. Based on these distinctions, state perfectionism may be classified into two main types. The first is extremeperfectionism, which holds that the state may adopt a comprehensive doctrine as the basis of state policy and promote the good life in accordance with the requirement of that comprehensive doctrine. This type of perfectionism should be rejected, because the state ought not to base its judgments on beliefs which cannot be rationally defended or which are highly counter-intuitive. The second type is moderate perfectionism. The moderate perfectionist state appeals to judgments of the first three types. It promotes valuable goods such as the arts, family life, and basic human virtues, and discourages people from leading ways of life that are highly deficient in these goods. For those ways of life that are roughly speaking "good enough," the state need not discriminate further between them. Perfectionism can be moderate in several other ways. The first way concerns the means that the perfectionist state would use in promoting the good life. We may distinguish between coercive and noncoercive perfectionism. For coerciveperfectionism, the state may use legal coercion to requirepeople to adopt and lead valuable ways of life or to relinquish worthless ones. For noncoercive perfectionism, the aim of the
20.
This example is from Caney, "Impartiality and Liberal Neutrality," pp. 277-78.
15
state is to create a social environment which is more conducive to the promotion of goods and worthwhile ways of life. The state does this by noncoercive means, such as providing subsidies, tax exemptions, and education. Obviouslythese two means have very different moral significance. Noncoercive perfectionism is far less intrusive into people's lives and far less restrictive of their choices than the coercive approach. Clearly noncoercive perfectionism is a moderate form of
perfectionism.21
Perfectionism can be moderate in yet another way. We may distinguish between pure and mixed perfectionism. Pureperfectionism holds that the good life (with all its constituents) is the only intrinsic value. All state policies have to be justified in terms of their contribution to that value. Mixed perfectionism, however, allows that there are other values that the state needs to care about, such as the peace and harmony of the political community, equality and distributive justice and efficiency among others. In fact, Aristotle himself explicitly writes that the state should not pursue perfectionist goals at the expense of other goals such as stability, public acceptability, and social harmony.22Perfectionists need not be radicals. They may allow the pursuit of the good life to be tempered by other values. Perfectionists insist only that the pursuit of the good life is one important, legitimate task of the state. Finally,there is another feature of moderate perfectionism. We may distinguish between two versions of perfectionism on the basis of the relative importance of the state's role. State-centered perfectionism holds that the pursuit of the good life should always start with the state. That is to say, the state should always be the primary and direct agent responsible for the promotion of the good life. The state should always
21. What is the reason for preferringthe noncoercive version to the coercive one? One is that directlycoercing people to conform to rules of conduct or to lead a certain way of life would often be ineffectiveand could even backfire.Anotherreason is that this kind of coercion would undermine personal autonomy,which is a valuable good. But notice that on the view of moderate perfectionism, personal autonomy is neither the only good nor the best good among others, ratherit admits of degree. So an endorsement of this value does not necessarily lead one to reject mild forms of legal restriction if the latter proves to be necessary in securing other important goods but without diminishing in significant degree the value of personal autonomy. This is a complex issue that I have no space to
enter into. For valuable discussions see Sher, Beyond Neutrality, pp. 56-60. 22. Politics 1288b22-1289a 25. Fora good discussion of a mixed perfectionist reading of
in Aristotle:Replyto MarthaNussbaum,"OxAristotle,see David Charles,"Perfectionism OxfordUniversityPress, 1988). ford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supp. Vol. (New York:
i6
take the lead, so to speak. Only if the state is found to be ineffective would other institutions in society, such as voluntary associations, be considered as agents. Multicenteredperfectionism, however, does not hold this principled preference for the state. It may allow voluntary associations to take the primary and active role in promoting valuable goods and ways of life. The state might either not intervene at all if these groups are effective, or just assist in promoting the good by helping these associations. The state may need to take an active role in those areas where civil society fails. Alternatively,the state may work side by side with civil society. In any case, in choosing whether the state or civil society (or both) is preferredas "promoter"of a particulargood in particular circumstances, multicentered perfectionism is sensitive to such comparative factors as the relative capability and vulnerabilityto malfunctioning of the state vis-a-vis civil society. Thus this feature of moderate perfectionism can respond to the practical challenge that the state might create more harm than good in directly promoting the good life. Moderate perfectionism recognizes this as a legitimate concern and thus holds that we should carefully look at the comparative consequences of the state's and society's pursuit of the good life. However,it maintains that such a consideration only implies a cautious attitude toward the suitability of the state as a promoter of the good life, not a total rejection of it as required by liberal neutrality. This anatomy of perfectionism could be continued, but it is long enough to enable us to see a number of the problems of liberal antiperfectionism. To summarize the above discussion, there are at least two main types of perfectionism. Extremeperfectionism is comprehensivein its ranking of goods and ways of life, coercivein its means of pursuit, pure in its (exclusive) concern for the good life, and state-centeredin its principled preference for the state as the direct and primaryagent of the promotion of the good life. Moderate perfectionism is, on the other hand, local, noncoercive, mixed, and multicentered.23Once we recognize these two types, we are able to see that the force of one liberal argument against perfectionism is very limited. Consider an argument offered by Rawls. He claims that the diversity of comprehensive doc23. Note that I do not claim that the comprehensive aspect of extremeperfectionism is logicallyconnected to other aspects such as pure and state-centered.Similarly, there is no logical connection between different aspects of moderate perfectionism-they may just tend to go together.
17
trines is a permanent feature of the public culture of modern liberaldemocratic societies. From this Rawls infers that in these societies a single comprehensive doctrine can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power. Such a use of power not only goes against the spirit of tolerance, it would also endanger the social unity and stability of these societies. Thus no states should try to promote comprehensive doctrines or to justify their basic structures with reference to them.24 This argument trades on the looseness of the term "comprehensive doctrines." It might have a certain plausibility if comprehensive doctrines referred to rigid, exclusive, and comprehensive religious doctrines that requirestrong commitments and allegiance. In our terminology, Rawls'sargument might be able to reject extreme perfectionism, for the attainment of its goals does seem to require the oppressive use of state power in modern pluralistic societies. But if the term "comprehensive doctrines" is just equivalent to another more commonly used term "conceptions of the good life," then that argument would fail to reject moderate perfectionism. There is no ground for believing that the pursuit of moderate perfectionism requires the oppressive use of state power, endangering social unity and stability. First, moderate perfectionism is far more "ecumenical"than the extreme version in terms of its understanding of the good. It makes on specific goods local judgments that are compatible with a great many philosophical doctrines and are widely accepted by many people. In addition, the agency and prudential goods can be found in many valuable ways of life. Second, because of its noncoercive nature, moderate perfectionism is more respectful of personal autonomy. It does not reduce the individual's capacity for making choices but ratherenhances it by providingmore opportunities for people to experience valuable options and to make choices on this basis. Third, because moderate perfectionism is mixed and multicentered, it adopts a flexible and piecemeal approach in promoting the good, with a view to maintaining the stability and harmony of society. To conclude, only extreme perfectionism resembles the kind of state enforcement or persecution of religion the West experienced for centuries. Perfectionism need not be the view that the state should pursue the good life at all costs. Moderateperfectionism is much more sensible and
24. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 36-40.
