Ratio Juris. Vol. 7 No.

3 December 1994 (314-24)

Political Liberalism.
Neutrality and the Political
CHANTAL MOUFFE

Abstract. The paper examines the current discussion in liberalism around the issue of
the “neutrality” of the state. It scrutinizes the ”political liberalism” defended by
John Rawls and Charles Larmore and shows that the consequence of their approach
is to evacuate the dimension of ”the political” from the idea of a well-ordered society.
By presenting the exclusions existing in their model of liberal society as the product
of free agreement resulting from rational procedures, “political liberals” offer us a
picture in which antagonism, violence and power have only disappeared because
they have been made invisible. The consequence is to leave liberalism unable to
conceptualize power and antagonism. The paper concludes that there cannot be such
a thing as a ”neutral justification of the neutrality of the state” (Larmore 1987) and
that a pluralist perfectionist perspective like the one proposed by Joseph Raz offers a
more adequate way to envisage the specificity of modern pluralist democracy.

The accepted wisdom concerning the “neutrality of the state”- which is, as
we know, one of the most central tenets of liberalism-has recently been
challenged by an increasing number of liberals. They argue that far from
neglecting ideas about the good, liberalism is the embodiment of a specific
set of values.
Moreover, writers such as William Galston suggest that a liberal state (just
like any other political community) not only entails a specific notion of
human good as well as a set of distinctive values, they insist that it should be
defended on the very basis of those values, irrespective of the fact that their
impact on the different parts of society will be far from neutral.
Galston presents his liberalism as being more substantive and less
procedural than the current neutralist version. He considers their positions
inadequate precisely because they refuse to deal directly with substantive
issues while, simultaneously, they incorporate them as a given. In his recent
book, Liberal Purposes (1991) Galston demonstrates how the three most
important advocates of the neutral state, Rawls, Dworkin and Ackerman
cannot avoid referring to a substantive theory of the good (or what he calls
Q Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, M A 02142, USA
 Political Liberalism. Neufrality and the Political 315

a “rationalist humanism”), despite their attempt to avow the contrary. His

claim is that without their having acknowledged it, they
covertly rely on the same triadic theory of the good which assumes the worth of
human existence, the worth of human purposiveness and of fulfilment of human
purposes, and the worth of rationality as the chief constraint on social principles and
actions. (Galston 1991, 92)

Galston suggests that, to be consistent, liberal theorists should adopt a

perfectionist stance: That is, they should recognize openly that they are
indeed promoting a specific conception of the good, and that, given this
recognition, they are committed to the pursuit of both the ends and the
virtues constitutive of the liberal polity.
Having raised these issues, I want to examine this debate on neutrality
from a particular angle. I submit that what is really at stake in this discussion
is the crucial question of pluralism and its implications for liberal democracy.
Generally, that question comes down to this: How can social unity be
envisaged under modern conditions wherein a multiplicity of conflicting
and incommensurable conceptions of the good life must, of necessity, exist?
This is precisely the issue at the center of the “political liberalism’’ advocated
by John Rawls and, in a slightly different way, by Charles Larmore. I will
therefore organize my reflections around their writings. For their position
is particularly interesting given their intention to maintain the idea of
neutrality whilst at the same time reformulating it so as to allow or ”make
room” for moral concerns.
By “political liberalism,’’ both Rawls and Larmore refer to a form of
liberalism that is strictly “political” in the sense that it cannot rely on any
comprehensive moral ideal, i.e., on any philosophy of man similar to that
sustained in the work of liberal philosophers such as Kant or J. S . Mill. Both
Rawls and Larmore contend that precisely because liberal institutions are
to be accepted by people who disagree about the very nature of the good
life itself, those institutions cannot be justified on grounds that take eo ips0
what are bound to be controversial conceptions, like the ideals of Kantian
autonomy or Millian individuality.
Political liberals concede that the liberal state must necessarily make
reference to some idea of the common good and that it cannot be neutral with
respect to morality. But once they have granted the fact that they cannot do
without a theory of the good at some level, they claim that theirs is a minimal
theory and that it must be distinguished from full comprehensive views. For
theirs is, instead, a common morality, they argue, one that is restricted to
principles which can be accepted by people who have different and con-
flicting ideals of the good life. Indeed, this is, according to Larmore, the
proper meaning of the notion of ”neutrality”:
neutral principles are ones that we can just* without appealing to the controversial
views of the good life to which we happen to be committed. (Larmore 1990, 341)
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316 Chantal Moufe

