Neutrality without pluralism
| Author | Faviola Rivera-Castro |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885118815537 |
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Neutrality without
pluralism
Faviola Rivera-Castro
Institute of Philosophical Research, National Autonomous
University of Mexico, Mexico
Abstract
Friends and foes of liberal neutrality assume that neutrality presupposes pluralism.
On this view, the state should be neutral among the many permissible conceptions
of the individual good that citizens affirm. I argue that neutrality need not be construed
as a response to pluralism. I focus on the case of specifically religious neutrality and
argue that it can be an appropriate political response to what I call “the fact of religious
hegemony,” which is a social scenario in which a particular religion is unanimously
recognized as dominant. Religious neutrality, in this kind of context, requires the
state to avoid all religious words and symbols that can be taken as an expression of
endorsement or criticism of religion. I take this conception of religious neutrality from
both political history and current political practice and discourse. Neutrality was orig-
inally conceived of as a proper political response in contexts of religious hegemony
both in France and in Mexico. Today, and despite the growth of religious pluralism, this
conception continues to be a live political posture in the places where it first originated.
I call it “neutrality as independence from religion” and argue that it differs from liberal
neutrality in crucial respects.
Keywords
Laicism, liberalism, neutrality, pluralism, religious neutrality
Corresponding author:
Faviola Rivera-Castro, Institute of Philosophical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico,
Circuito Mario de la Cueva, Ciudad Universitaria UNAM, Mexico City, 04510, Mexico.
Email: faviolarivera@gmail.com
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(2) 232–251
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885118815537
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
Liberal neutrality has few friends and many foes, but all of them assume that
neutrality presupposes pluralism.
1
On this familiar liberal view, the state should
be neutral among the many permissible conceptions of the individual good that
citizens affirm insofar as none of them receives universal assent.
2
Neutrality
requires the state to treat all such permissible conceptions equally in the sense of
not singling out any one of them for special favorable treatment or as being intrin-
sically superior. If, as the view goes, all citizens were to converge on affirming or
rejecting a particular conception of the individual good (or a part thereof), there
would be no need for the state to remain neutral with regard to the good. Some
maintain that in such a scenario the state could appropriately promote the uni-
versally favored conception (Klosko, 2003; Larmore, 1987). The disagreement
between neutrality’s friends and foes centers on whether neutrality is defensible,
but they all share the assumption of pluralism for neutrality.
3
In this article, I argue that neutrality need not be construed as a response to
pluralism. In particular, I focus on the case of specifically religious neutrality and
argue that it can be an appropriate political response to what I call “the fact of
religious hegemony.” By the latter I mean a social scenario in which a particular
religion is unanimously recognized as dominant regardless of whether it enjoys
state recognition as official or not. The appropriate political response in this kind
of scenario need not be a form of establishment. Instead, the fact of religious
hegemony may motivate the demand to separate the state from religion and to
declare the former independent from the latter. Neutrality, in this kind of context,
does not hold among conceptions of the good, but with regard to religion as such.
On this view, the state is neutral when it excludes all religious words and symbols
that can be taken as an expression of endorsement or criticism of religion. This
exclusion takes place from state’s institutions, official political discourse, the
person of state officials themselves, and formal politics in general. Thus conceived,
a state is neutral with regard to religion when it offers a thoroughly secular face.
I call this kind of neutrality “neutrality as independence from religion,” or
“neutrality as independence” for short.
4
My motivation for developing this conception of religious neutrality proceeds
from both political history and current political practice and discourse. In the late
19th and early 20th centuries, neutrality was originally conceived of as a proper
political response in contexts of religious hegemony both in France and in Mexico.
Today, this kind of neutrality continues to be a live political posture in the places
where it first originated. Political actors both in France and in Mexico have con-
tinued to debate whether state institutions, state officials, and formal politics
should systematically avoid all religious content that could be taken as an expres-
sion of endorsement or criticism of religion.
5
Despite its enduring presence and
significance, however, this conception of neutrality has never been the object of
detailed theoretical analysis.
6
My purpose here is to make the object of conceptual
examination a concept that has mostly been treated from historical and sociolog-
ical perspectives.
7
Rivera-Castro 233
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