Sandel Criticizes The Three Dimensions Of Liberalism's Neutrality

For nearly half a century,liberal neutrality has attracted wide attention from political philosophers,including the defending of its position by liberals who adhere to the principle of neutrality,and the continuous criticism of political philosophers who oppose the principle of liberal neutrality.Sandel,as one of the central figures in the debate of political philosophy in the 1980 s,has criticized liberal political philosophy from the very beginning and tried to provide a public philosophy with the color of civic republicanism to replace the dominant position of liberal neutrality principle in the field of western public political discourse.For this reason,Sandel’s logical starting point and path of criticizing liberalism neutrality has become an important index to examine the rationality of his own thoughts.From Sandel’s published works,we can clearly see that Sandel’s criticism of liberalism neutrality has a distinct sense of hierarchy,which can be summarized in three dimensions: the philosophy of subjectivity dimension,the historical practice dimension and the public life dimension.The three dimensions have distinct differences in narrative,but also contain profound logical connections.The philosophy of subjectivity dimension destroys the philosophical foundation of contemporary liberals.The philosophical foundation of liberalism is mainly laid by Kant and Mill,and is integrated into Rawls’ own theory of justice.Rawls is an important coordinate of Sandel’s criticism of liberalism.The dimension of historical practice is to reveal the failure of political practice dominated by the principle of neutrality in the past hundred years.In the past hundred years,American judicial and political practice has been regarded by Sandel as the concrete embodiment of the principle of neutrality.Therefore,Sandel also focuses on the defects of democratic practice in American history,while the dimension of public life focuses on the poverty of public discourse and the root of democratic discontent.The source,and also pointed to the principle of liberal neutrality.In Sandel’s theory,the three dimensions of criticism all reject the value of neutrality.However,it have also been that Sandel’s critical theory contains many untenable arguments,and its authenticity has also been greatly questioned due to the lack of theoretical characteristics of construction.However,no matter how true Sandel’s critical theory is,it has to be admittedthat since the political philosophers labeled "communitarianism" came to the stage of history,British and American political philosophers,together with postmodernists,put the established values and ideals since the Enlightenment in a position that should be re-tested and criticized.Sandel is one of the best among them,who has not only different views and attitudes towards the traditional heterogeneity,but also many possibilities for the future.But what is more noteworthy is that the Post-Rawls political philosophy is still uncertainty.