Moreover, Rawls declares that his theory of justice is a “political,” and not
a “metaphysical” conception, whose aim is

to articulate a public basis of justification for the basic structure of a constitutional

regime working from fundamental intuitive ideas implicit in the public political
culture and abstracting from comprehensive religious, philosophical and moral
doctrines. (Rawls 1993, 192)

Political Liberalism and ”Neutrality”

Pluralism is accepted by perfectionist liberals as well as by the anti-
perfectionists. Given liberalism’s commitment to pluralism and the defence
of individual liberty, the two sides also agree that this requires, at the very
least, some limits to be established with respect to the problem of state
intervention. But what is contested is the status of those constraints and the
“neutral” character they are said to embody. This is one of the issues I would
like to elucidate at this point.
The type of constraint to be established all depends, I believe, on the way
pluralism is conceived. Political liberals insist on the need to respect what
they call the “fact” of pluralism, understood here as the multiplicity of
conceptions of the good that exist in modern democratic society. This ”fact”
of pluralism is important, it would appear, not because they see it as
particularly valuable, but because they argue that pluralism cannot be
eradicated without use of state coercion. Rawls, for instance, affirms that

the diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral

doctrines found in modern democratic societiesis not a mere historical condition that
may soon pass away; it is a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy.
(Rawls 1993, 36)

Within such a perspective, neutrality is understood as a kind of non-

interference with substantive views, while pluralism comes to be identified
with tolerance.
But pluralism can also be envisaged as an axiological principle. This kind
of ”value pluralism” is defended by Joseph Raz, and it leads him to establish
a connection between the ideal of personal autonomy and pluralism.
According to Raz, autonomy presupposes moral pluralism because it is only
when a person has a variety of morally acceptable options to choose from,
that she can live an autonomous life. “To put it more precisely,” he writes:

if autonomy is an ideal then we are committed to such a view of morality: valuing

autonomy leads to the endorsement of moral pluralism. (Raz 1986,399)

Contrary to Rawls, who believes that pluralism requires a rejection of

perfectionism, Raz sees a necessary link between the kind of perfectionism
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 Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political 317

to which he is committed and the existence of pluralism. This allows him to

visualize pluralism not merely as a “fact” to be accommodated, but as
something to be celebrated and, indeed, valued since it becomes the very
condition around which personal autonomy can be established. Obviously
then, given such a perspective, the fostering of pluralism cannot be
theorized under the mode of neutrality.

Pluralism and Social Unity

Once pluralism is accepted, the problem of social unity arises. This problem
is at the core of both Rawls’s and Larmore’s reflections. We find that in their
work “political liberalism” is presented as the system best able to secure
social unity under modern conditions, irrespective of the fact that there are
many competing conceptions about the nature of the good life. According to
Rawls the problem is

how to frame a conception of justice for a constitutional regime such as those who
support, or who might be brought to support, that kind of regime might also endorse
the political conception provided it did not conflict too sharply with their
comprehensive views. This leads to the idea of a political conception of justice a s a
freestanding view starting from the fundamental ideas of a democratic society and
presupposing no particular wider doctrine. (Rawls 1993, 40)

Liberalism can, of course, give different answers to the question of social

unity. Some liberals, for instance, consider that a Hobbesian modus uivendi
should be enough to provide the type of consensus required by a pluralistic
society; others believe that a constitutional consensus on established legal
procedures fulfils that role as effectively as would a consensus on justice. But
advocates of “political liberalism” are unsatisfied with either of these
solutions and argue, instead, that some form of moral consensus is required.
In clarifying their position, Larmore explains that they refuse to appeal to
the various controversial views of the good life, but also to skepticism which
is itself an item of reasonable disagreement. Moreover they are not satisfied
with a type of justification based merely on strategic considerations, a
Hobbesian justification grounded on purely prudential motives. Instead,
they consider that

only by finding a mean between these two extremescan liberalism work as a minimal
moral conception. (Larmore 1990, 346)

