Against the Asymmetry Objection

Abstract

One of the key objections raised against political liberalism is the argument from asymmetry, which claims that political liberalism holds double standards between its treatment of the right and the good. According to political liberalism, the question of the good life, unlike the question of political justice, fundamentally divides even reasonable people in a liberal society, so the most sensible thing to do is for the state to refrain from making references, let alone officially endorsing, comprehensive doctrines in order to avoid implications of paternalism and even totalitarianism. However, it is also reasonable to assume that similar disagreements exist in the realm of justice. According to Joseph Chan, liberals “owe perfectionists an account as to why the state’s enforcement of controversial decisions is problematic only in the case of conceptions of the good life and not in non-good-life issues like social justice.” In other words, liberals must show that the distinction between social justice and the good life is so deep that they warrant asymmetric treatments. For instance, why is it not justified for the liberal state to endorse Aristotelian teleological ethics, whereas its endorsement of court decisions, policies on national defense, and education reforms that are no less controversial is considered legitimate? Michael Sandel argues that “political liberalism must assume not only that the exercise of human reason under conditions of freedom will produce disagreements about the good life but also that the exercise of human reason under conditions of freedom will not produce disagreements of justice.” The asymmetry objection is considered by many to be so powerful that “as long as [it] remains unanswered, the pursuit of justice opens the door to perfectionism.” As Jonathan Quong correctly points out, the asymmetry objection, instead of challenging the main assumptions from which political liberalism begins, “purports to show that political liberalism is not even internally coherent; that liberal neutrality concerning the good cannot be consistently derived from within the political liberal position.” The force of the asymmetry objection is thus twofold. First, it casts doubt on the distinction between the right and the good that lies in the heart of political liberalism. If this distinction is blurred, people who are sympathetic to perfectionism will have the ground to propose alternatives to the neutral state, albeit liberal or not. Second, the objection also turns some of the most widely used political liberal defenses against political liberalism and vindicates the reasonability of perfectionism.