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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sher
"In this book, I shall present a view about government and the good life, one intermediate between two familiar extremes. At one extreme are views that the connection between government and the good life is internal - that living well requires governing as well as being governed, as Aristotle thought, or that the state exists to realize some other vision of the good. At the other extreme is the view that there is no connection between government and the good life - that the state should simply be neutral toward all conceptions of the good. Between these extremes, there is room for a third type of view, one that does not seek to ground the state in any particular conception of the good, but nevertheless holds that a government may legitimately promote the good. The view that I shall advance is of this third sort. To defend it, I must defuse the main reasons to deny that the state may seek to promote the good; to motivate it, I must develop a conception of the good that is worth promoting. These, accordingly, are the book's two main aims." (1)
"In recent years, many who call themselves liberals [comme J. Rawls, R. Nozick, B. Ackerman, R. Dworkin, C. Larmore, D. A. Lloyd-Thomas, W. ill Kymlick, R. Arnerson, et, plus anciennement et partiellement, J. S. Mill et Thomas Nagel] have maintained that the state should not favor, promote, or act on any particular conception of the good. Instead, it should simply provide a neutral and just framework within which each citizen can pursue the good as he understands it. To provide this framework, a government must sometimes interfere with liberty. It must restrict its citizens' options in order to insure security and stability, promote prosperity and efficiency, and make available various public goods. Also, if justice requires more equality than unconstrained markets can provide, the state must intervene to equalize opportunity or resources. But, according to the view under discussion, this is all that government should do. If in addition it tries to make citizens more virtuous, to raise their level of culture or civility, or to prevent them from living degraded lives, it oversteps its bounds. Even if some traits or activities are genuinely better than others, no government should promote the better or suppress or discourage the worse. About all questions of the good life, the state should remain strictly neutral.
Even in summary statement, this neutralist picture is instantly recognizable. It is, indeed, a picture that no contemporary Westerner can altogether escape. Although barraged by competing ideologies and social schemes, we have all absorbed, by a kind of cultural osmosis, the ideas that self-expression, choice, and diversity are paramount, and that how a person lives is less important than whether he lives as he prefers and chooses. We also worry, unfortunately with justification, that by tolerating departures from official neutrality, we risk allowing the state's coercive apparatus to be captured by fanatics, bullies, or worse. Neutralism also draws support from our uncertainty about where our deepest values lie and which ways of living really are best - an uncertainty that is the inevitable byproduct of our (on the whole extremely salutary) critical attitude toward all belief. Given this confluence of factors, there is a strong sense in which all, or all but a very few, contemporary Americans and Europeans must feel the pull of neutralism." (pp.1-2)
"If, as I believe, some traits, activities, and ways of relating to people really are superior to others, and if there are no defensible reasons for governments not to promote these, then many citizens of neutral states will end up with lives that are not as good as they could be. Conversely, by combining some state efforts on behalf of the good with some liberal strictures against state excess, we may hope to increase significantly the likelihood that many citizens will live genuinely good lives." (p.3)
"Consider first an objection that, if sound, would make short work of neutralism. To warrant serious consideration, the neutralist ideal must be one that governments can at least approach, even if not fully attain. But many believe that no government can even approach neutrality, since every law, policy, and political institution must automatically favor many conceptions of the good while disfavoring many others. For example, even an institution as necessary as a police force or army must require and reward traits like discipline, courage, and respect for authority. In so doing, it must favor all conceptions of the good that prize these traits over (say) spontaneity, gentleness, and compassion. This, it seems, is an obvious breach of neutrality. Moreover, the case is not isolated: governments also favor specific conceptions of the good by adopting particular tax structures, zoning laws, and environmental policies, and by taking countless other actions. But if breaches of neutrality are so pervasive and inevitable, then isn't neutralism doomed from the start ? If this objection succeeded, there would be little point in going on.
But most neutralists believe it does not, and their reasons are instructive. The standard response is to distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of neutralism. The stronger version asserts that governments may not adopt any laws or policies that have the effect of promoting any particular conceptions of the good, whereas the weaker asserts only that governments may not take any actions in order to promote any such conceptions. In Will Kymlicka's useful terms, the stronger version demands consequential, the weaker only justificatory neutrality. This distinction is important because the current objection -that any government action must favor some conceptions of the good over others- tells only against the possibility of consequential neutrality. Hence, the obvious way to meet it is to interpret neutralism solely in justificatory terms. Under this interpretation, neutralism is exclusively a thesis about the reasons for which governments may act.
