Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Mill's On Liberty: Introduction
- 1 Mill's case for liberty
- 2 Mill's liberal principles and freedom of expression
- 3 Racism, blasphemy, and free speech
- 4 State neutrality and controversial values in On Liberty
- 5 Rawls's critique of On Liberty
- 6 Mill on consensual domination
- 7 Autonomy, tradition, and the enforcement of morality
- 8 Mill and multiculturalism
- 9 Mill, liberty, and (genetic) “experiments in living”
- 10 John Stuart Mill, Ronald Dworkin, and paternalism
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - State neutrality and controversial values in On Liberty
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Mill's On Liberty: Introduction
- 1 Mill's case for liberty
- 2 Mill's liberal principles and freedom of expression
- 3 Racism, blasphemy, and free speech
- 4 State neutrality and controversial values in On Liberty
- 5 Rawls's critique of On Liberty
- 6 Mill on consensual domination
- 7 Autonomy, tradition, and the enforcement of morality
- 8 Mill and multiculturalism
- 9 Mill, liberty, and (genetic) “experiments in living”
- 10 John Stuart Mill, Ronald Dworkin, and paternalism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I MILL: A “COMPREHENSIVE” DEFENSE OF LIBERAL NEUTRALITY?
In an important essay Charles Larmore tells us that
Kant and Mill sought to justify the principle of political neutrality by appealing to ideals of autonomy and individuality. By remaining neutral with regard to controversial views of the good life, constitutional principles will express, according to them, what ought to be of supreme value throughout the whole of our life.
On Larmore's influential reading, Mill defended what we might call first-level neutrality: Millian principles determining justified legal (and, we might add, social) intervention are neutral between competing conceptions of the good life. However, Larmore insists that Millian neutral political principles do not possess second-level neutrality: they do not have a neutral justification. “The problem with Mill's value-based defense of liberalism,” Larmore holds, is that because the value of individuality is “far from uncontroversial,” Mill's case liberalism is open to reasonable objection. In contrast Larmore and, of course, John Rawls, seek to develop a “political liberalism” that defends liberal neutrality without appeal to a “general ‘philosophy of man’ or a ‘comprehensive moral ideal.’” The justification of liberal principles “must be acceptable by reasonable people having different views of the good life, not just those who share, for example, Mill's ideal of the person.” Liberals, argues Larmore, need “a neutral justification of neutrality.”
This chapter challenges this widely accepted view of Mill as presenting a “comprehensive” defense of liberalism, to be sharply contrasted with the “political liberalism” of Larmore and Rawls.
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- Mill's On LibertyA Critical Guide, pp. 83 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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