Neutrality without PluralismFaviola Rivera Castro

13.10.17

Liberal neutrality has few friends and many foes, but all of them agree that a necessary

condition for a neutral state is the fact of pluralism.1 On this familiar liberal view, the state

should be neutral among the many conceptions of the individual good that citizens affirm

insofar as none of them receives universal assent despite being otherwise compatible with

justice.2 Neutrality requires the state to treat all such conceptions equally in the sense of not

singling out any one of them for special treatment, either favorable or unfavorable.3 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.4 In such a scenario the state could appropriately

promote the universally favored conception or discourage the unanimously rejected one.

The disagreement between neutrality’s friends and foes centers on whether neutrality

constitutes an appropriate response to pluralism, but all of them agree that the relevant

social fact that underlies neutrality is the fact of pluralism.5

1 Friends include Ackerman (1980), Dworkin (1978), Klosko (2003), Larmore (1987), Patten (2012). Foes include Arneson (2003), Macedo (1990), Raz (1986), Sheer (1997), Wall (1998). 2 In order to avoid a possible misunderstanding, I wish to make explicit that a conception of the individual good is a conception held by an individual about what makes or would make her life good or worth living. There are goods that are not individual in this sense, such as public goods (security, public health, a clean environment) or social goods that all individuals need (such as income and opportunities for employment and education). 3 Participants to the debate focus on “permissible” conceptions, that is, those that are compatible with the demands of justice. 4 Larmore (1987: ??) writes: “Where everyone agrees about some element of human flourishing, the liberal should have no reason to deny it a role in shaping political principles.” 5 Neutrality’s foes are usually perfectionists who maintain that the liberal state should not treat equally all conceptions of the good. Instead, on this view, the state should promote certain views on the individual good that are taken to be superior or worthwhile while, at the same time, discourage those that are taken to be inferior or debasing. Perfectionists include Arneson (2003), Macedo (1990), Raz (1986), Sheer (1997), Wall (1998).

In this paper, I argue that neutrality need not be construed as a response to the fact

of 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 uniformity.

By the latter I mean a social scenario in which all, or nearly all, citizens affirm the same

religion. Despite a widely held view, the appropriate political response in this kind of

scenario need not be a form of establishment, but it can be the demand to disentangle the

state from matters pertaining to religious conviction. Neutrality, in this kind of context,

would 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 rejection of religion. This exclusion takes place from

state’s institutions, from official political discourse, and from formal politics in general.

Thus conceived, a state is neutral with regard to religion when it offers a thoroughly secular

face. I refer to this kind of neutrality as radical disentanglement.

My motivation for developing this conception of religious neutrality proceeds from

political history. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, neutrality was

conceived of as a proper political response in contexts of religious uniformity both in

France and in Mexico. Despite its historical significance, however, this conception of

neutrality has never been the object of detailed theoretical analysis. This is partly due to the

growing pluralism of the twentieth century, which has mostly extinguished any theoretical

interest in neutrality without pluralism. Nevertheless, neutrality as radical disentanglement

has continued to be a live political posture in the places where it first originated. Political

actors have continued to debate whether state institutions, officials, and formal politics

should systematically avoid all religious content that could be taken as an expression of

endorsement or rejection of religion. In light of the fact of growing pluralism both in France

and in Mexico, this type of neutrality is sometimes presented as an attractive alternative

that is rooted in local political history.6 My purpose here is to make the object of conceptual

examination a concept that has usually been treated from historical and sociological

perspectives.7

I restrict my discussion of neutrality without pluralism to the particular case of

religion because the historical experiences that motivate my discussion are ones in which

religious neutrality developed in the absence of religious pluralism. I do not consider here

the possibility of neutrality with regard to the non-religious individual good in the absence

of pluralism of conceptions of the good. As far as I know, there is no historical case of

demands for state neutrality with regard to the non-religious individual good in a context of

social convergence on a non-religious conception of the good.8 I wish to make clear that I

do not take my argument for the conceptual coherence of religious neutrality in the absence

of religious pluralism to open up the conceptual possibility of neutrality with regard to the

non-religious individual good in the absence of pluralism of conceptions of the good. I do

not consider whether there could be political reasons for state’s neutrality with regard to the

individual good when all, or nearly all, citizens converge on affirming or repudiating a

conception of the good (or a part thereof).