18
acceptable, even if judged by the common standards in liberal society such as personal autonomy, reasonableness of the good, and stability and harmony of society. It is unfair of liberals to lump them together as pursuits of the good life to be excluded from the state. Rawls'ssocial unity and stability argument cannot be used to support the liberal doctrine of antiperfectionism, which requires a blanket exclusion of conceptions of the good life.25 It is time to consider several objections. Some might think that the kind of perfectionism defended here is too mild to be interesting, and that many liberals would not find those specific judgments regarding the good life unreasonable or controversial.Moreover,no specific policies have been proposed to show how, in policy terms, moderate perfectionism might diverge from the liberal neutralistview. Don't liberal neutralists also accept that the state should subsidize the arts and culture? Answering fully these questions requireslengthy discussions that I cannot provide here. Several brief comments are in order, however. First, to the extent that many liberals regard many specific judgments on agency goods, prudential goods, and ways of life mentioned above as reasonable, they will have to face two unwelcome consequences: (a) they need to revise the often-asserted claim that most or all conceptions of the good or the good life are disputable by reasonable persons,26and (b) the scope of liberal neutralitywould be very much limited and hence its power diminished. Second, the acceptance of certain specific judgments on the good as not disputable by reasonable persons would generate good reasons to favor certain public policies that liberals normally do not endorse or advocate. Consider the case of the economic life of a society. Most contemporary liberals, especially liberal neutralists, would approach the issue from the angle of distributivejustice and equality. They think the state should regulate the economic life of a society in order to ensure that egalitarian justice be achieved. For perfectionists, however, the
is the view that whether 25. Joseph Raz has expressed this point well: "[Perfectionism] or not a particularmoral objective should be pursued by legal means is a question to be judged on the merit of each case, or class of cases, and not by a general exclusionaryrule, p. 1231. as the so-called 'neutralists'would have it." See Raz, "FacingUp: A Reply," 26. See, for example,Rawls,Political Liberalism, pp. 35-40, Nagel, Equality and Partialand ReasonableDisagreement,"Social Philosophy ity, ch. 14,CharlesLarmore,"Pluralism
and Policy ii (1994): 61-79.
19
quality and meaningfulness of work is also of great importance. Vaclav Havel wrote, The most important thing today is for economic units to maintainor, rather,renew-their relationship with individuals, so that the work those people perform has human substance and meaning.... Such enterprises must have ... a human dimension; people must be able to work in them as people, as beings with a soul and a sense of responsibility, not as robots.27 If mind-numbing labor is of low value, the state should, according to the perfectionist view, try every means to ensure that less and less work should fall into that category.28 Even if certain low-qualityjobs are inevitable, there is a reason for the state to seek to provide compensation for those who have them or distribute them as fairly as possible. Liberal neutralists either do not seem willing to embrace these recommendations or they are prevented from doing so by their neutrality doctrine. Some liberal neutralists might argue that they can justify the policies favored by perfectionists by nonperfectionist arguments. Typically,liberals do so on the ground of freedom: those policies would enlarge the range of options for individuals to choose. Forexample, they would support improvingthe quality of work or subsidizing the arts on the ground that such policies would provide more options to people and not on the direct ground of improving people's good lives. One problem with this reply is that such a strategycannot really avoid appealing to considerations of the good. What options should the state support?Why bother to support options if they are not worthwhile or cannot add value to people's lives? In providing or supporting options, the state cannot avoid evaluating the intrinsic merit of the options. Most people, including liberal neutralists, would say that the state should support options that are worthwhile rather than those that are not (for instance, they
VaclavHavel, Disturbing the Peace, p. 15. 28. For a similar discussion on this point, see James BernardMurphy,TheMoralEcon27.
omy of Labor: Aristotelian Themes in Economic Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), especially pp. 225-34. Murphyargues that "governmentshould be concerned with
the distributionof meaningfulwork ... simply because meaningfulwork is so fundamental to human happiness and well-being"(p. 228).He furtherarguesthat restoringthe unity of conception and execution in the design of jobs is compatible with our economic interests in efficient production and is requiredby our moral interests in human flourishing.
20
would prefer eccentric but imaginative novels to hard-core pornography, although both may be in short supply in the market). There is another objection to moderate perfectionism, which takes an opposite stance from the first objection. The antiperfectionists might argue that while the goods in abstract,or as types,may not be controversial, their substantive conceptions, or as tokens, may be. For example, while music in the abstract is valuable, different people may have very different conceptions of music and hence what constitutes valuable music. Some of those who love modern music might worship Stravinsky;but for others favoring classical music, his music may not be valuable. Moreover,a perfectionist state, when devising policies, cannot appeal simply to abstract ideas but to specific conceptions; in doing so it has to rely on controversialconsiderations about the good. Although this objection is challenging, I think there is a compelling reply. Indeed, there can be reasonable disagreements over tokens of good. But this need not always pose unresolvable problems to perfectionism. As I shall argue in the next section, under some circumstances, the state's pursuit of disputable goals need not create any problem for its legitimacy.A proper argument to this effect has to await our discussion of the relationship between legitimacy and disagreement.
III. Two ARGUMENTS
JUSTIFYING THE LIBERAL CUT
Liberalshave another important type of argument against perfectionism, which argues that a perfectionist state would not pass the liberal standard of political legitimacy. The liberal standard of legitimacy, adopted by a number of liberal neutralists, is a contractualistone: political principles must be justifiable to all who are to be subject to them. Nagel writes, [I]fyou force someone to serve an end that he cannot be given adequate reason to share, you are treating him as a mere means-even if the end is his own good, as you see it but he doesn't. In view of the coercivecharacterof the state, the requirementbecomesa condition of
political legitimacy (EP, p. 159, italics added).29
29. See also CharlesLarmore:"Thenorm of equal respect holds that political principles-that is, principles to which compliance may be effected by force, if need bemustbe justifiableto all who are to be subject to them, for otherwise persons would be
21
Thus a central idea of the contractualist view of a state's legitimacy is this: the state, by forcing people to serve ends with which they may reasonably disagree, would give no due respect to people as ends. Applying this view to the issue of perfectionism, we get the following argument against the perfectionist state:
(i) Conceptions of the good life are objects of reasonable disagreement. (2) We should respect people as ends (or we should never treat them merely as means).30 (3) Respecting people as ends implies that we should not force people to serve an end with which they may reasonably disagree.3' (4) Thus the state should not enforce conceptions of the good life.
