Liberalism and CST

At the risk of being a shameless self-promoter (hey . . . Rick taught me everything I know!), I would encourage anyone interested in the relationship between liberalism and Catholic legal theory to read my piece, recently published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy entitled Neutrality in Liberal Legal Theory and Catholic Social Thought, available here.

 

 

As Michael P. has pointed out, liberalism is complex.  Indeed, it is a "tradition" (in MacIntyre’s sense of the term) to which many thoughtful people have contributed.  So, while I acknowledge that there is no one authoritative version of liberalism, in the piece I focus on those liberal thinkers who have stressed the centrality of liberalism’s purported neutrality with respect to competing theories of the good.

 

 

Thus, I critique the work of thinkers such Ackerman, Dworkin, Larmore, and Rawls through the lens of Catholic social thought while at the same time usefully drawing on the work of Galston, Taylor, MacIntyre, Schindler, and our own Michael P. (proving that even a graduate of St. X and Georgetown and a graduate of Trinity and Notre Dame can agree on some things!).  In doing so I discuss many of the topics touched upon in recent posts on MOJ including the philosophical anthropology that liberalism and CST each puts forth, the nature and place of rights and duties in the social order, and the relationship between the good and the right.

 

 

In what is perhaps the most provocative section of the article, I suggest that, to the extent liberalism claims that social life has a point or purpose, it is only a “civilization of tolerance,” which I contrast with the goal of social life set forth in Catholic social thought, namely, “the civilization of love.”

  

 

I organize my discussion around the four varieties of neutrality that Andrew Altman puts forth in his splendid defense of liberal theory – what he calls “rights neutrality,” “epistemological neutrality,” “political neutrality,” and “legal neutrality.”