6 Laborde (2008) presents republican neutrality as a response to pluralism.7 I do not discuss here the relation between radical disentanglement and laicism (laicidad in Spanish and laicité in French). Historically, the former has been considered a key element of the latter. Laborde (2008: Part 1).8 This historical asymmetry suggests that perhaps we should not treat religion on a par with other conceptions of the good, as many authors often do. As a matter of historical fact, modern political constitutions have usually treated religion in a special way when compared with other conceptions of the individual good. Constitutions or fundamental political documents often make explicit the state’s relation to religion without, at the same time, specifying the state’s relation to conceptions of the non-religious individual good. Some constitutions or fundamental political documents establish one or more official religions, institute a regime of separation between state and religion, or declare official atheism, to name three modern arrangements. The differential treatment that religion and non-religious conceptions of the individual good have received in modern constitutions and fundamental political documents speaks in favor of the suggestion that we should not treat religion as a conception of the good on a par with other conceptions.

My aim in this paper is not to recommend radical disentanglement as a workable

view, either in its own right or as compared with traditional liberal neutrality. My aim is

more modest. It is only to open up the conceptual possibility of neutrality without pluralism

within a liberal framework. Against the traditional liberal view according to which the fact

of religious pluralism is a necessary condition for neutrality, I argue that neutrality can

constitute an appropriate liberal response in the absence of religious pluralism.

The paper is organized as follows. In the first section I present the conception of

neutrality as radical disentanglement. Here I present the political reasons that, as a matter of

historical fact, motivated this conception in the first place. Although I take these reasons

from the French and Mexican cases, my discussion is not historical, but conceptual. I take

both cases together without bringing out the important differences between them. In the

second section, I consider some conceptual objections that can or have been raised against

this conception of neutrality. The main task of this section is to argue for its coherence from

a liberal point of view. In the third section, I turn to a comparison between this kind of

neutrality and the more familiar liberal conceptions. The purpose here is to show that

neutrality as radical disentanglement constitutes a distinctive view that cannot be

assimilated to other, more familiar conceptions. Finally, in the fourth section, I consider the

more salient practical difficulties for implementing the conception of neutrality as radical

disentanglement.

1 Neutrality without pluralism

It is often assumed that, in the absence of pluralism, there would be no need for neutrality.9

On this view, the state could appropriately promote the conception of the good that enjoys

unanimous (or nearly unanimous) social favor. The reasoning behind this position goes as

follows: the reason why the state should not single out a particular conception of the good

for special treatment, either favorable or unfavorable, is its controversial character; thus,

when a conception of the good is not controversial, either because it enjoys unanimous

social favor or because it is universally repudiated, there is no reason why the state should

refrain from promoting the former or discouraging the latter. According to this reasoning,

even in a context of pluralism, the state need not remain neutral when all conceptions of the

good share “some element of human flourishing” or converge in repudiating a type of

behavior that is not illegal.10 On this view, the fact of pluralism of conceptions of the good

is a necessary condition for neutrality.

Since religion is usually taken to be a conception of the good, the implication of the

previous reasoning is that religious neutrality is necessarily motivated by the fact of

religious pluralism. In the absence of this fact, there is no need for religious neutrality. On

this view, a proper political response to religious uniformity would be some form of

establishment in which a liberal state supports in various ways the religion that enjoys

social favor. By “religious uniformity” I mean a social scenario in which all, or nearly all,

citizens affirm the same religion.

Political history shows, however, that religious pluralism need not be a necessary

condition for religious neutrality: there have been good political reasons for neutrality in

9 Ackerman (1980), Dworkin (1978), Klosko (2003), Larmore (1987), Patten (2012), Wall and Klosko (2003: Introduction).10 Larmore (1987: ??).

contexts of religious uniformity. This kind of neutrality does not hold among religions, but

with regard to religion as such. Historically, neutrality as radical disentanglement has been

taken to complement a regime of separation between state and religion in which the state is

conceived of as independent from religion as such –and not only from the specifics of

particular religious confessions or institutions. The state remains neutral with regard to

religion in the sense that it does not concern itself with matters pertaining to religious

conviction: the state neither affirms nor criticizes religion. The task of this section is to

develop this conception of neutrality and to argue for its coherence from a liberal point of

view. My aim is not to recommend this conception as superior to other alternatives but only

to show that it is conceptually coherent within a liberal framework. In what follows I

present the political reasons that have historically been offered for religious neutrality in a

context of religious uniformity.

