Liberal Neutrality and Oppression

September 11, 2017 - September 13, 2017
MANCEPT, University of Manchester

Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
United Kingdom

View the Call For Papers

Organisers:

Elizabeth Edenberg
Georgetown University
Emily McGill-Rutherford
Keene State College

Topic areas

Talks at this conference

Add a talk

Details

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss liberal neutrality and oppression.

Liberal political philosophers place great value on securing the liberty and equality of all citizens. Traditionally, valuing liberty requires a commitment to individual autonomy, understood broadly as the ability to direct one’s personal life according to one’s choices. Yet individual liberty is often in tension with securing the equality of citizens in the political sphere. Adjudicating this tension is value-laden. When liberty and equality conflict, what role should the state play in ensuring that all citizens are free and equal?

In addition to valuing liberty and equality, political liberalism is also devoted to the ideal of state neutrality, according to which the state should not exhibit bias toward one set of value commitments over others. Given that adjudicating between liberty and equality is value-laden, is the liberal state bound to violate the norms of neutrality? In other words, are liberal values bound to be comprehensive, or is political liberalism a viable position?

These questions are especially relevant to debates surrounding liberalism’s emancipatory potential. Working to eliminate the oppression of marginalized groups seems to require at least a thin commitment to autonomy or a substantive conception of equality on the part of the state; but insofar as the state promotes either, it may fail to be politically
liberal. Topics to be discussed at this workshop include:

  • Exploring and/or questioning the emancipatory potential of liberalism
  • Exploring whether and, if so, how public reason constrains the political projects of feminism, racism, ableism, etc.
  • Competing conceptions of liberal neutrality
  • Objections to neutrality as a commitment of liberalism
  • The relationship between personal and political autonomy
  • The connection between liberal neutrality and justification
  • How to balance individual liberty with a commitment to equality

Supporting material

Add supporting material (slides, programs, etc.)

Reminders

Registration

No

Who is attending?

No one has said they will attend yet.

Will you attend this event?


Let us know so we can notify you of any change of plan.