Like most neutralists, I believe the fundamental issue is one of justification; but, unlike them, I do not believe that any kinds of reasons are in principle inadmissible in politics. Instead, I believe it is no less legitimate for governments than for private individuals to try to promote the good." (pp.3-4)
" [A non-neutral state] can also guarantee most if not all of the substantive rights that liberals have traditionally favored. At first glance, this may not be obvious; for if citizens have rights to express themselves, practice their religion, travel, and own property, then governments cannot promote the good in any ways that these rights prohibit. But the ability to promote the good is not all-or-nothing, and even a set of rights that does protect some activities must leave many others unprotected. Hence, a democratic (or, for that matter, undemocratic) government can both acknowledge many substantive rights and still leave much latitude for nonneutral legislation.
The interesting question, of course, is how far that latitude should extend, and how the rights that limit it can be justified. If we reject the ideal of neutrality, we cannot say, with Ronald Dworkin, that civil rights exist precisely to disallow the policies that are most likely to be adopted for nonneutral reasons. But even without this justification, there remain various reasons to protect especially sensitive or strategic areas of life. Although this approach is unlikely to validate all the rights that liberals have advocated or claimed to find in our Constitution -that, indeed, is what gives my position its bite- it is quite capable of allaying the most pressing liberal fears." (p.7)
"To say that governments may legitimately try to promote the good is to take no special position about what is good. Moreover, to tie the case against neutralism to any single conception would be strategically unwise, since in a pluralistic society, no single conception can be expected to command general assent. Still, even granting this, there remain two compelling reasons to take and defend a position about the good life. One reason, internal to my argument, is that some who favor neutralism do so precisely on the grounds that no such position can be rationally defended. The most effective way to answer them is to offer an argument of the kind that they say cannot
be produced. But another, even more important reason to mount such an argument is that the neutrality debate does not take place in a cultural vacuum. It occurs at a time when long-held values of virtue, excellence, and reason are under wide attack." (p.7)
"One way to classify substantive theories of the good is on a continuum from subjective to objective." (p.
"By "substantive theories I mean theories that single out specific traits or activities as superior to others. Thus, as defined, the continuum does not include expressivism or any other variant of noncognitivism ; for the primary question that these theories seek to answer is not Which things are good? but What do we mean (or what are we doing) when we say that something is good ?" (note 5 p.
"One way to classify substantive theories of the good is on a continuum from subjective to objective. At the subjective end, we find the view that all value depends on people's actual preferences, choices, or affective states. Simply by wanting, choosing, or enjoying something, a person (somehow) confers value on it. A bit less extreme, but still quite subjective, is the view that what is valuable is not what persons actually want, choose, or enjoy, but what they would want, choose, or enjoy under (more) ideal conditions - for example, if they were more instrumentally rational, better informed, or better able to imagine alternatives. Still less subjective is the view that while the value of a trait or activity does depend on certain facts about the individual who has or engages in it, the relevant facts concern neither his actual nor his ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments, but certain broad capacities that all members of his species share. On this account, the good life for humans is the one that most fully realizes these fundamental capacities. Finally, at the extreme objectivist end of the spectrum, we find the view that the value of a trait or activity depends on nothing at all except its own nature. Because this view implies that the trait or activity would have the same value whatever else were the case, it alone treats that value as simply intrinsic.