A social context of religious uniformity need not make religious establishment an

attractive option. There can be good political reasons for a regime of separation and for

state’s neutrality in this kind of scenario. Historically, neutrality as radical disentanglement

from religion developed in the nineteenth century in places with a recent history of

religious, specifically Catholic, establishment. Those were places in which the growth of

Protestantism had been either nonexistent or minimal when compared with the continued

presence of Catholicism.11 This kind of neutrality was the historical product of the efforts to

disentangle the state from religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such

efforts were in turn motivated by the adversarial relation that had evolved between the state

and the dominant Church as the former attempted to introduce, among other political

11 Specifically, I refer to France and Mexico. Though the Catholic Church continued to be dominant in many other places in the late nineteenth century, such as Spain and its former American colonies, neutrality as radical disentanglement developed only in France and in Mexico roughly at the same time.

changes, the protection of some basic individual rights and liberties as well as a republican

(i.e., non-monarchical) form of government. The Catholic Church, as is well known, was

strongly opposed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to freedom of conscience

and of the press, to the granting of equal citizenship (that cancelled special legal privileges

for the members of some corporations, such as the Catholic Church), and to republicanism

and liberalism more generally.12 The established Church not only opposed such political

changes but was also willing to support an armed rebellion to stop them. Since most of the

population was Catholic, the state had to contend with an adversary that not only had great

power of political influence, but was also an established moral authority.

In this particular kind of context, the aim of the regime of separation was not to

protect the Church from the state’s interference, but to weaken the former and to free the

state from its influence. Establishment had previously meant, on the one hand, the state’s

material, symbolic, and legal privileging of Catholicism, intolerance of all other religions,

and the state’s authority to participate in the Church’s internal organization. On the other

hand, establishment had also meant the Church’s commitment to help the state in case of

need and the former’s authority to perform administrative and judicial functions that were

later to be assumed by the modern secular state. As political forces pushed for the

recognition of basic individual rights and liberties, the Catholic Church clung to the defense

of its centuries old political, economic, and legal privileges and immunities. In the end, the

Church lost this war and the regime of separation forced it to become a civil association,

bereft of its former privileges. Thus began a process of transformation in which the

12 Catholic Church & Pius (1864). 

Catholic Church gradually adapted itself to the demands of the modern secular state.13 The

latter, in turn, promoted the secularization of society at large.

The doctrine of neutrality as radical disentanglement emerged in the midst of this

struggle as a way of conceiving a state that aimed to become independent from religion.

According to this doctrine, which was assumed to complement the regime of separation,

state institutions, official speech, and formal politics at large were to be free from religion.

A regime of separation establishes various limits between state and religion: on the one

hand, the state must not establish a religion as official, offer its material or symbolic

support to any religion, or interfere in the internal life of religious organizations; on the

other hand, religious authorities and the members of religious congregations cannot hold

public office while religious associations must refrain from participating in formal politics.

The doctrine of neutrality adds a particular stance that state institutions and officials are to

maintain with regard to religion: they are neither to affirm it nor to criticize it. In order to

do this they are to exclude all religious words and symbols that could be taken as an

expression of endorsement or rejection of religion. The state is neutral in this sense when it

is devoid of religious expressions and it offers a thoroughly secular face.14

In practice, religious neutrality so conceived requires official buildings, official

political speech, formal politics, and state funded social services (such as public schooling

and public health) to be devoid of religious expressions. This doctrine of neutrality

developed mainly in the fashioning of public schooling as the emerging secular state

struggled to exclude religious authorities as well as religion at large from it. Publicly

13 Gauchet (1998).14 These restrictions to the expression of religious words and the display of religious symbols are more demanding than the restrictions on the appeal to religious reasons that some liberal political views require in some areas of political debate. See Audi & Wolterstorff (1997).

funded schools gradually became thoroughly secularized as religious organizations were

not allowed to run them or to participate in their organization, religious personnel were not

allowed to teach in them, the curriculum did not include the teaching of religious subjects

(such as the history of religions), and religious symbols were forbidden in school buildings

and even in the attire of school employees. As the doctrine of neutrality became the official

state stance towards religion, all state buildings had to be devoid of religious symbols,15

public officials, while on duty, had to refrain from expressing themselves in a way that

could be taken as endorsing or rejecting religion -they had also to refrain from wearing

visible religious symbols. Since formal politics had to be devoid of religion, religious

organizations were not allowed to participate, religious authorities and the members of

religious congregations were barred from running for public office, and all those involved

in formal politics could not publicly employ an explicitly religious language.