Everything, then, hinges on the possibility of reconciling consensus with

neutrality and morality. The solution put forward by Larmore is a form of
justification that relies on the two norms of rational dialogue and equal
respect. These two norms provide the reason why we are able to abstract
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318 Chantal Mouffe

from disputed views of the good life- and thus respect political neutrality-
when we devise principles for political order. Legitimate political principles
become, as a consequence, those which are arrived at through a rational
dialogue in which the parties are moved by the norm of equal respect. This
implies that

when disagreement arises, those wishing to continue the conversation should

withdraw to neutral ground, in order either to resolve the dispute or, if that cannot
be done rationally, to bypass it. (Larmore 1987, 59)

Similarly, we find in the case of Rawls, that the solution is to look for:

A political conception of justice that we hope can gain the support of an overlapping
consensus of reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines in a society
regulated by it. (Rawls 1993, 10)

To that end, he practices a method of "avoidance," hoping that, by ignoring

philosophical and moral controversies, a "free agreement" could be reached
through public reason, around a political conception of justice, in order to
regulate the basic structure of society. A similar method of avoidance is used
by Larmore in order to devise a common ground that would (supposedly)
allow followers of different ideals to get along together in society.
We find that both authors, by leaving aside religious, philosophical and
metaphysical disputes, present a strictly "political" understanding of lib-
eralism as providing the common ground that can still be reached, even
though there is no possibility of a common good. This constitutes for them
a type of consensus that manages to be neutral and moral at the same time.

Rationalism and the Evasion of the Political

I submit that "political liberalism's" attempt to find a principle of social unity
in the form of a neutrality grounded on rationality cannot succeed. More-
over, I want to show that it bears a serious consequence: It evacuates the
political from its idea of a well-ordered society and leaves liberalism un-
able to conceptualize power and antagonism. In this sense its proponents'
understanding of pluralism is severely limited and utterly inadequate for
democratic society.
When we examine their position closely, it becomes clear that in attempt-
ing to secure consensus in the public realm, they have had to relegate
pluralism and dissent to the private sphere. All controversial issues are taken
off the agenda in order to create the conditions for a rational consensus. As
a result, the realm of politics becomes merely the terrain where individuals,
stripped of their "disruptive" passions and beliefs, and understood as
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 Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political 319

rational agents pursuing their self-advantage, agree to submit to procedures

that they see as "fair" for adjudication between their claims.
This conception of politics, which one cannot but recognize as a typical
case of liberal negation of the very concept of the political itself, was one
already well criticized by Carl Schmitt, for whom

liberal concepts typically move between ethics (intellectuality) and economics

(trade). From that polarity they attempt to annihilate the political as a domain of
conquering power and repression. (Schmitt1976, 71)

