Neutrality And Perfection

Among the basic concepts of contemporary political philosophy, there is probably no such one that is more ambiguous and controversial than liberalism. The reason lies in that most Western countries has adopted the basic principle of liberalism in their political practice. But owing to different times and cultures that people live in, people’s understanding of liberalism are diverse and different. However, no matter how various the form of liberalism is, its goal of pursuing and protecting personal freedom would nevertheless change. We all know that the liberals who mainly discuss the relationship between the individual and the state care about the interference that the nation has placed on personal freedom. The reason why the liberals study and care about these problems is that modern society represents itself with diversities, resulting in the differences that exist in people’s understanding of goodness and good lifestyle. Facing with the society with pluralism, the liberals think that people should keep impartial attitude towards their thoughts of goodness and ideals when they take fairness in politics into consideration. That is, although the ideal life itself is valuable, the government has no obligation to promote and realize it. This kind of liberalism is also known as the "anti-perfectionism ", including Rawls’ equality of liberalism and Nozick ’s extreme liberalism.Anti-perfectionism worries that the state or government will menace to individual’s freedom, thus the government is required to maintain neutrality inbetween people’s concept of goodness while leaving out the consideration of the truthfulness of goodness or moral ideal. In this regard, Raz criticized the view of "anti-perfectionism" and tried to explore a path of " liberalism perfectionism" between liberalism and Communitarianism, which holds the opinion that the state or government is obliged to perfect the citizen’s lifestyle, the major responsibilities of the state is to promote good lifestyles while preventing bad ones so as to enable the citizens to realize the perfect life. In Raz’s view, the state or government is not the enemy of freedom but the source of it. It is whether or not the state or government should intervene in personal life that leads to the discussion between perfectionism and anti-perfectionism, based on which we should think deeply into the neutrality of liberalism in order to explore the view of liberal perfectionism while discovering its limitations, and which exactly could be compensated by Confucianism. This paper is the result of the focus and reflections on those arguments.The first part is about the study on the neutrality of liberalism, which aims to describe problems. The idea of liberalism has been produced and developed on the basis of the disintegration of community and the formation of society, the dual division of the public and private sphere, and the existence of diverse society and rational differences. The theory of it emphasizes that the state should maintain a neutral attitude towards the concept of goodness and ideals that people have. The reason lies in that a good life is diversified in people’s mind, and the state is unable to form an unified standard to judge which concept is valuable. In anti—perfectionists’ view, political ethics was set up in perfectionism on the basis of metaphysical notions which are full of disputes and even conflicts, while allowing the government to promote the implement of goodness by using coercive means. As a result, other important concepts of goodness and ideals would have become the tool of it, thus resulting in patriarchal system and even centralized system. At the same time, perfectionism can’t provide the modern society with pertinent suggestion for the tolerance of free modern society and the stability of modern state. However, the liberal neutrality holders also justified their theories by such ideas as skepticism, autonomism and value pluralism.The second part illustrates the criticism that Raz has made on liberalism neutrality for the purpose of analyzing problems. Generally speaking, antiperfectionism and political neutrality can be interchanged, their representatives are Rawls and Nozick. Rawls thinks that government behavior is to ensure that all the people would have equal rights in the pursuit of goodness and ideals, for which he demonstrates the neutrality by the theory of justice; Nozick believes that national political behavior aims at promoting and realizing individuals’ ideals, and the national behaviors should be restricted by taking the principle of right as the principle of marginal constraints, he also use the rights of individuals to demonstrate that the state should remain neutral. Raz’s criticism on anti-perfectionist is mainly concentrated on the scholars themselves. He thinks that Rawls’ s theory of justice is inappropriate and Nozick’s idea of minimal state is unreasonable. Raz has divided the anti-perfectionism into the principle of neutrality and exclusion of ideals. He thinks the former emphasizes that the government should keep neutral towards people’s ideas of goodness; the latter stresses that the government is unable to decide whether people’s ideas of goodness and moral ideals is true or