Those familiar with this kind of neutrality may be surprised at the suggestion that it

can be acceptable from a liberal point of view. Radical disentanglement is often assumed to

be part and parcel of French republicanism, not liberalism, and is usually identified with the

republican French version of separation between state and religion.16 However, there are at

least two reasons to include this kind of neutrality within the liberal family. The first reason

is historical: this conception of religious neutrality was first articulated in the second half of

the nineteenth century within both the republican ideology of the second French republic

and the liberal ideology of the Mexican restored republic. In this latter context, neutrality as

radical disentanglement was explicitly associated with the liberal official position. The

15 There have always been exceptions in enclosed places such as prisons and hospitals, where places suitable for religious worship are allowed.16 Laborde (2008: Part 1) identifies this kind of neutrality as an element of French laicité. The other two elements are individual autonomy and solidarity. By contrast with the account that I offer here, she presents republican neutrality as a response to pluralism.

second reason is conceptual: radical disentanglement has been strongly associated, both

within French republicanism and Mexican liberalism, with the protection of freedom of

conscience, which is a basic liberal right. In societies in which liberal freedoms still had to

compete in the social imaginary against Catholic demands for religious intolerance, radical

disentanglement allowed the state to expel from its domain the religious voices and

symbols that implied or evoked the rejection of individual rights and liberties. This political

strategy allowed the state to limit the expression of such rejection to the “private” domain

of civil associations and individual consciences.

Although I cannot develop this point here, the relation between freedom of

conscience and neutrality should be understood in the following way. While the former is a

basic political value, the latter is not.17 Radical disentanglement should be considered a

political strategy or an institutional arrangement for the protection of freedom of conscience

under the social conditions that I have described here (religious uniformity and ideological

opposition between the state and the dominant religious institution). Neutrality is thus

instrumental for the protection of basic liberal freedoms and should not be placed at the

level of basic political values. A further question that I will consider in the following

section is whether radical disentanglement has become dated with the growth of religious

pluralism, or whether this conception could constitute an adequate political response under

conditions of pluralism.

To conclude this section, I will address an important conceptual objection that

threatens the conceptual coherence of radical disentanglement. According to this objection

radical disentanglement is not really a conception of “neutrality” since the latter

presupposes some sort of conflict among at least two parties and in respect of which a third

17 I agree with Patten (2012) that neutrality is a downstream value. See Maclure &Taylor (2011).

party claims to be neutral.18 When there is no plurality of competing religions, the objection

continues, there is nothing for the state to be neutral about in religious matters. Perhaps, it

could be added, proponents of neutrality as radical disentanglement really mean the state’s

independence from religion. As we have seen, a state that purports to be neutral in this

sense of neutrality seeks to exclude all religious words and symbols from its institutions

and from the domain of formal politics at large. According to this objection, neutrality talk

is unnecessary, potentially confusing, and probably incoherent.

The objection is right in pointing out that proponents of neutrality as radical

disentanglement do, in fact, mean to defend the state’s independence from religion. A state

that claims to be neutral in this sense seeks to become independent from religion by making

it invisible in its domain. The objection is wrong, however, in assuming that claims to

neutrality make sense only in relation to a conflict between at least two parties. A being or a

thing can also be said to be neutral when it lacks some feature, as when we say that a facial

expression is neutral meaning that it lacks emotion or that a background for a photo is

neutral meaning that it is empty. Likewise, a state can be said to be neutral with regard to

religion meaning that it lacks religious content –that it is empty of religious content. This is

the sense of neutrality at play in claims to religious neutrality in the absence of religious

pluralism. If we keep in mind this second sense of neutrality as lacking some feature, the

absence of religious pluralism or conflict does not render incoherent, confusing, or

unnecessary the conception of neutrality as radical disentanglement.