In the previous section I have challenged proposition (i): not all conceptions about the good life are disputable by reasonable persons. For our present purposes, however, let us assume that (i) is true. The most important step in the argument is then proposition (3). But is it acceptable? An initial response is that it is not at all clear why enforcing a controversial decision on matters about the good life or about other matters would imply not respecting people as ends. Ordinaryexamples of disagreement do not seem to support this conclusion. Consider the court (or the jury's) decision on criminal cases. As long as the court's trial procedures are fair and effectively observed, the court could not be said to be treatingthe convicted not as an end, even if the convicted may have reasonable disagreement over the court decision. Consider also the case of social justice. People do have reasonable disagreement over the nature of social justice. Even within liberalism (broadly underbeing treated only as means (as objects of coercion) and not also as ends in themselves (as beings whose distinctive capacity of thinking and acting on the basis of reasons is engaged directly)."Larmore,"TheLimits of AristotelianEthics,"Nomos 34 (1992): 193-94. See also Rawls,Political Liberalism, p. 137. 30. It may be askedwhy this statement about respectingpeople as ends is needed. Why can'twe just start with a statement that simply says that laws and policies must be justifiableto all who aresubject to them?The answeris that Nagel and other neutralists(such as Larmore,as previously noted) see the need to base the justifiabilityrequirement on certain basic moral principles, and for them the most plausible one is Kant'ssecond formulation of the categoricalimperative-that one should treat humanity never merely as a means, but always also as an end" (EP,p. 159). 31. We shall see that Nagel recognizes that this principle, as it stands, is too ambitious and its scope needs to be limited.
22
stood), there are, among others, two conflicting views of social justice, namely libertarianism and egalitarianism. Many arguments for or against these positions are presented with vigor and force by respectable philosophers. If a government, after careful considerations of both sides of the debate, decided to enforce the libertarianview of social justice, it would be odd to say that egalitarianswould then be treated not as ends. The same point holds for the state's pursuit of perfectionist goals. If the state carefully deliberated on questions about the value of a certain pursuit or practice, and decided on a particularcourse to take, why should we think that those people who objected to this course of action would not be respected as ends? Moreover,if the respect argument works, it would be too successful for liberals to endorse. Carriedto its logical conclusion, the argument entails that no government should enforce social justice, since it is an issue which is bound to be controversial and debatable even among most reasonable and rational people. This conclusion is surely unacceptable to liberals.Liberalsowe perfectionists an account as to why the state'senforcement of controversialdecisions is problematic only in the case of conceptions of the good life and not in non-good-life issues like social justice. In other words, liberals must show us why a deep cut between the two types of issues is warranted. TheArgumentof Higher-orderUnanimity Nagel seems to be one of the very few liberals who have confronted this He gave two intriguing arguproblem and tried to provide an answer.32 ments to justify the asymmetry.The first is what we may call the argument of higher-orderunanimity. Consider the example of national defense. It seems that everyone would recognize that some unified policy is absolutely necessary for national defense. Thus people are willing to let the state make authoritative decisions on national defense policy, despite the fact that they may have reasonable disagreements regarding
32. JoshuaCohen is anotherliberalwho explicitlytackles this problem.The line of what he calls the bootstrappingargumentis that while egalitarianprinciples of justice may be controversial,they can be shown to be logicallyrequiredby commitment to uncontroversial ideals such as freedom and equalitybefore the law. See Joshua Cohen, "Moral Pluralism and PoliticalConsensus,"in David Copp,JeanHampton, and John Roemer,eds., ThIe Idea of Democracy (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993), pp. 270-91. For the reason of space, I cannot enter into a proper discussion of Cohen'sargument. Michael Sandel also discusses the asymmetry problem and responds to a possible liberal reply
23
Legitimacy, Unanimity,
and Perfectionism
those decisions. The central idea here is that people who disagree with a particular state policy on national defense are not treated merely as means, because, at a higher level, there may be reasonable agreement on the need for a unified state policy in that area.33 The same answer may apply to the case of court decisions. Law and criminal justice are absolutely necessary for the order and stability of society (they may also be required for retributivejustice). Of course we should strive to make the system of criminaljustice as acceptable and reasonable as it can be, but the mere fact that defendants may often reasonably disagree with the court's decisions is not a sufficient reason to justify abandoning the whole system which is regardedby all as necessary. Local disagreements can be accepted and contained by a global agreement on the need for state action and policy. In other words, Nagel sees a rule of exception that must be added to P3 in the argument reconstructed above. Now P3 must take the following revised form: "Treating people with respect (as ends) implies that we should not force people to serve an end with which they may reasonably disagree, unless a special condition of higher-orderunanimity obtains." This condition can be best stated as a general principle: Theprinciple of higher-orderunaninity: In situations where reasonable people have disagreements on how a problem should be resolved but nonetheless agree, or would agree, that the state should adopt a policy (even if the policy may turn out to be disputable), the state may legitimately make policy decisions dealing with the problem.34 What would be capable of generating a high-order unanimity on policy issues? Or,to use the language of reasonable agreement, what would be the thing that generates a reason for higher-order unanimity which
similarto that of Cohen. Sandelarguesthat it may be true that a certainprincipleof justice (Rawls's differenceprinciple) is the only reasonableprinciple,but it is also likelytrue that only a certainmoral or religiousposition (forexample on the moral status of homosexuality) is reasonable.Thereis no a priori reason to exclude this possibility,and whether it is possible "to reason our way out to agreementon any given moral or political controversy is not something we can know until we try."See his "PoliticalLiberalism," HarvardLaw Review 107 (1994): 1783-88. I thank Simon Caney for drawing my attention to Cohen's and Sandel'sarticles. Both of the articles, however, do not discuss Nagel'stwo arguments to
justify the asymmetry. Neither do Wall's Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint nor Sher's Beyond Neutrality discuss these arguments. 33. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 164-65.
34. I thank Simon Caney for helping me construct this principle.
24
every reasonable person would recognize?In Nagel'sview, the most obvious candidate is practical necessity. In some cases, such as national defense, a common standpoint can be found despite extreme disagreement, because everyone recognizes that some unified policy is absolutely necessary, and we shall have to take the risk that the actual policy decided on will be abhorrentto us
(EP, pp. 164-65).