not. According to his demonstration, there is no strict neutrality and it’s wrong to exclude ideals, thus introducing the theory of liberalism perfectionism.The third part is the illustration of Raz’s liberalism perfectionism theory in order to solve problems. This paper firstly has made a brief introduction to Raz and taken three approaches which includes human nature perfectionism, objective list perfectionism and liberalism perfectionism to draw forth the thoughts of liberalism perfectionism that Raz believes. He believes that the value of freedom lies in the stimulative roles that it plays in the autonomous life so that people can smoothly choose a good life by their own wishes. As far as he is concerned, freedom is of intrinsic value for the formation of the autonomous life, and the instrumental value for the promotion of it, thus people’s happiness is to obtain from the autonomous life. Owing to the objective value that autonomous life has, government is obliged to promote good lifestyles and reject bad ones so as to actively build a good environment for people to live in autonomously. He also believes that individuals should be the creator of the whole life. Individuals, As the autonomy of ideal, people choose a target freely and implement it successfully which are regarded as autonomous life or personal happiness. The choice of personal goals and the obtain of happiness depend on the forms of society or collective goodness, therefore he is opposed to individualism while in favor of perfectionism. He believes that the value of political freedom should be built on non-individualist ethical basis, and that the government is not the enemy to freedom but the source of it. Raz elucidate the idea of perfection by the commitment of freedom and collective goodness, which also makes his understanding of government functions stronger than liberalism, but weaker than communitarianism.The fourth part discusses about Confucian perfectionism and contemporary ethics in order to reflect the reality. Although perfectionist and Neutrals have made their utmost to fight for their own views, there still has defectives according to their satisfactory. The argument of them is applied to self-behaviors concerning people themselves, not to mention being interested in doing things good to others. In this regard, Confucian perfectionism cares more about how to promote people’s personal goodness than to hinder their rascality’s to others. In another word, the state should not only sentence one according to the criminal law, but should provide more moral civilization which means to implement the criminal law along with a heart of compassion so as to recover his goodness. What’s more, we should also notice that the study of political philosophic theories depends on social life and contemporary ethic life. The contemporary society is open, equal and diverse. When faced with the topic of ethic philosophy, the moral structure of it is required to cover ethic line, common faith and ultimate concern. In the process of pursuing perfection by the use of science and technology, the government is asked not to remain neutral but shall support and promote the rational use of science and technology while opposing to or impeding the abuse of it; When confronted with the realistic problem of the new historical starting point in China, the rule of law and rule of virtue and good governance should be applied to the governance of the country. Therefore, when we are in the face of contemporary social issues, we should not only respect the autonomy of individuals and competitiveness pluralism, and shall recognize the universality and importance of government’s moral civilization.A significant feature of the contemporary political liberalism is the principle of neutrality. It aims at coping with the serious differences about good life under Modernity, and thus seeking for neutrality as the solution, namely the state remains neutral on the issue of value and the government only needs to protect the security of citizens while to support or advocate some concepts of goodness is not the government’s responsibility. Raz has criticized systematically the liberalism neutrality that the principle of neutrality is too simple and general. Therefore, he has put forward perfectionism which is based on freedom and collective goodness, proposing that the government is a reliable source of freedom. If a concept of goodness is of intrinsic value, the government should actively support and advocate its realization. Furthermore, an effective perfectionism not only respects the intrinsic value of freedom, but also base itself on the respect of social forms and common culture. However, neutrality- perfectionism have all neglected the moral dimension of the concerns of others, but Confucianism, as a political perfectionism, could aptly overcome the shortcomings of both. Therefore, in the face of Chinese and Western cultures and thoughts, we are supposed to not only achieve comparative dialogue discovering the similarity and difference between different philosophical traditions, but also keep pursuing cooperative dialogue while interpreting, explaining and studying for different cultures in order to achieve intercultural dialogue paradigm. Hence, we are able to go further.