The task of the following section is to place radical disentanglement in relation to

liberal conceptions of neutrality, all of which have been articulated in response to the fact 18 Waldron (1993) writes: “The concept of neutrality presupposes a contest between two or more sides (two or more people, parties, teams, nations, religions, ideals, values) and it focuses attention on a third or additional party whose actions and status are in question and to whom either the term ‘neutral’ or the term ‘nonneutral’ is to be applied” (p. 145).

of pluralism. In order to carry out this comparison, I present radical disentanglement as a

response to pluralism. As I mentioned, my purpose is not to recommend radical

disentanglement as a superior alternative. Instead, my purpose is only to show that this

conception, when presented as a response to pluralism, cannot be assimilated to the more

familiar liberal conceptions of neutrality.

2 Traditional liberal neutrality and radical disentanglement

By “traditional liberal neutrality” I mean all views on neutrality that present it as a response

to the fact of pluralism, either religious or, more widely, of conceptions of the good. Thus,

under this heading, I include virtually all views on neutrality that have been discussed in the

political and philosophical literature in the English language in recent decades. Within this

literature, neutrality is universally regarded as a political response to the fact of pluralism.

On this familiar view, the state should remain neutral in relation to the existing plurality of

conceptions of the good, some of which may be religious, in the sense of not singling out

any one of them for special treatment, either favorable or unfavorable.

The purpose of this section is to place radical disentanglement in relation to the

various conceptions of traditional liberal neutrality in order to show that the former

constitutes a distinctive alternative. For the sake of this comparison, I present radical

disentanglement as a response to religious pluralism. Although liberal conceptions of

neutrality do not respond to religious pluralism only, but consider the wider pluralism of

conceptions of the good, they do treat religion as a conception of the good.19 Participants to

19 An important exception is Rawls (1993) who refers to religious conceptions a “comprehensive moral doctrines”, not as conceptions of the good.

the debate on neutrality as a response to pluralism usually take neutrality in the religious

domain as paradigmatic and assume neutrality in the domain of the good to be an

extension.20 They also often consider religious establishment as the paradigmatic case of a

departure from neutrality.21 Thus, the expression “conception of the good” includes

religious conceptions.

In the literature on neutrality as a response to pluralism, authors usually distinguish

between different kinds of grounds for neutrality, on the one hand, and various types of

neutrality, on the other. Let me begin with the grounds for neutrality. The basic value

implicit in neutrality is equality: the aspiration to neutrality is intended to satisfy the

demand that the state treat all conceptions of the good equally in some respect.22 This

demand for equal treatment is in turn grounded on other considerations. Its proponents

usually appeal to two kinds of grounds for neutrality. 23 The first kind is a perfectionist

ground for neutrality. On this view, neutrality is grounded on individual autonomy, which

is the distinctively liberal conception of the individual good.24 The ideal of autonomy

requires the individual to live according to values and ideas that she affirms freely and upon

reflection. Most liberal authors assume that individual autonomy does not require any

particular content and can be exercised on the basis of any values whatsoever.25 Proponents

of neutrality assume that in order to pursue autonomy, so conceived, individuals must be as

20 Arneson (2003), Patten (2012).21 Arneson (2003), Patten (2012).22 Greenawalt (2003: p. 261)23 Liberal authors usually reject skeptical views to support the equality requirement implicit in religious neutrality. Though it could be claimed that the state should remain neutral since we cannot know which religion is true, skepticism itself is a controversial position and a neutral state should not affirm it. Ackerman (1980). For a criticism Waldron (1993).24 Dworkin (1978).25 This is not the only liberal view on autonomy. Rawls (1993) conceives of individual autonomy along Kantian lines, according to which autonomy is not compatible with any values whatsoever but is inseparable from certain moral principles.

free as possible from paternalistic state influence. On this view, the state must leave

individuals free to choose their own values and to experiment freely with their own lives. If

it were to promote or to discourage a particular conception of the individual good, the state

would paternalistically interfere with the free pursuit of individual autonomy. Hence the

conclusion that the state should treat all permissible conceptions of the good as having

equal value and refrain from singling out any one of them for favorable treatment.

The difficulty with individual autonomy as a ground for neutrality is that it is

limited in reach: autonomy does not require the equal treatment of all permissible

conceptions of the good, but only of those that affirm the value of autonomy. In a liberal

society there are individuals who affirm conceptions of the good that reject the value of

individual autonomy while being otherwise compatible with justice. A liberal state

committed with the promotion of individual autonomy through its institutions (such as

publicly funded schooling) could arguably discourage such conceptions. But a state that

take sides among permissible conceptions of the good, actively promoting some and

discouraging others, can hardly be said to be neutral in the domain of the individual good.