This scheme is crude in various respects. For one thing, it ignores what many consider an important distinction between theories of what is good for persons and theories of what is good simpliciter. For another, it makes no mention of mixed theories, such as the view that both desire-satisfaction and various traits, activities, or types of relationship are good just in themselves. Still, despite these omissions, the scheme provides enough structure to allow me to introduce some definitions. In what follows, I shall call any variant of the first two views - any theory that traces all value to some combination of actual or ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments -a form of subjectivism. By contrast, if a view denies that these factors exhaust the determinant of value, I shall call it a form of perfectionism. Because one version of what I shall call perfectionism grounds the good life for humans in the realization of their fundamental capacities, and because these fundamental capacities are distinct from any of the specific activities or traits that realize them, some whom I classify as perfectionists do not believe that any activities or traits are intrinsically valuable. The related form of value that they do attribute I shall instead call inherent. Thus, on my account, one may qualify as a perfectionist by saying that certain activities and traits are either intrinsically or inherently valuable. By introducing these definitions, I imply that subjectivism and perfectionism are exhaustive categories. I imply, too, that if someone holds the mixed view that some value is conferred by actual or ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments while some is not, he counts as a perfectionist rather than a subjectivist." (pp.8-9)
"Because "perfectionist" has no canonical meaning, it may be helpful to compare my definition to a number of others. Perhaps the most significant division is between those who interpret perfectionism only as a view about the good, and those who also take it to involve a view about the right. Of the latter thinkers, the most prominent is John Rawls, who defines perfectionism as the view that we should maximize human excellence. (Later in A Theory of Justice, Rawls extends this definition to encompass the more moderate view that promoting excellence is only one duty among others.) Among those who construe perfectionism only as a view about the good, some take it to equate the good with excellence or perfection itself, others take it to equate the good with the advanced development, or perfection, of certain characteristically human capacities, and still others take it to say only that some traits, activities, or forms of life are intrinsically better (or more "perfect") than others. Although my definition differs from all of these, it coincides roughly with the conjunction of the last two. Also, although I do not include any of the other claims in my definition, I do agree that excellence is one (though not the only) perfectionist good and that both individuals and the state ought to promote (though not maximize) such goods. Thus, in the end, my view will incorporate much, though far from all, of what most perfectionists have wanted to say.
One need not, of course, be this or any other kind of perfectionist to be opposed to neutralism. Instead, even someone who believes that only enjoyment or desire-satisfaction has value can take the position that some activities, traits, or relations are more conducive to it than others ; and he can say, further, that the state should promote these value-conducive activities and traits while discouraging or suppressing others. Such a person would clearly be a subjectivist rather than any kind of perfectionist ; but because he would believe that the state should promote (what he takes to be) the good, he would, on at least some readings, not be a neutralist. Still, despite this possibility, the affinities between neutralism and subjectivism remain clear and close. Other things being equal, each person can be presumed to know his own desires and tendencies best, and each can be presumed to care more than others about his own satisfaction and enjoyment. These facts give subjectivists special reasons to doubt that governments can effectively promote the good."(pp.9-10)
-George Sher, Beyond Neutrality. Perfectionism and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 251 pages.
"In this book, I shall present a view about government and the good life, one intermediate between two familiar extremes. At one extreme are views that the connection between government and the good life is internal - that living well requires governing as well as being governed, as Aristotle thought, or that the state exists to realize some other vision of the good. At the other extreme is the view that there is no connection between government and the good life - that the state should simply be neutral toward all conceptions of the good. Between these extremes, there is room for a third type of view, one that does not seek to ground the state in any particular conception of the good, but nevertheless holds that a government may legitimately promote the good. The view that I shall advance is of this third sort. To defend it, I must defuse the main reasons to deny that the state may seek to promote the good; to motivate it, I must develop a conception of the good that is worth promoting. These, accordingly, are the book's two main aims." (1)
"In recent years, many who call themselves liberals [comme J. Rawls, R. Nozick, B. Ackerman, R. Dworkin, C. Larmore, D. A. Lloyd-Thomas, W. ill Kymlick, R. Arnerson, et, plus anciennement et partiellement, J. S. Mill et Thomas Nagel] have maintained that the state should not favor, promote, or act on any particular conception of the good. Instead, it should simply provide a neutral and just framework within which each citizen can pursue the good as he understands it. To provide this framework, a government must sometimes interfere with liberty. It must restrict its citizens' options in order to insure security and stability, promote prosperity and efficiency, and make available various public goods. Also, if justice requires more equality than unconstrained markets can provide, the state must intervene to equalize opportunity or resources. But, according to the view under discussion, this is all that government should do. If in addition it tries to make citizens more virtuous, to raise their level of culture or civility, or to prevent them from living degraded lives, it oversteps its bounds. Even if some traits or activities are genuinely better than others, no government should promote the better or suppress or discourage the worse. About all questions of the good life, the state should remain strictly neutral.