And Nagel immediately adds: But that is not true of religion and other basic choices regardingwhat life is about and how it is to be led. There the argument of necessity does not supply a common standpoint capable of containing the centrifugalforce of diametricallyopposed values, and legitimacy requires that individuals be left free, consistent with the equal freedom of others, to follow their own paths (EP,p. 165). For Nagel, it is the reason of practical necessity that separates national defense from the promotion of the good life. In the case of the people's pursuit of the good life, there is no necessity for coordinated collective action in the form of state policy and action. Thus there is no reason for higher-orderunanimity that reasonable people would recognize. In the absence of this reasonable higher-order unanimity, the state would be treatingpeople not as ends if it were to enforce decisions about the good life with which they reasonably disagree. I shall argue that Nagel's argument faces a serious dilemma: either higher-orderunanimity is so difficult to obtain that not only the state's pursuit of the good life but also other traditional pursuits of the state such as national defense and education would be judged as illegitimate, or it is so easy to obtain that all these pursuits of the state, including the good life, can be judged as legitimate. A different, and stronger,way to state the problem is this: for liberals who accept the contractualist account of political legitimacy, a broader version of the higher-orderunanimity argument is necessary to justify traditionalpursuits of the state, but this version would also justify state perfectionism. Nagel's contractualist argument can thus be turned into a defense of state perfectionism. (This is a strong claim, which might immediately arouse two suspicions. Some might suspect that this claim assumes it is coherent to use nonperfectionist arguments-such as contractualism-to justify state
25
perfectionism. But could a political arrangement that is justified by a contractualist argument be "perfectionist" at all? Another suspicion, very different from the first one, is that Nagel's broader version of higher-order unanimity seems to be "infected"with perfectionist considerations and, as a result, Nagel's argument could be turned into a defense of state perfectionism. Thus my argument shows only that Nagel's antiperfectionism is unprincipled, not that state perfectionism is legitimate. These suspicions raise important questions about the proper relationships between perfectionist "arguments"and perfectionist "policies,"questions I shall tackle in detail toward the end of this section.) Let me now explain the first horn of the dilemma. Nagel says that since a unified national defense policy is absolutely necessary, there should be higher-orderunanimity "capable of containing the centrifugal force of diametrically opposed values." The essential question left unsettled by Nagel is this: For what is a unified policy on a problem absolutely necessary? Why would reasonable people regard a unified policy as absolutely necessary, irrespective of its content?35 One possible answer is this: it is necessary for the survival of the society.National defense, like other such similar issues as criminal justice and law and order, is a matter on which the very survival of the society rests, and therefore it must be taken care of by the state through the adoption of unified policies. This, however, is not true in the case of the good life. A common pursuit of the good life is not strictly necessaryto the survival of society. But this is an impossibly stringent criterion of necessity. Such a criterion would exclude some other issues that liberals such as Nagel would agree are the appropriate objects of the state's pursuit. These are, for example, education, public health (EP, p. 163), environmental issues,
and the promotion of aesthetic values (EP, p. 130-138, 167). It is not at all
obvious that if the state did not promote these goals, the survival of society would be threatened. Some poor countries do not promote a better environment for all or provide free education to children, but they can still survive. Moreover,the principle of higher-orderunanimity might even not be able to justify some traditional state actions. Take the case of national
35. Assuming that it does not violate individualrights of course.
26
defense. There are likely to be people (moralpacifists, for example) who are so opposed to the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance that if they were given two choices only, namely either no unified defense policy at all or the possibility of the state using nuclear weapons in wars, they would prefer the former to the latter. It would be difficult to argue that these people are clearly unreasonable in making this choice. In other words, they may not be willing to let the state make authoritative of what those decisions policy decisions on national defense irrespective it to that such unwillingconfidently and say is difficult turn out to be, ness is unreasonable. In this situation, there will be no higher-order unanimity even in national defense. Some might argue that if we adopt a more relaxed approach to understanding the conditions for reasonable agreement or rejection, the principle of higher-order unanimity can preserve the traditional areas in which state action is thought to be legitimate. However, I shall claim that such a relaxed approach would also legitimize the state's promotion of the good life-and this is the second horn of the dilemma. To see what a relaxed approach is like, consider Nagel'sexample of the promotion of aesthetic values.36Nagel holds that artistic and intellectual creations and beauties of the naturalworld are things valuable in themselves (EP,p. 132).Everyonehas reason to promote intrinsicallyvaluable things such as artistic excellence; but, everyone also recognizes that they are things which each of us cannot effectively advance as individuals (EP, p. 135),and thus "everyonehas reason to want the state to identify and encourage excellence" (EP, p. 134). This collective "effort is legitimate even if mistakes can be made" (EP,p. 134)and even if people may have reasonable disagreements as to what intrinsicallyvaluable things are. That there are things good in themselves, however, seems to me a position on which reasonable persons can be expected to agree, even if they do not agree what those things are. And acceptance of that position is enough to justify ordinarytax support for a society's effort to identify and promote such goods, if it can effectively do so-provided it does not engage in repression or intolerance of those who would have chosen different candidates (EP,p. 134).
36. This relaxed approach, as we shall see, is generated not simply by the example of aesthetic values but also by the need to justify the traditionaltasks of the state.
27
For Nagel, there can be a higher-orderunanimity for state's action and unified policy on the promotion of aesthetic values, not because a unified policy on this subject is necessary for survival of society, but because everyone has reason to promote whatever is deemed intrinsically valuable, and because society as a collective is a better instrument to promote it. The possibility of higher-orderunanimity can be strengthened if the following conditions are also present. First, the method of selecting which artistic goods should be promoted is fair and open. Second, the people making the decisions come from a broad range of relevant groups. Third, there are particular mechanisms that give special attention to underrepresented groups. If all these conditions obtain, it is more likely that, in the long run, each individual or group would derive some benefit through state action in supporting the arts. We can now describe the conditions sufficient for higher-orderunanimity. When a particular policy does not benefit a person or is not agreeable to him, the following conditions may still give sufficient reason for the person to want to agree that the state should have a unified policy, even if that policy proves not to promote his interests or views: Conditions of higher-orderunanimity (a) Collective action through the agency of the state is a better means than individual action to promote the desired goal. (b) Policies made by the state do not engage in repression or intolerance of those who have different views (EP,p. 134).In other words, the policies respect basic individual rights. (c) The members of decision-making bodies (officials,group representatives, or experts appointed by the state or elected by groups) may change from time to time so that each interest- or opinion-group may have a fair chance to influence the decision-making process and its outcomes. In other words, while various individuals or groups may not agree with every policy produced, there will be, in the long run, some policies which promote their concerns so that, all things considered, each of these individuals or groups prefers to have collective action supported by the state to separate individual action.37
37. For similar approaches to conditions for legitimacy, see, e.g., Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, "Moral Conflict and Political Consensus," Ethics 10o (1ggo): 64-88; Simon Caney, "Anti-perfectionism and Rawlsian Liberalism," Political Studies 43 (1995):255-56.