For to envisage politics as a rational process of negotiation among

individuals is to obliterate all the dimensions of power and antagonism-
what I propose to call "the political"; it is to miss completely its very nature.
Indeed, it is to neglect the predominant role of passions as moving forces of
human conduct. Moreover, to insist on an individualized and private
rationality as the basis of politics is to miss entirely the reality that in the field
of politics, it is groups and collective identities that we encounter, not
isolated individuals. Its dynamics cannot be apprehended by reducing it to
individual calculations, even under the constraints of morality.
Clearly, this has devastating consequences for the liberal approach since,
as Freud has taught us, self-advantage might, in certain circumstances, be
an important motivation for the isolated individual, but it very seldom
determines the conduct of groups.
It is not necessary to endorse entirely Schmitt's conception of the political
to admit the strong point of his argument which exposes the shortcomings of
a view conceiving politics as a neutral domain insulated from all the divisive
issues that exist in the private realm. The liberal illusion that a universal
rational consensus could be produced by an undistorted dialogue and that
free public reason could guarantee the impartiality of the state can be sus-
tained only at the cost of denying the irreducible antagonistic element
present in any social relation. And that denial would have disastrous
consequences for the defence of democratic institutions. For negating the
political does not make it disappear; it only leads to bewilderment at its
manifestations and to impotence in attempting to deal with them.
Liberalism, in so far as it is formulated within a rationalistic and indi-
vidualistic framework, is, necessarily, blind to the existence of "the
political." As a result, it can only delude itself with regard to the nature of
politics. Indeed, it eliminates from the outset what is its "differentia specificu,"
its concern with collective action and its attempt to create unity in a field criss-
crossed with antagonisms; it overlooks the fact that it is concerned with the
construction of collective identities and the creation of a "we" as opposed to
a "them."
One could say, rather, that politics, as the attempt to domesticate
"the political"- to keep at bay the forces of destruction and to establish
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320 Cha ntal Mouffe

order-always has to do with conflicts and antagonisms. Indeed, it requires

an understanding that every consensus is, by necessity, based on acts of
exclusion and that there can never be a fully inclusive "rational" consensus.
Within the field of what is broadly referred to as "post-structuralism"
there is a useful conception that can help us to clarlfy this problem: It is the
idea of the "constitutive outside." Such a notion points to the fact that the
constitution of an identity is always based on excluding something and
establishing a violent hierarchy between the two resultant poles, be they
formlmatter, essencelaccident, blacklwhite, madwoman, etc. This means
that there is no identity that is always-already self-present to itself and not
constructed as difference. And it is the reason why all systems of social
relations imply to a certain extent relations of power- since the construction
of a social identity is precisely an act of power.
Such an approach requires that we do not conceptualize power as an
external relation taking place between two preconstituted identities, but
rather that we understand it as constituting the identities themselves. This
point is decisive. Because if the constitutive outside is present within the
inside us its always real possibility, the inside itself becomes a purely contingent
and reversible arrangement. We can understand why, then, for a democracy
to exist, no social agent should be able to claim any mastery of thefoundation
of society. This implies, further, that the relation between social agents will
become more democratic only in so far as they accept the particularity and
the limitations of their claims; that is, only in so far as they recognize their
mutual relations as relations from which power is ineradicable.
Once we examine the question of pluralism and social unity from such a
perspective, we can begin to understand not only why pluralism must be
conceived as being constitutive of modern democracy, but also why it cannot
be separated from power and antagonism.
And yet, it is precisely those dimensions of power and antagonism that
political liberals are at pains to evacuate from their model. They are well
aware that pluralism must have limits and that some positions will, as a
consequence, be excluded, but they justify those exclusions on the grounds
of rationality. As a result, the coercive dimension is denied, since those
exclusions are presented as if they were the product of "free agreement"
resulting from rational procedures (veil of ignorance or rational dialogue),
and immune from relations of power.
This strategy is evident in Larmore's attempt to formulate "neutral
justification of the neutrality of the state" grounded on rationality. He starts
by identifying neutrality with a minimal moral conception: A common
ground neutral with respect to the varying and controversial views of the
good life. Then, in order to specifythat common ground without lapsing into
an arbitrary position, he resorts to the shared norms of equal respect and
rational dialogue. Acknowledging the debt that his conception of "ideal
conditions of rational argument" clearly owes to the Habermasian idea of
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 Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political 321