A liberal state committed with the promotion of individual autonomy appears to endorse

perfectionism instead of neutrality. This is why those who defend the state’s commitment to

the furtherance of individual autonomy are usually perfectionists, not neutralists.

A different ground for neutrality appeals to a principled distinction between the

political domain and the domain of the individual good.26 On this view, state institutions

and policies should be guided by principles the proper domain of which is the governance

of political institutions only. The individual good, by contrast, is guided by values and

principles that are not suitable for the design of political institutions and particular policies.

26 Rawls (1993).

The reason for their unsuitability is precisely their controversial character. Since citizens

could not possibly agree on any particular conception of the good, such conceptions cannot

be integrated into the political domain of state institutions and policies. This second ground

for neutrality is wider in reach since it requires the state to treat all permissible conceptions

of the good on an equal footing. Individual autonomy turns out to be a particular conception

of the individual good on a level with other permissible conceptions.

These two types of grounds for neutrality intersect with the various types of liberal

neutrality that have been offered in response to pluralism. Most participants in the debate

draw a distinction between neutrality of aim and neutrality of effects. A state is neutral in

the former sense when its policies do not aim at singling out a particular conception of the

good for special favorable or unfavorable treatment. By contrast, a state is neutral in the

latter sense when its policies do not have the effect of favoring or harming a particular

conception of the good. All authors in this debate agree that neutrality of effects is

unworkable since most, if not all, state policies, may have favorable or harmful effects for

some conceptions of the good. As is often remarked, protection of the most basic individual

rights and liberties may make it easier for an autonomy based conception of the individual

good to flourish than for a conception that requires unquestioned submission to particular

moral authorities and tradition. Thus, most defenders of neutrality hold a version of

neutrality of aim.27

Neutrality of aim is often construed as neutrality of justification. According to this,

a policy is neutral when the grounds or justification for it do not to single out a particular

conception of the good for special favorable or unfavorable treatment. “Justification” may

27 Patten (2012) has recently defended what he deems a new type of neutrality: “neutrality of treatment”. Though I cannot argue for this here, “neutrality of treatment” is not an alternative to neutrality of aim, but, as I will indicate later, a strategy for achieving it.

be construed narrowly or broadly. If construed narrowly, justification includes the grounds

for a policy only. So construed, neutrality of justification could not rule out the most

obvious cases of non-neutrality as long as the reason for the policy is a public good.28 For

example: “the state recognizes the Catholic Church as official for the sake of social peace”.

On this narrow interpretation, neutrality of aim fails to rule out religious establishment as

long as the ground for the latter is the promotion of a public good. In order to avoid this

undesirable outcome, justification could be construed broadly and include not only the

grounds for a policy, but also its content.29 On this broader interpretation, the aim of a

policy is composed by both what it says and the grounds for it. According to this, a law that

establishes a particular religion on the basis of a public good fails to be neutral in its aim

since its content clearly singles out a particular religion for favorable treatment. It is not

difficult to agree that it would be disingenuous, if not downright cynical, for an official to

claim that a particular law is neutral in religious matters when it establishes an official

religion on the grounds that the establishment would promote social peace and unity. A

state that establishes an official religion has such an establishment as its aim regardless of

the grounds that it offers for it. Thus, it seems reasonable to claim that the aim of a policy is

expressed in both its content and the grounds for it.

There are two ways in which neutrality of aim might be achieved. According to a

first strategy, the best way to achieve neutrality of aim is through abstention: the state

should not get involved in providing special assistance in the way of material goods or

symbolic recognition to any conception of the good. By leaving the pursuit of the good

fully to individuals themselves, the state remains neutral among the many conceptions that

28 Patten (2012) dismisses neutrality of aim or justification by construing “justification” narrowly.29 Kymlicka?

they might affirm. According to a second strategy, the best way to achieve neutrality of aim

is through active support: the state must provide special assistance in the way of material

goods and symbolic recognition to all conceptions of the good, but it must do so equally or

fairly.

