Abstract
Timothy Michael Fowler has argued that, as a consequence of their commitment to neutrality in regard to comprehensive doctrines, political liberals face a dilemma. In essence, the dilemma for political liberals is that either they have to give up their commitment to neutrality (which is an indispensible part of their view), or they have to allow harm to children. Fowler’s case for this dilemma depends on ascribing to political liberals a view which grants parents a great degree of freedom in deciding on the education of their children. I show that ascribing this view to political liberals rests upon a misinterpretation of political liberalism. Since political liberals have access to reasons based upon the interests of children, they need not yield to parent’s wishes about the education of their children. A correct understanding of political liberalism thus shows that political liberals do not face the dilemma envisaged by Fowler.
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Notes
I focus, as does Fowler, on the political liberalism developed by Rawls. There may be other versions of political liberalism that actually are vulnerable to Fowler’s critique. My only claim is that the Rawlsian version is not.
On Rawls’ view, one does not look to presently existing comprehensive doctrines when one formulates a political conception of justice. Doing so would make political liberalism ‘political in the wrong way’ (Rawls 2005, p. 40). I believe that Fowler’s way of proceeding when taking account of different views on children’s upbringing is an example of this error (Fowler 2010, p. 369). Lack of space, however, makes me unable to argue for this here.
For more on the connection between the political conception of the person and primary goods, see (Rawls 2005, p. 75ff).
It might be objected that I shift here, from talking about political liberalism, to talking about a specific conception of justice. There is, however, no problem in doing so. Justice as fairness, as a liberal political conception, is supposed to be fully compatible with political liberalism. Indeed, if any conception of justice is so compatible, we should expect Rawls’s own conception to be.
Rawls distinguishes between two ways of understanding the capacity for a conception of the good: as a means to a person’s good and as part of a person’s good (Rawls 2005, p. 312). I focus on the former, since doing so is enough for my purposes here.
Whether it, in the end, is sufficiently independent is of course another question. I believe that it is, but this larger issue is not relevant for my purposes in this reply.
References
Fowler, Timothy Michael. 2010. The problems of liberal neutrality in upbringing. Res Publica 16: 367–381.
Rawls, John. 2005. Political liberalism: expanded edition. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Andersson, E. Political Liberalism and the Interests of Children: A Reply to Timothy Michael Fowler. Res Publica 17, 291–296 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9154-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9154-2