"ideal speech situation," Larmore (1987, 56) insists that his is a more con-
textualist view than Habermas's because his ideal conditions of justification
never depart entirely from our historical circumstances. They are a function
of our general view of the world.
Moreover, he shares Rawls's emphasis on an "overlapping consensus"
based on norms which are widely accepted in modern Western societies.
According to him, it is precisely because the norms of equal respect and
rational dialogue have been central to Western culture that they can be
accepted by Romantic critics of modern individualism. Therefore, and in
keeping with the logic of their argument, it should be possible to convince
the various critics of modern individualism that they can support a liberal
political order without having to renounce their cherished values of tradition
and belonging. In Larmore's view, those norms should be accepted by
rational people interested in devising principles of political association.
But as Galston (1991,299) has pointed out, apart from the irony of having
attempted to resolve the dispute between the heirs of Kant and Mill and the
neo-romantics by appealing to the Kantian conception of equal respect,
Larmore's solution leaves out the increasing number of religious believers
whose opposition to liberalism constitutes a much more serious challenge
than the romantic critics of individualism. Larmore's rejoinder would prob-
ably be that their disagreements cannot be accepted as being "reasonable. "
But that does not resolve the problem, it only displaces it. For who decides
what is, and what is not, "reasonable"? In politics the very distinction
between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" is always the drawing of a
frontier. It has a political character and it is the expression of a particular
hegemony.
Indeed, what is at a given moment deemed "rational" or "reasonable" in
a community is the result of a process of sedimentation of an ensemble of
discourses and practices whose political character has been elided. And so,
though it is a perfectly legitimate distinction to make, it cannot be grounded
on the territory of a supposedly neutral rationality. In a modern democracy,
we should be able to question the very frontiers of reason and to put under
scrutiny the claims to universality made in the name of rationality. A
pluralist position emerging under that scrutiny would have to acknowledge
the impossibility of the heretofore algorithmic mode of decision-makingin
the field of politics. It has to recognize its dimension of undecidability.
In a move typical of liberal rationalism, we find as an already established
"given" a set of norms quite "beyond" power, adumbrated by recourse to
tropes of rationality and universality. It is a convenient move, one that
manages to exclude from rational dialogue all those who disagree with the
liberal understanding of the ideal conditions. In that way, it is easy to reach
an agreement. But alas! The excluded do not disappear and, once their
position has been declared "unreasonable," the problem of neutrality
remains unsolved. From the perspective of those excluded, these "neutral"
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322 Chantal Mouffe

principles of rational dialogue are far from being so. What is seen as
rationality from one point of view necessarily appears as coercion from the
other side.
I am not pretending to suggest that there exists some way to avoid
excluding certain points of view. No state or political order, even a liberal
one, can exist without some form of exclusion, and pluralism can never be
total. But it is very important to acknowledge those forms of exclusion for
what they are and the violence that they imply, instead of concealing them
under the guise of rationality. Indeed, it is only when we are aware of them
that the terrain of democratic dispute can be entered and it can become
possible to minimize the varying forms of exclusion. Otherwise a set of
practices and contingent arrangements are placed outside the reach of
critical enquiry.
The specificity of pluralist democracy does not reside in the absence of
domination and violence but in the establishment of a set of institutions
through which they can be limited and contested. But those mechanisms of
“self-binding” cease to be effective if violence is unrecognized and hidden
behind appeals of rationality. Disguising the real nature of the necessary
“frontiers” and modes of exclusion required by a liberal democratic order
by grounding them in the supposedly neutral character of a given set of
procedures creates, at the minimum, stultifying effects of occultation-
effects that clearly constitute serious risks for democratic politics. Hence the
need for a democratic political theory that abandons any mystification of
illusion of a dialogue free from coercion.
What must be relinquished is the very idea that there could be such a thing
as a “rational” political consensus, if by that term we mean a consensus that
would not, of necessity, be based on any form of exclusion. When it is
presented as the outcome of a pure deliberative rationality, liberal
democracy is reified into an unalterable set of institutions that cannot be
transformed. The fact that, like any other regime, it constitutes a system of
relations of power, is concealed and the democratic challenging of those
forms of power is made impossible.