These two strategies have radically different practical implications. According to the

abstention strategy, the state cannot have the aim of supporting, materially or symbolically,

activities that fall within the domain of the individual good, such as school prayers, artistic

performances, sports, religious pilgrimages, or hunting excursions. According to the active

support strategy, by contrast, the state may support or encourage activities such as these as

long as support is distributed equally or fairly among conceptions of the good: school

prayer may be allowed provided that all individuals are offered a fair chance to engage in it

according to their own religion and atheists are somehow accommodated, the state may

financially support artistic performances as long as all artistic tendencies are offered their

fair share of material support, and so on.

Most proponents of neutrality of aim favor the abstention strategy. They conceive of

the domain of the good as a sort of marketplace in which individual choices and resources

determine which conceptions flourish and which die out. The abstention strategy is the

natural choice for those who defend neutrality through an appeal to individual autonomy.

On their view, state support for conceptions of the good unduly interferes with the pursuit

of autonomy. The abstention strategy is also the natural approach for those who appeal to a

principled distinction between the political domain and the domain of the individual good.

Since, on their view, conceptions of the individual good cannot be integrated into the

political domain, the state must leave in the hands of individuals themselves to provide the

necessary means for realizing their conceptions of the good.

At first glance, it may seem unlikely that the active support strategy could count as a

way of achieving neutrality of aim. Equal treatment as equal or fair support developed in

the religious domain and has only recently been extended to the domain of the non-

religious individual good.30 As the experience with the active support strategy in the

religious domain has shown, it is extremely hard for the state to proceed in a strictly neutral

way. As religious and spiritual options multiply, it becomes harder to distribute the state’s

material and symbolic support in an equal or fair way, not to mention the need to

accommodate non-believers as well. When this strategy extends to include all conceptions

of the individual good, neutrality may appear unworkable.

Nevertheless, the appeal of the active support strategy for achieving neutrality of

aim proceeds from the shortcomings of the abstention strategy. As critics have often

pointed out, it is both impossible and undesirable for a liberal state to fully abstain from

aiming at the promotion of the individual good. On the one hand, the liberal state cannot

fail to aim at supporting some conceptions of the individual good through some of its

institutions, most notably through publicly funded schooling. Insofar as schools actively

privilege the teaching of certain kinds of arts, sports, and reasoning (the critical

examination of received authority, say), they aim to promote particular conceptions of the

good, namely those that welcome those particular kinds of arts, sports, and reasoning. On

the other hand, some argue that it would be highly undesirable for the liberal state to fail to

aim at actively supporting elements of some conceptions of the good. Why should the state

not fund sport facilities or artistic performances that would be welcomed by most members

of a given community? If the complaint is that those who don’t care about such activities

30 A discussion of the religious case is in Gedicks (2002). Patten (2012) extends this strategy to the entire domain of the individual good.

could reasonably object, the right answer might be that state support should benefit all

conceptions of the good in an equal or fair manner. If the abstention strategy is neither

possible nor desirable as a way of achieving neutrality, the door is open for the active

support strategy. Many, however, would prefer to drop neutrality altogether when faced

with this alternative, as discussions in the religious domain often reveal.

Let us now consider how religious neutrality as radical disentanglement relates to,

and differs from, these familiar conceptions of liberal neutrality. So far, I have briefly

presented two kinds of grounds for neutrality (individual autonomy and a principled

distinction between the domains of the political and of the individual good); two types of

neutrality (of aim and of effects); and what I have called two “strategies” for achieving

neutrality of aim (abstention and active support). In the remainder of this section I will

focus on religious neutrality only and assume a context of religious plurality.

A first question is whether radical disentanglement constitutes a ground for, or a

type of, neutrality, or rather a strategy for achieving neutrality. At first glance it may seem

that radical disentanglement is a strategy for achieving neutrality of aim though restricted

to specifically religious conceptions of the good: it seems to be a radical version of the

abstention strategy. When restricted to the domain of religion, this strategy requires the

state not to support any particular religion through material goods or symbolic recognition.

Radical disentanglement does exactly this in combination with the regime of separation that

it complements: while the latter requires the state not to offer material support or symbolic

to religious associations and activities, the former requires the state to exclude all religious

words and symbols from its institutions and from formal politics in general.

