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willow @dreary.dev

raymond geuss, history and illusion in politics, pg 79-80. liberalism and toleration

Relatively fancy efforts to distinguish between neutrality of outcomes (not always possible) and neutrality of reasons cited for action (possible),° seem pointless. Any seriously religious person will reject the very idea of neutral reasons. There are two distinct points here. First, there is the question whether there ever are any 'neutral' reasons, particularly in matters that concern one's basic world-view. Second, even if there were neutral reasons in some arcas, it might be inappropriate in areas of the gratest human concern to allow oneself to be moved by reasons that are neutral. For a seriously religious person it might seem that to accept the possibility of neutrality on issues of the greatest human concern is to decide to deprive oneself of the most important human good, the possibility of leading a life which is preemptively pervaded by religious truth. As a secularist and atheist I would myself welcome the demise of this kind of religious view, but I do not delude myself, as many liberals seem to do, into thinking I have 'neutral' grounds on which to object to it. To say to a non-liberal that one ought' to look for and accept neutral reasons is just to say that one ought to be a liberal, and if that is what one thinks (and can get one's opponent to accept) then there is no need for a detour through a theory of neutral reasons. It is no surprise that onc can give good liberal reasons for holding the views one holds in a liberal way (i.e. on purportedly 'neutral' grounds). An opponent who will not accept liberalism on other grounds will be likely to accept the doctrine of neutrality in any form.

March 29, 2025 at 3:53 PM

willow·Mar 29, 2025

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willow·Mar 29, 2025

raymond geuss, history and illusion in politics, pg 80. liberalism and toleration

It might be very nice if we could assume that we will always, or even very often, get agreement on neutral reasons, but there seem to me only two consistent positions here. The first is that of Habermas:' we have transcendentally binding grounds for knowing that everyone must be looking for a neutral standpoint, that such a standpoint is always in principle accessible to us, and that we will agree in recognising it when it is found and will all feel bound by moral arguments convincingly made from this standpoint. The second is that of Rorty:"' agreement is where you find it; there is not more of it around than there is, and that is usually little enough. Agreement is always contingent, and its motivational force problematic. Rorty's position gives one no general grounds to assume that neutral reasons will be available, no matter how hard onc tries to find or invent them, and also gives no grounds for thinking that citing neutral reasons, when they are available, will have any force. Habermas' position saddles one with an archaic and inherently implausible Kantian transcendentalism. There is nothing to be gained in trying to pursuc liberalism through the concept of neutrality.