A critique of Alan Patten's neutrality as equal accommodation on the necessity of radicalizing liberal neutrality

Abstract

According to liberal orthodoxy, justice requires a regime of rights and benefits distributed in a manner that is blind to social difference; providing that the standard package of liberal rights is secured, there is no room to further lodge a justice-based complaint. In contrast, advocates for marginalized and disadvantaged groups and cultures deem the existing liberal regime to be insufficient and unfair, claiming the necessity of extra measures to accommodate for the difference. Their normative position originates from suffering or distress, but this also makes their claim vulnerable to the challenge that its criteria for justice are excessively shaped by the (political) goal of securing a particular outcome, such as the prevention of a cultural decline.

Alan Patten (2014) claims to identify a progressive but non-outcome-based solution to this dilemma, in which there is a cutoff point determined by an independent standard of fairness beyond which further assistance, accommodation, and recognition for the group or its culture is not mandated by justice. Central to this independent standard of fairness is Patten’s novel conception of neutrality. Given that neutrality of aims or justification is underreaching, and neutrality of effects overreaching, Patten proposes a distinctive, middle-ground conception of “neutrality of treatment,” according to which a state’s policies ought to be equally accommodating toward rival conceptions of the good.

This thesis investigates the ambiguities and tensions inherent in Patten’s conception: on the one hand, its distinctiveness hinges on a notion of accommodation that is identified by a disposition to produce certain effects; on the other hand, Patten attempts to argue that neutrality of treatment can be established on the basis of equal state inputs, which are independent to and distant from the outcomes of state policies. However, I argue that this unrefined formula of equal inputs runs the risk of overlooking, and failing to accommodate, individuals’ heterogeneous goals and natures. In light of Christoph Menke’s analysis (2006) of the internally reflective constitution of the modern attitude of equality, I demonstrate that true neutrality requires a process of equal determination not only by us from our own perspective but equally by others from their perspectives. Consequently, the input metrics of neutrality cannot be stipulated a priori but are processual and politically dissentious in character.

Developing from David Miller’s conception of what might be referred as neutrality of institutional effects (1990), I further propose that equal accommodation can be understood as neutralizing from the ends of both inputs and outputs, simultaneously, as a unified conception; however, equal inputs cannot be stipulated in isolation from the feedback on outputs. As such, a state’s responsibility to be neutral cannot be analytically defined through abstract reason in a conclusive manner without engaging in conversation with various groups about their concrete and particular complaints and political agendas; a neutral framework might consist of numerous compensations and adjustments on an ongoing basis. Thus understood, neutrality is a standard of justice not independent from politics but to be sought within and through the never-ending political contestation regarding the value of myriad human differences.