28
It seems that, in reality,state action on education and public health is often justified by the above considerations. Not all state policies are agreeable to everyone; but the state is a better instrument to promote education and public health than individual effort taken separately,and in the long run all would derive some benefits (not obtainable by themselves individually) through a changing variety of state policies. This seems the best justification one can get from a contractualist approach that takes unanimity as a condition of legitimacy. This is an important point, for it shows that the case for the broaderversion of the conditions of higher-orderunanimity does not rest only on Nagel'sexample of aesthetic values, which, for some neutralists, may be problematic because aesthetic values are often thought to be a component of the good life. Rather, the broader version is justified by its purported ability, as claimed by Nagel, to show that the traditional pursuits of the state in such areas as education and health services can satisfy the unanimity requirement and hence be legitimate.38 But if the broader version can justify state action on controversial issues of education and public health, they can, as I shall argue, equally justify perfectionist policies made by the state. In other words, the case of state promotion of the good life can satisfy the three conditions of higher-orderunanimity. My argument consists of the following propositions: (1)The individual'spursuit of a worthwhile life requires or can better be promoted by collective efforts coordinated or supported by the state. (2) Moderate perfectionism, as defined above, does not advocate the use of coercion to promote the good life, and hence would not engage in "repression or intolerance of those who have different views." (3) The making of perfectionist policies need not be done in a way that sounds offensive and arrogant,or in a way that generates serious injustice of a kind that cannot be tolerated. Of these three propositions, the second one is the least controversial. Moderate perfectionism, as defined earlier, is noncoercive. There are
38. Andso my followingargumentthat the broaderversion can be turned into a defense of state perfectionism does not simply rely on an unprincipled element of perfectionism found in Nagel'saccount.
29
strong consequentialist reasons for not taking a high-handed repressive approach to promote the good life, for it often does not work, and worse still, it backfires-it generates on the part of the citizens a negative response toward the life that is promoted through coercion. Besides, authoritarianrule would likely produce other undesirable effects, such as cynicism, revolt, and political instability.Moderateperfectionism, being sensitive to values other than the good life, would certainly take these factors seriously into account when it comes to the question about the proper means of promoting the good life. In addition, coercion suppresses people's autonomy, which is an important, though not absolute, value in moderate perfectionism. For these reasons, then, moderate perfectionism would satisfy the second condition of higher-orderunaLet me now discuss in greaterlength the first and third proponimity.39 sitions, respectively. The first condition of higher-order unanimity states that collective action through the agency of the state is a better means than individual action to promote a desired goal. Now proposition (1) claims that this is precisely the case when the desired goal is valuable goods and ways of life. The pursuit of the good life is not entirely a personal matter, but requires conditions that can be provided only by collective effort. Social institutions, culture, traditions, and social forms of life are collective constructs, ones that provide the very possibility and conditions for people to live the good life. This is a sociological truism, with which no liberalswould disagree.What liberals often claim is that the civil society, being free from the coercive machinery of the state, is voluntary in character and strong enough to maintain the conditions necessary for the pursuit of worthwhile ways of life. Some liberals hold that collective groups in the civil society can flourish without the support of the state. Civil society is like a free market in which worthwhile collective groups and ways of life will flourish on their own. As Will Kymlickaargues, liberal neutrality . .. allow[s] each group to pursue and advertise its way of life, and those ways of life that are unworthy will have difficulty attracting adherents. Since individuals are free to choose between competing visions of the good life, liberal neutralitycreates a market39. For an interesting argument for the claim that standardliberal rights can provide adequate protection to citizens without making the state neutral, see Sher,Beyond Neutrality, pp. 111-14.
30
place of ideas, as it were, and how well a way of life does in this marketplace depends on the kinds of goods it can offer to prospective adherents. Hence, under conditions of freedom, satisfying and valuable ways of life will tend to drive out those which are unsatisfying.40 This Millianoptimism about the flourishingof worthwhileways of life in the marketplaceis unfounded, however. There is no evidence to show that people, even in conditions of freedom, will usually choose worthwhile options. People'schoices are often influenced by factors other than the appreciation of the intrinsic merit of the options: for example, the unwillingness to bear the cost of developing one's ability to differentiate the good from the bad, personal prejudice,weakness of will, peer-group pressure, difficulty in obtaining relevant information, manipulation or deception by others (sales or media), and so forth. Now given that worthwhile options (ways of life or collective groups and activities) do not always drive out the less worthwhile or worthless ones, and given that the market or voluntary action often does not provide enough support for those worthwhile options, there is a need for the state to take up the perfectionist task if it can be shown to be a more effective instrument. Furthermore,civil society and the state are interconnected and interdependent. For one thing, they both face similar problems and both need each other to help resolve those problems. Liberalsoften think that what incapacitates or harms civil society is the state, and that the former should thus be protected from the latter.The reality,however, is that the enemy of civil society can emerge from within. Powerdomination, coercion, manipulation, and the destruction of valuable ways of life can all occur in civil society even if the state is kept outside. Civilsociety needs the state to remedy its defects, and the state in turn requires a strong civil society to counterbalance and constrain its enormous power. Moreover,just as the state can have great impact on people's lives, civil society can create as well as reflect people's wants and values. Individuals and worthwhile options are susceptible to the influence of civil society and the state, and both need to be checked by collective scrutiny.As pointed out in the previous section, moderate perfectionism, in particular its multicentered feature, is sensitive to the relative capabilities and
Political Philosophy (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1991), 40. Will Kymlicka,Contemporaty p. 219.
31
Legitimacy, Unanimity,
and Perfectionism
limitations of the state vis-a-vis civil society. Thereis no deep distinction between the state and civil society as far as their vulnerabilityand their impact on people's lives are concerned. And in fact the two requireeach another in the pursuit of perfectionist goals. We may now proceed to proposition (3). But before elaborating, it is fitting at this point to go back to a question that was raised at the end of the previous section. The question was that although we might agree that many goods in abstract,or as types,are not controversial,their substantive conceptions, or as tokens, are. (Recall the example of music.) Disagreement at this level may, therefore, make any state decision or policy illegitimate. This challenge can now be answered, at least partially. As we have shown, although there are disagreements regarding concrete policies, there is agreement that some types of goods are worthwhile, and that they can be better promoted collectively than individually (proposition 1).Now if the policies that promote these goods do not engage in repression or intolerance (proposition 2), then these facts together already satisfy the first and second conditions of higher-order unanimity. That is to say, even though token goods are controversial, people would likely agree that it is better for the state to make controversialpolicies promoting those goods. Still,this answer may not fully convince the critic. Some may contend that a perfectionist state making controversial policies on the good is offensive to those who disagree with those policies. Call this the offended dissentersproblem. Others may argue that the dissenters would be disadvantaged,because their views would not be heard or their interests promoted in a perfectionist state (at least not as much as those in the "mainstream"). Call this the disadvantaged dissentersproblem. Now proposition (3) is meant to put these concerns to rest. It precisely claims that the making of controversialperfectionist policies need not be offensive or unfair to dissenters. To elaborate on this, let us first consider in greater detail the problem of offended dissenters, for this is a problem that Nagel explicitly brings out in his attack on perfectionism. Nagel holds that while the state may make controversialpolicies promoting aesthetic values, no such allowance should be given to the case of the good life. One main reason he gives is this: [T]he role of the state as actor on behalf of its citizens assumes prominence when the action is based on commitment to values in direct
32
contradiction to the deepest convictions of some citizens about the meaning of life. That, I think, is deeply offensive and unacceptable, and forfeits the state's aim to represent them in a way in which promotion of other values some of them do not share does not. The objections to it do not apply to the promotion of controversialaesthetic
values, for example (EP, p. 167).