Pluralism and Modern Democracy

Politicalliberalism presents us with a picture of the well-ordered society, one
where antagonism, violence, power and repression have disappeared,
though in reality, it is only because they have been made invisible. Despite
their claims to the contrary, I consider the solution advocated by Rawls and
Larmore not pluralistic at all: It leaves little room for dissent and dispute in
the field of politics. And by claiming that it is possible to reach a free moral
consensus on political fundamentals through rational procedures, it actually
ends up endowing a historically specific set of institutions with the character
of universality and rationality.
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 Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political 323

This is contrary to the indeterminacy which is constitutive of modern

democracy. Modern democratic politics, linked as it is to the declaration of
human rights, does imply a reference to universality. But this universality is
conceived as an horizon that can never be reached. Every pretension to
occupy the place of the universal, to fix its final meaning must be rejected.
For the content of the universal must remain indeterminate, precisely
because it is this indeterminacy that belies the very condition of existence of
democratic politics.
The specificity of modern democratic pluralism is missed when it is
envisaged merely as an empirical fact, a multiplicity of moral conceptions of
the good. It needs to be understood as the expression of a symbolicmutation
in the ordering of social relations: The democratic revolution understood in
Claude Lefort's terms as "the dissolution of the markers of certainty." In a
modern democratic society there no longer can be a substantive unity as
such; or, to put it slightly differently, division must be recognized as
constitutive. It is

a society in which Power, Law and Knowledge are exposed to a radical indeter-
minacy, a society that has become the theatre of an uncontrollable adventure. (Lefort
1986, 305)

When we adopt such a framework, the question of pluralism begins to

appear in a different light. It could be said that it is better grasped through a
kind of "pluralist perfectionist" approach such as that defended by Raz, and
I would be willing to follow him in presenting the recognition and defence of
pluralism as being related, at least in part, to the promotion by the state of
specific values-in his work, for example, the value of personal autonomy.
The problem lies in the way in which one answers the question: Why defend
autonomy? A pluralist perfectionist response (like that of Raz) would argue
that autonomy is required because it is linked to the goodlife and that the role
of the state is to promote the good life. But it could also be argued that the
state should foster personal autonomy because it is a value which is at the
core of the liberal tradition and which gives its specific character to the liberal
state. In that case we would be moving away from perfectionism towards a
more contextualist defence of liberalism. Indeed, this is the approach that
I would favour. But this requires an acceptance that there could be (and are)
other important values which can act as organizing matrices for other
regimes. Moreover, it requires us to admit that liberalism, by privileging
autonomy, excludes other values.
This is to say that value pluralism should be understood as applying not
only to the field of individual choices and conceptions of the good, but also
to collective forms of life. This has great consequences for the understanding
of the political forms of society. For in the field of politics, once the plurality
of values is granted, and once their conflicting nature and the impossibility
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324 Chantal Mouffe

of finding a final ground for their hierarchy is also granted, then undecid-
ability cannot be the last word. Politics calls for decision and any type of
political regime requires the establishment of a hierarchy among political
values.
A liberal democratic regime, while fostering pluralism, does not put all
values at the same level. It could not do so, since its very existence as a
political form of government requires a specific ordering of values which
precludes a total pluralism. In other words, any political regime is always a
case of “the undecidable decided.“ And that is why it cannot exist without
a “constitutive outside”: Other possible solutions have to be repressed.
It can, no doubt, be argued that by placing the defence of individual liberty
and equal rights at the top of the hierarchy, liberal democracy does express
a better understanding of and respect for the plurality of values than other
regimes. But as far as such an ordering can never be apodictically secured, it
cannot be presented as the rational, universal solution to the problem of
political order. Attempts to deny its ultimately ungrounded status by
making it appear as the outcome of a rational choice or a dialogical process of
undistorted communication are incompatible with a consistent pluralism.
The fear of ”relativism” and “nihilism” explains to a large extent the
unwillingness of many liberals to come to terms with the ungrounded nature
o€liberal democracy. But this is a misunderstanding. Instead of putting our
institutions at risk, the recognition that they do not have an ultimate
foundation creates a more favorable terrain for their defence. When we
realize that, far from being the necessary result of a moral evolution of
humanity, democracy is something improbable and very fragile, we realize
that it is a conquest that needs to be protected as well as deepened.

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.1990. Political Liberalism. Political Theory 18: 339-360.
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Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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