Neutrality as a Basis for Minority Cultural Rights

Andrew Lister

doi:10.7202/1035334ar

Abstract

This comment examines the idea of ‘neutrality of treatment’ that is at the heart of Alan Patten’s defense of minority cultural rights in Equal Recognition. The main issue I raise is whether neutrality of treatment can do without an ‘upstream’ or foundational commitment to neutrality of justification.

Highlights

The problem is that neutrality of justification is overinclusive, which suggests that neutrality of justification is not enough, not that it is unnecessary or pernicious
If there is more than one alternate policy, there is more than one effect, and if the effects of a policy on different ways of life are equal compared to one alternate policy, they won’t in general be equal compared to others
The conclusion one might draw is not that liberals are uninterested in neutrality with respect to effects, but that they are interested in neutrality relative to the appropriate baseline, a property that is in any case shared by neutrality of treatment

Summary

Introduction

Liberal culturalism is the now-familiar view that some minority cultural rights are requirements of liberal justice (Patten, 2014, p. 3, citing Kymlicka, 2001, chap. 2). To make the basic-liberties criticism stick, Patten has to define the inequality as unequal impact relative to a particular alternative policy: locking people into their existing conceptions of the good

Results

Conclusion