Nagel does not tell us why he thinks that the state, by promoting controversial conceptions of the good life, would deeply offend those who do not share those conceptions. The reason cannot lie simply in the fact that people have deep convictions about the good life, for people can and usually do have deep convictions about other things, such as aesthetic values, abortion, euthanasia, social justice, and democracy, and the state, being the authoritative agency of society, does make many decisions contradicting the deep beliefs of many citizens on these important issues. Furthermore, in public debates these issues are often inextricablybound up with competing claims about the value of human life and worthiness of differentways of life. A clear separation between issues of the good life and other issues is rarelypossible. There may be two more arguments to support Nagel, but they either are wrong or contradict Nagel's own position. First, it may be claimed that since judgments about the good life depend entirely upon people's own subjective standpoints, it would be offensive for the state to ignore this and proceed to make what it (wrongly) believes to be reasonable judgments on the good life. But this argument relies on a premise, namely subjectivism, that liberals such as Nagel do not accept. Second, it may be argued that the perfectionist state is offensive because it is arrogant;it is arrogant because it claims to know about the good life better than those who disagree with it. To reply, the perfectionists need not claim that the state always knows better about the good life than its citizens-this is not only an arrogantclaim but a plainly false one. What seems necessary to perfectionism is the claim that not all individuals are of equal ability to make correctjudgments and that sometimes the state or its representativescan make better judgments.41 Obviously,this claim does not imply an attitude of arrogance. Moreover,whether a state's actions imply an arrogant attitude deand the Best-Judge 41. For an argumentto this effect, see RobertGoodin, "Liberalism Principle,"Political Studies 38 (1ggo): 189.
33
pends partly on how it makes its decision as well as the content of its decision. A state that was dismissive of its citizens' views or did not take their views seriously into consideration would be adopting an arrogant attitude. Clearly,moderate perfectionism is not committed to this sort of approach. In addition, the perfectionist policies need not be made by state officials but by legally sanctioned and state financed committees composed of individual citizens or representatives of groups who have more experience or knowledge about a certain issue. This is in fact what many liberal-democratic governments do in making important judgments on issues of values or morality-they would form a committee composed of professionals, philosophers, representativesof concerned groups, lawyers, etc., to make funding decisions and to propose policy or legislation recommendations to the government and legislature. They are there to deliberatetogether to arriveat the best informed decisions they can on the relative importance and prioritization of specific goods and practices. In fact, the composition and functioning of this kind of committee is not much different from other funding bodies in many non-state philanthropic or academic organizations.A perfectionist state may employ these procedures and mechanisms in the promotion of the good life. If these procedures and mechanisms were still regarded as offensive, then the functioning of a normal government in liberal-democratic societies would be no less offensive than a perfectionist one. Consider now the problem of disadvantaged dissenters, the problem that there may be reasonable (but controversial) conceptions of the goods that are not heard or supported in the course of making perfectionist policies. The present line of thinking can be extended to address this problem. We should, first, admit that it is not possible to guarantee that no mistakes would be made in deciding on what goods and practices should be supported. What a perfectionist state can do is to try its best to ensure that the process of decision-making be as open and fair as possible. For example, the state can require the committees that make funding decisions or policy recommendations to rotate, say every three years, their members, who may be representativesof different interest or issue groups, or individual experts who represent differentreasonable views. Furthermore, to ensure more procedural fairness, the representativesof groups can be chosen by democratic election within those groups. The result of this is that most, if not all, major reasonable
34
specific conceptions of goods would have a fair chance to be heard and supported by state funding in the long run. No doubt there may still be minor injustices or mistakes about the good made under this approach, and the chance of having a great blunder made is still conceivable. But this is true of all human institutions, including constitutional democracies. The essential point, however, is that it seems unreasonable, and probably not rational, to disallow the making of perfectionist policies just on this ground. The cost of doing so is that people risk losing the opportunities to experience valuable goods and worthwhile ways of life. To conclude, then, people would agree that the state is often needed to provide conditions for worthwhile lives to flourish. It is true that a perfectionist state, when devising policies, cannot appeal simply to abstract ideas but also needs to address to specific conceptions that may be reasonably disputable. But this difficulty is surmountable. If perfectionism takes the moderate form as defined earlier,and if perfectionist policies respect individual rights, are made in an open and fair process, and may be changing in the long run to reflect different reasonable points of view, then the claim that the state lacks legitimacy to make perfectionist policies would be unreasonable. So long as the conditions for higher-order unanimity obtain, it is legitimate for the state to promote the good life, just as it is legitimate to promote education, environmental protection, health care, and so forth. Nagel's higher-orderunanimity argument not only fails to reject perfectionism, it vindicates it.
Perfectionism: Politics versus Justification
We should consider one important objection to this line of defense of perfectionism before proceeding to examine another antiperfectionist argument of Nagel. Some might argue that the above attempt to turn Nagel's higher-order unanimity into an argument for perfectionism is highly problematic, for such an argument is not perfectionist in nature. That various arguments justify perfectionist policies in the sense that they lead to policies also supported by perfectionism does not show that those arguments are perfectionist. If the argument is that a certain good is permissible for the state to pursue because the state is doing so in accordance with principles with which no reasonable person could disagree, then the argument is not perfectionist. But this objection rests on an important confusion. We need to distinguish between political and
35
philosophical perfectionism.42 Political perfectionism, which is the focus of discussion in this article, says that it is permissible for the state to design its political arrangementor policies with the aim of promoting what the state (or those citizens acting on the behalf of the state) thinks are worthwhile goods and ways of life. Philosophical perfectionism states that the good arguments justifying the legitimacy of the perfectionist state cannot be neutral about the good life. That is to say, these arguments have to draw from a substantive understanding of the good life. This distinction helps us see that political perfectionism does not necessarily require philosophical perfectionism and is actually compatible with philosophical neutrality. Political perfectionism can be defended by philosophical arguments that are neutral toward substantive issues of the good life, such as arguments drawing on democratic principles (argumentsto the effect that it is permissible for the state to promote the good only because that good is also at the same time approved by a democratic majority).43 Similarly,as I have tried to show here, Nagel's contractualist argument, an example of philosophical neutrality,can be used to defend the legitimacy of a perfectionist state. State officials or citizens' representatives are allowed to make policies to promote what they think are worthwhile goods and ways of life, since such an arrangement or action can satisfy the conditions of higher-orderunanimity. Of course, political perfectionism might also be defended by arguments that are philosophically not neutral, for example, arguments drawingon Aristotelianteleological theories of human associations and the human good. This type of argument says that human associations arise and continue as they do because they can help develop the human good. In particular,the polis is by nature the association the existence of which is to promote the human good to the fullest possible extent.44The fact that I use a nonperfectionist (contractualist) argument to defend the legitimacy of political perfectionism does not imply that the latter can42. For a statement of this distinction and its importance, see Thomas Hurka, "Indirect Perfectionism: Kymlicka on Liberal Neutrality," Journal of Political Philosophy 3 (1995): 36-57. 43. See Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 258-63, as cited in Hurka "Indirect Perfectionism," p. 37. 44. For an account of this argument, see Joseph Chan, "Does Aristotle's Political Theory Rest on a 'Blunder'?" Histoiy of Political Thought 13 (1992): 189-202.