Even in summary statement, this neutralist picture is instantly recognizable. It is, indeed, a picture that no contemporary Westerner can altogether escape. Although barraged by competing ideologies and social schemes, we have all absorbed, by a kind of cultural osmosis, the ideas that self-expression, choice, and diversity are paramount, and that how a person lives is less important than whether he lives as he prefers and chooses. We also worry, unfortunately with justification, that by tolerating departures from official neutrality, we risk allowing the state's coercive apparatus to be captured by fanatics, bullies, or worse. Neutralism also draws support from our uncertainty about where our deepest values lie and which ways of living really are best - an uncertainty that is the inevitable byproduct of our (on the whole extremely salutary) critical attitude toward all belief. Given this confluence of factors, there is a strong sense in which all, or all but a very few, contemporary Americans and Europeans must feel the pull of neutralism." (pp.1-2)
"If, as I believe, some traits, activities, and ways of relating to people really are superior to others, and if there are no defensible reasons for governments not to promote these, then many citizens of neutral states will end up with lives that are not as good as they could be. Conversely, by combining some state efforts on behalf of the good with some liberal strictures against state excess, we may hope to increase significantly the likelihood that many citizens will live genuinely good lives." (p.3)
"Consider first an objection that, if sound, would make short work of neutralism. To warrant serious consideration, the neutralist ideal must be one that governments can at least approach, even if not fully attain. But many believe that no government can even approach neutrality, since every law, policy, and political institution must automatically favor many conceptions of the good while disfavoring many others. For example, even an institution as necessary as a police force or army must require and reward traits like discipline, courage, and respect for authority. In so doing, it must favor all conceptions of the good that prize these traits over (say) spontaneity, gentleness, and compassion. This, it seems, is an obvious breach of neutrality. Moreover, the case is not isolated: governments also favor specific conceptions of the good by adopting particular tax structures, zoning laws, and environmental policies, and by taking countless other actions. But if breaches of neutrality are so pervasive and inevitable, then isn't neutralism doomed from the start ? If this objection succeeded, there would be little point in going on.
But most neutralists believe it does not, and their reasons are instructive. The standard response is to distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of neutralism. The stronger version asserts that governments may not adopt any laws or policies that have the effect of promoting any particular conceptions of the good, whereas the weaker asserts only that governments may not take any actions in order to promote any such conceptions. In Will Kymlicka's useful terms, the stronger version demands consequential, the weaker only justificatory neutrality. This distinction is important because the current objection -that any government action must favor some conceptions of the good over others- tells only against the possibility of consequential neutrality. Hence, the obvious way to meet it is to interpret neutralism solely in justificatory terms. Under this interpretation, neutralism is exclusively a thesis about the reasons for which governments may act.
Like most neutralists, I believe the fundamental issue is one of justification; but, unlike them, I do not believe that any kinds of reasons are in principle inadmissible in politics. Instead, I believe it is no less legitimate for governments than for private individuals to try to promote the good." (pp.3-4)
" [A non-neutral state] can also guarantee most if not all of the substantive rights that liberals have traditionally favored. At first glance, this may not be obvious; for if citizens have rights to express themselves, practice their religion, travel, and own property, then governments cannot promote the good in any ways that these rights prohibit. But the ability to promote the good is not all-or-nothing, and even a set of rights that does protect some activities must leave many others unprotected. Hence, a democratic (or, for that matter, undemocratic) government can both acknowledge many substantive rights and still leave much latitude for nonneutral legislation.
The interesting question, of course, is how far that latitude should extend, and how the rights that limit it can be justified. If we reject the ideal of neutrality, we cannot say, with Ronald Dworkin, that civil rights exist precisely to disallow the policies that are most likely to be adopted for nonneutral reasons. But even without this justification, there remain various reasons to protect especially sensitive or strategic areas of life. Although this approach is unlikely to validate all the rights that liberals have advocated or claimed to find in our Constitution -that, indeed, is what gives my position its bite- it is quite capable of allaying the most pressing liberal fears." (p.7)
"To say that governments may legitimately try to promote the good is to take no special position about what is good. Moreover, to tie the case against neutralism to any single conception would be strategically unwise, since in a pluralistic society, no single conception can be expected to command general assent. Still, even granting this, there remain two compelling reasons to take and defend a position about the good life. One reason, internal to my argument, is that some who favor neutralism do so precisely on the grounds that no such position can be rationally defended. The most effective way to answer them is to offer an argument of the kind that they say cannot
be produced. But another, even more important reason to mount such an argument is that the neutrality debate does not take place in a cultural vacuum. It occurs at a time when long-held values of virtue, excellence, and reason are under wide attack." (p.7)
"One way to classify substantive theories of the good is on a continuum from subjective to objective." (p.
