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Liberal Neutrality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Lawrence Haworth
Lawrence Haworth
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

In Patterns of Moral Complexity, Charles Larmore describes three related ways in which moral and political theory are more complex than is often allowed. He objects to three parallel simplifications: that moral decision making largely consists in the application of rules to particular situations; that the ideals by which we are guided in our personal (private, social) lives should also do service as political ideals, a simplification which he calls “expressivism”; and that there is but a single source of moral value (that we must be either consequentialists, or deontologists, or endorse the “principle of partiality”). Against these simplifications he argues in a sort of Aristotelian way for (1) the centrality of judgment in moral reasoning; (2) for the liberal principle that the state should not strive to express our highest personal ideal; and (3) for the, I suppose eclectic, view that partiality, deontological reasons, and consequentialist reasons all have a place in moral reasoning and that therefore the moral person may well be caught in conflicts that present him or her with tragic choices. These are the three “patterns of moral complexity” that the title of the book refers to.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , Winter 1988 , pp. 711 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1988

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References

1 Larmore, Charles, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 7: 1932, ed. Boydston, J. A. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 249–252, 406–411Google Scholar. For a concise account of Green's position, see Dewey, John, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), 23–27.Google Scholar

3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Harvard University Press, 1971), 560.Google Scholar

4 The idea of a norm of rational conversation is derived from J. Habermas. See especially Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

5 There is a superficial similarity here with the sense in which criminal laws and associated enforcement practices are coercive: one incurs the legal penalty on condition that one commits the offence; typically, there are alternatives to committing the offence and these carry opportunity costs. That the similarity is superficial can be seen by recalling that tax evasion is a criminal offence. One has an alternative to avoiding paying one's taxes; that is, one can pay them. If one chooses the alternative one escapes the penalty. The fact that there are alternatives of this sort does not mitigate the coerciveness of the tax laws and associated enforcement practices. In the text, the relevant “alternatives” are alternatives to acquiring taxable income and thereby incurring tax liability, not to avoiding paying the tax for which one is liable.

6 Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt, 1927).Google Scholar