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not also be supported by perfectionist (e.g., Aristotelian) arguments, or vice versa.45 This line of defense requiresa little more clarificationin orderto completely dispel the force of the objection. For critics may still argue that although a philosophically neutral justification of state perfectionism is conceptually possible, this type of justification might ultimately make any first-order"perfectionist"policies lose their perfectionist character. State perfectionism says it is legitimate for the state to design its laws and policies to promote the good life. Naturally,then, the state'sjudgments about the good would serve as a basis or as part of a justification of those laws and policies. Now if one uses such a philosophically neutral approach as democracy or unanimity to justify state policies, then, the objection goes, one can claim that the real basis or justification of those policies lies in the legitimacy of majorityrule or unanimity as decision-making procedure, and not in the substantive view that those policies may serve to promote or respect a certain good. Since the substantive view of the good does not do any real justificatorywork, those policies that are justified cannot be regarded as perfectionist.46 This objection has a point, but it is one that poses no serious challenge to my argument here. The point is that there may be a certain type of neutralist argument which has the result as stated in the objection. Consider, for instance, someone who gives a pure proceduralist democraticjustification for a certain policy. This justification is not based on the intrinsic merit of the opinions of participants who vote on the policy, but merely on the procedural principle of political equality. It is therefore possible to say that even if participants (officials or citizens) do cast their votes on the basis of their considered views of the good, their views are treated merely as preferences to be aggregatedby whatever decision-making principle is required by procedural political
45. Similarly, state neutralityis compatible with both philosophical perfectionism and philosophical neutralityas justification. Perfectionistjustifications of state neutralityinclude, for instance, an autonomy-basedjustification,which says that the respect for personal autonomy as a valuable good implies that the state ought to remain neutral toward conceptions of the good life. For criticism of the soundness of this argument,see Hurka, "Indirect Perfectionism," and Sher,BeyondNeutrality,chs. 3-4. Neutralistjustificationsof state neutralityinclude contractualistarguments such as Nagel's.This article is precisely aimed to arguethat Nagel'scontractualistargumentnot only fails to justify state neutrality but can lend support to state perfectionism. 46. This objection is not considered in Hurka's "IndirectPerfectionism."
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equality.Arguably,therefore, this justification does not confer any perfectionist character on the resultant policy, despite the fact that views of the good are processed into the vote-aggregation. But there are other arguments of democracy or contractualismwhich do not "explainaway"perfectionist considerations in the policy-making process. Proponents of deliberative democracy, for instance, argue that both the substantive content of deliberation and the procedures of deliberation are necessary to the legitimacy of the policy outcome of democratic choice.47Majoritariandecision-making procedure can generate full legitimacy only if participants carefully deliberated on different views expressed before casting the vote. On this view, then, if participants invoke perfectionist considerations in the deliberative process, these considerations, and the manner in which they are discussed, are highly relevant to the legitimacy of the outcome. If, after deliberation, the majorityof the participants come to choose a policy alternativethat is backed by perfectionist considerations given by the participants,then we can properly say that that policy outcome is justified by reference to both perfectionist considerations and democratic principles. So the argument of deliberative democracy does not explain away perfectionist considerations. Now, similar reasoning holds when we use contractualist arguments such as Nagel's higher-orderunanimity to justify state perfectionism. It is not a pure proceduralistargument, but one that concerns the reasons and goals of the relevant parties in their attempt to reach reasoned agreement about the good. When my reconstructed version of higherorder unanimity is applied to the case of the good life, considerations about the good enter into both the second and first levels of discourse. People wish to lead a life that is good, and they broadly agree on the general types of good that make a life go better. Yet they may disagree among themselves on the specific tokens of good. But since the conditions of higher-order unanimity obtain, they are in agreement, at the higher-order level, that the state may make (controversial)policies to pursue the good. At the first level of discourse, relevantparties acting on the state'sbehalf will make the best judgments about the specific tokens of good and do so in a way consistent with other principles prescribed
47. For comparison of proceduralist and deliberative conceptions of democracy, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracyand Disagreement(Cambridge,MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996), ch. 1.
38
by, say, deliberativedemocracy,which emphasizes both the quality and process of deliberation. The policy outcome is thus justified with reference to controversialperfectionist considerations and deliberative democracy in the policy-making process and is further grounded in a second-order agreement on the permissibility of the state to make policies promoting the good. Likethe argument of deliberativedemocracy,then, this contractualist argument does not explain away the perfectionist characterof state policies. I therefore conclude that the objection is not
successful.48
IV.THE ARGUMENT
OF NEGATIVE RESPONSIBILITY
Nagel has another important argument to justify the asymmetric treatment of the good life and other issues. This argument deals primarily with the case of social justice and other issues of public morality.Although both social justice and the good life are the kinds of issues that tend to generate reasonable disagreements, liberals think that this fact morally disqualifies the state from deciding on only the latter kind of issue. The reason for this is that the state cannot possibly avoid making decisions on issues of justice. In the case of social justice, the state should be morally responsible not only for what it does do or decides to do, but also for what it does not. Nagel writes: [T]he pursuit of equality requires abandonment of the idea that there is a morally fundamental distinction, in regardto the socioeconomic frameworkwhich controls people's life prospects, between what the state does and what it merely allows.... [W]ith regard to income, wealth, social position, health, education, and perhaps other things, it is essential that the society should be regarded by its members as responsible for how things are, if different feasible policies and institutions would result in their being different. And if the society is re48. It is important to note that the contractualistargument itself is not perfectionist. Rather,it is the application of this argument to the case of the good life that makes use of considerationsabout the good life. The applicationof the contractualistargumentin other cases such as education and health services need not appeal to perfectionist considerations. Nagel'suse of the argumentin these cases is not guilty of smuggling in perfectionism (except, arguably,his example of aesthetic values), and thus my critique of the contractualistrejection of perfectionism does not rest on a soft target.
39
sponsible, they are responsible through [the state], for it is their agent.
