In the few decades a new conception of liberalism has arisen—the “public reason view” — which developed out of contractualist approaches to justifying liberalism. The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all stressed that the justification of the state depended on showing that everyone would, in some way, consent to it. By relying on consent, social contract theory seemed to suppose a voluntarist conception of political justice: what is just depends on what people choose to agree to — (...) what they will. As Hume famously pointed out, such accounts seem to imply that ultimately political justice derives from promissory obligations, which the social contract theory leaves unexplained.1 Only in Kant, I think, does it become clear that consent is not fundamental to a social contract view: we have a duty to agree to act according to the idea of the “original contract.”2 Rawls’s revival of social contract theory in A Theory of Justice also made no important appeal to consent, though the apparatus of an “original agreement” of sorts persisted. The aim of the original position, Rawls announced, is to settle “the question of justification…by working out a problem of deliberation.”3 As the question of public justification takes center stage (we might say as contractualist liberalism becomes justificatory liberalism), it becomes clear that posing the problem of justification in terms of a deliberative or a bargaining problem is simply a heuristic: the real issue.. (shrink)

Compared to other debates in contemporary political philosophy, the light-to-heat ratio of discussions of neutrality has been somewhat dismal. Although most political philosophers seem to know whether they are for it or against it, there is considerable confusion about what “it” is. To be sure, some of this ambiguity has been noted, and at least partially dealt with, in the literature. Neutrality understood as a constraint on the sorts of reasons that may be advanced to justify state action is regularly (...) distinguished from “consequential neutrality”—that the effects of state policy must somehow be neutral.1 Yet interpretations of neutrality are far more diverse than most analyses recognize.2 Neutrality is sometimes understood as a doctrine about: the intent or aim of legislation or legislators,3 the proper functions of the state,4 the prohibition of the state “taking a stand” on some issues,5 the prohibition of the state enforcing moral character,6 or the requirement that the state take a stance of impartiality.7 Alternatively, neutrality can be understood as a requirement of a theory justice rather than state action.8 There are also differences about whether neutral states (or theories.. (shrink)