"By "substantive theories I mean theories that single out specific traits or activities as superior to others. Thus, as defined, the continuum does not include expressivism or any other variant of noncognitivism ; for the primary question that these theories seek to answer is not Which things are good? but What do we mean (or what are we doing) when we say that something is good ?" (note 5 p.
"One way to classify substantive theories of the good is on a continuum from subjective to objective. At the subjective end, we find the view that all value depends on people's actual preferences, choices, or affective states. Simply by wanting, choosing, or enjoying something, a person (somehow) confers value on it. A bit less extreme, but still quite subjective, is the view that what is valuable is not what persons actually want, choose, or enjoy, but what they would want, choose, or enjoy under (more) ideal conditions - for example, if they were more instrumentally rational, better informed, or better able to imagine alternatives. Still less subjective is the view that while the value of a trait or activity does depend on certain facts about the individual who has or engages in it, the relevant facts concern neither his actual nor his ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments, but certain broad capacities that all members of his species share. On this account, the good life for humans is the one that most fully realizes these fundamental capacities. Finally, at the extreme objectivist end of the spectrum, we find the view that the value of a trait or activity depends on nothing at all except its own nature. Because this view implies that the trait or activity would have the same value whatever else were the case, it alone treats that value as simply intrinsic.
This scheme is crude in various respects. For one thing, it ignores what many consider an important distinction between theories of what is good for persons and theories of what is good simpliciter. For another, it makes no mention of mixed theories, such as the view that both desire-satisfaction and various traits, activities, or types of relationship are good just in themselves. Still, despite these omissions, the scheme provides enough structure to allow me to introduce some definitions. In what follows, I shall call any variant of the first two views - any theory that traces all value to some combination of actual or ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments -a form of subjectivism. By contrast, if a view denies that these factors exhaust the determinant of value, I shall call it a form of perfectionism. Because one version of what I shall call perfectionism grounds the good life for humans in the realization of their fundamental capacities, and because these fundamental capacities are distinct from any of the specific activities or traits that realize them, some whom I classify as perfectionists do not believe that any activities or traits are intrinsically valuable. The related form of value that they do attribute I shall instead call inherent. Thus, on my account, one may qualify as a perfectionist by saying that certain activities and traits are either intrinsically or inherently valuable. By introducing these definitions, I imply that subjectivism and perfectionism are exhaustive categories. I imply, too, that if someone holds the mixed view that some value is conferred by actual or ideal desires, choices, or enjoyments while some is not, he counts as a perfectionist rather than a subjectivist." (pp.8-9)
"Because "perfectionist" has no canonical meaning, it may be helpful to compare my definition to a number of others. Perhaps the most significant division is between those who interpret perfectionism only as a view about the good, and those who also take it to involve a view about the right. Of the latter thinkers, the most prominent is John Rawls, who defines perfectionism as the view that we should maximize human excellence. (Later in A Theory of Justice, Rawls extends this definition to encompass the more moderate view that promoting excellence is only one duty among others.) Among those who construe perfectionism only as a view about the good, some take it to equate the good with excellence or perfection itself, others take it to equate the good with the advanced development, or perfection, of certain characteristically human capacities, and still others take it to say only that some traits, activities, or forms of life are intrinsically better (or more "perfect") than others. Although my definition differs from all of these, it coincides roughly with the conjunction of the last two. Also, although I do not include any of the other claims in my definition, I do agree that excellence is one (though not the only) perfectionist good and that both individuals and the state ought to promote (though not maximize) such goods. Thus, in the end, my view will incorporate much, though far from all, of what most perfectionists have wanted to say.
One need not, of course, be this or any other kind of perfectionist to be opposed to neutralism. Instead, even someone who believes that only enjoyment or desire-satisfaction has value can take the position that some activities, traits, or relations are more conducive to it than others ; and he can say, further, that the state should promote these value-conducive activities and traits while discouraging or suppressing others. Such a person would clearly be a subjectivist rather than any kind of perfectionist ; but because he would believe that the state should promote (what he takes to be) the good, he would, on at least some readings, not be a neutralist. Still, despite this possibility, the affinities between neutralism and subjectivism remain clear and close. Other things being equal, each person can be presumed to know his own desires and tendencies best, and each can be presumed to care more than others about his own satisfaction and enjoyment. These facts give subjectivists special reasons to doubt that governments can effectively promote the good."(pp.9-10)
-George Sher, Beyond Neutrality. Perfectionism and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 251 pages.