(EP, pp. 99-loo)
Nagel here is criticizing libertarians,such as E A. Hayek,who see social and economic orders as being spontaneous or natural and hold that the state need not be held responsible for their existence or results; only when the state actively interferes with them is it then responsible. This view is rejected by Nagel, and rightly so. When the state permits a laissez-faire system and enforces only the rights that go with it, such a permission is equivalent to choosing or opting for that system-if the state recognizes that there is a feasible alternativesystem that may give different results. The laissez-faire system "rewardsthose with greaterproductive capacity (and their heirs) at the expense of those with less" (EP,pp. ioo-lol). The state then deprives the less fortunate of what they could have under an alternative system, and for this the state is responsible. The state's permission implies a choice, and this requires justification. In short, the state not only has a positive responsibility for what it has done, it also has a negative responsibility for what it could have done. The argument thus far seems convincing. What is not convincing is Nagel's further claim that the state has no negative responsibility for what happens to people's good life. Nagel argues that the state is positively responsible for the difficulties of a particular religion if it either suppresses that religion or actively supports another. Citizens who adhere to the disfavored religion clearly have no reason to authorize such policies. But they do not have similar reasons to refuse acceptance of a system which simply fails to prevent the decline of their religious community (EP,p. 166). Nagel gives no reason for his claim that the state need not be responsible for the decline of a particularreligious community, if that decline is not the result of active interference by the state. His claim seems intuitively appealing, but this may be because we have already accepted the liberal view that religious communities should be left free to develop or decline without any favoritism of the state. In this sense, Nagel's claim is not so much an argument as a conclusion. But if we move our concern beyond religion and consider the good life in general, then it is not clear whether the liberal view of noninterference should also apply. In fact this is precisely the issue to which we requireliberals to give an answer.
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Moreover,quite contrary to what Nagel might hope, the argument of negative responsibility actually provides a good explanation of why the state cannot evade its responsibility in passing judgment on the good life. The pursuit of the good life is not simply an individual endeavor. The development of one's capacities, virtues, tastes, preferences, and way of life is to a significant extent influenced by the social environment. Differentsocial, economic and political structures influence people's dispositions and aspirations in different ways. We could easily imagine the differential impacts, created by the following opposing pairs, on people's ways of life: urban versus ruralsocial systems, industrial-capitalistversus agriculturaleconomic systems, authoritarianversus democratic political systems. The meaning, availability,and accessibility of social and personal goods and ways of life are heavily structured, if not determined, by these social and economic structures.Now the important point is that the maintenance of these systems usually requiresthat they have certain legal rights and resources properlyrecognized, protected, or provided by the state. In permitting one type of system, the state implicitly rules out the development of other feasible ones. Thus, just as the prevalence of a certain social, economic system the rise and decline of social forms and is, in Nagel'sview, not "natural," ways of life that are associated with the change of the social environment are not "natural"either. All the same, the state cannot evade its responsibility to assess the goodness or badness of the impact of the social environment on people's dispositions and ways of life. State neutralityin this case simply means opting for those ways of life and dispositions more favored by the prevailing environment.49 Liberalsmay reply to this challenge by distinguishing between neu49. In fact Rawlsacknowledgesthis: "Some decision concerning these backgroundarrangements [regardingthe basic structure of society] is fundamental and cannot be avoided. In fact, the cumulativeeffect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic structures.Moreover,the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are. Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfyingexistingwants and needs but a way of creatingand fashioning wants in the future.... Since economic arrangementshave these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design of institutions to realize it. This choice must, therefore,be made on moral and political as well OxfordUniversityPress,1971), pp. 259as economic grounds."A Theoiyof Justice(Oxford: 60. For another similar view, see Brian Barry,Political Argument (New York:Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 75-78.
41
tralityof effect and neutrality of judgment or aim. They understand that neutrality of effect is impossible to achieve, but in their view what liberalism endorses is neutrality of judgment or aim, which requiresthat the state should not make decisions based on any judgments concerning the good life and that the state should not aim at promoting any particular conception of the good life.50Thus the above argument challenges only neutrality of effect.Neutralityof judgment or aim, which is the real principle in liberalism, remains intact. This reply is question begging. The argument of negative responsibility is precisely meant to cast doubt on the moral difference, in some circumstances, between actions and inactions, aims and effects, and decisions and nondecisions. Knowingthat the basic structureof society and the basic policies of the state may have fundamental impact on the chance and direction of the development of people's good lives, the state cannot simply focus on justice and efficiency and ignore the good life in its justification of the basic structure.In ignoring this the state in effect takes up either one of the following positions: (a) the impact on people's disposition are, as a matter of value judgment, acceptable, or (b) the question about the good life is far less important than efficiency and justice and so it need not be considered, or (c) there is some independent moral argument, other than that of negative responsibility, which requiresthe state to ignore the question of the good life. The first position contains judgments about the good life and thus violates neutralityof judgment. While the second position does not violate that principle, it is unacceptable. The good life or well-being is one of our most fundamental ethical concerns. There is no reason why the values of justice and efficiency should be so weighty that they always "crowd out" considerations of the good life. The third position has yet to be shown by liberals. But whether or not there are other independent arguments, the argument of negative responsibility in itself cannot justify the asymmetry. Its validity presupposes
neutrality.
a sound argument justifying state
In conclusion, we have seen a general problem in the liberal argument against perfectionism. Liberalswant to exclude the state from the social pursuit of perfectionist goals. However, their arguments offered thus far would either exclude the state from pursuing social justice and
50. See Nagel, EP, p. 116; Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp.
192-94.
42
other traditional goals or fail to exclude perfectionist goals at all. More important, the two arguments examined in this article, the argument of higher-order unanimity and the one of the negative responsibility, can actually be turned around to support political perfectionism. If anything, this shows that perfectionism cannot be lightly dismissed, and that liberal neutralists have seriously underestimated its reasonableness. It should be noted, however, that I have not provided conclusive arguments against antiperfectionism. Even if my criticisms of the above liberal arguments are convincing, there may be some other plausible arguments against perfectionism that I have not considered.5'Nonetheless, I believe that in our evaluation we have already discerned several factors in support of perfectionism. (1)The pursuit of the good life requires the support of an appropriatesocial environment. (2) The maintenance of the social environment depends on the assistance of the state. (3) Different parts of the political community are interconnected and have a great impact on people's lives. (4) The state should be accountable for this impact and cannot evade the responsibility of evaluating it. (5) A moderate perfectionist state is much more sensible and acceptable than liberal neutralists thought it to be, even if judged by the common standards in liberal-democratic societies. (6) Moderate perfectionism does not violate, and can in fact be justified by, a liberal contractualist account of political legitimacy. All these points press us toward one conclusion: state perfectionism is desirable, unavoidable, and legitimate.
51. The following offer good analyses and criticisms of other antiperfectionist arguments: Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint, chs. 3-5; Sher, Beyond Neutrality,
and Caney, "Impartiality and RawlsianLiberalism"; chs. 2-5; Caney,"Anti-perfectionism LiberalNeutrality"; and Hurka,"IndirectPerfectionism."

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Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism Author(s): Joseph Chan Source: Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 29, No.

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

by Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

II. Two FORMS

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

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Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

34. I thank Simon Caney for helping me construct this principle.

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy,Unanimity, and Perfectionism

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Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

Philosophy & Public Affairs

Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism

a sound argument justifying state

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