The difficulty with this characterization is that radical disentanglement demands the

exclusion of religious words and symbols regardless of whether they are controversial or

not. As I mentioned, proponents of traditional liberal neutrality hold that the reason why the

state should be neutral is the fact that all religions are controversial in the sense that citizens

affirm a variety of them. Therefore, if all citizens were to converge on an element that all

religions share, there would be no need for the state to be neutral with regard to that

element. Assume, for the sake of argument, that all citizens affirm some religion or other.

The abstention strategy would be compatible with some forms of official endorsement of

religion provided that they are not controversial (e.g., when public officials, teachers in

state funded schools, or candidates running for public office, refer to themselves as

religious persons or as persons of God). Radical disentanglement, by contrast, requires the

state to exclude all religious words and symbols that may be taken as expression of

endorsement of religion regardless of whether they are controversial or not. This suggests

that radical disentanglement is not a strategy for achieving neutrality of aim, but may be a

ground for, or a type of, neutrality.

It could hardly be argued that radical disentanglement constitutes a ground for

neutrality since it calls for specific policies. Instead, it seems that radical disentanglement is

a type of neutrality that implies both a ground and a strategy for achieving it.

Considered as a type of neutrality, radical disentanglement clearly differs from

neutrality of consequences since it allows policies that harm religions in some way. The

exclusion of all religious words and symbols from state institutions arguably harms

religions. However, radical disentanglement also differs from neutrality of aim. In the

religious domain, this kind of neutrality requires the state to do nothing with the aim of

singling out a particular religion for special treatment, either favorable or unfavorable.

Radical disentanglement, by contrast, does not consider the state as a neutral party among

various religions, but as a power that must be free or independent from religion as such. It

could be argued that, for the sake of comparison with radical disentanglement, neutrality of

aim could be reformulated so as to require the state to do nothing with the aim of favoring

or harming religion as such. This reformulation allows us to appreciate better where the

difference lies: radical disentanglement is not concerned with the aims of state’s policies,

but directly demands the exclusion of religious words and symbols that can be taken as a

form of endorsement or criticism of religion. Such exclusion is required regardless of

whether it aims at harming or favoring religion. If it turns out that a particular type of

exclusion has the aim of harming religion, this would not contradict radical

disentanglement. The exclusion of religious words and symbols from public schooling may

have the aim of weakening a dominant religion’s social moral authority, the freeing of

formal politics from religion may have the aim of curtailing a dominant religion’s chances

of acquiring power of political influence, the exclusion of religious content from the speech

of public officials may have the aim of making religion invisible in this domain, and so on.

Radical disentanglement does not require neutrality of aim.

As I mentioned above, radical disentanglement assumes a conception of neutrality

that differs from the one that is most familiar among liberal authors. Instead of the

neutrality of a party vis a vis a conflict among at least two other parties, radical

disentanglement requires the state to be neutral with regard to religion in the sense of being

free or devoid of all religious words and symbols. This is not neutrality in the aim or

consequences of state policies, but neutrality in self-presentation. A state that is neutral in

this sense must present itself as thoroughly secular. This type of neutrality presupposes a

ground for it and proposes a strategy for achieving it. The ground is a principled distinction

between the domain of religious conviction and the domain of formal politics. On this view,

the state must not be a vehicle for the transmission of religious conviction. The strategy for

achieving this kind of neutrality, as we have seen, is the exclusion of all religious words

and symbols from state institutions and from formal politics at large.

Before concluding this section, I would like to mention another type of religious

neutrality from which radical disentanglement also differs. This is the demand that the state

be neutral between religion and non-religion. This type of neutrality has become relevant

against the background of state policies that systematically favor nonreligious associations

to the disadvantage of religious ones. Such policies follow from a regime of separation

between state and religion that requires the former not to assist religions through material

goods or symbolic recognition. While the state may support non-religious associations in

various ways, religious associations necessarily fail to qualify for state support. As a

consequence, religious associations may complain that they are unfairly disadvantaged on

religious grounds and may demand to be treated on an equal footing with nonreligious

associations. Hence the demand that the state be neutral between religion and non-religion

and offer its support, both material and symbolic, to both religious and non-religious

associations.

Radical disentanglement clearly differs from this last type of neutrality. The former

is part and parcel of a regime of separation that forbids the state to offer any kind of

support, material or symbolic, to religious groups and to religion as such regardless of

whether this prohibition harms or favors religion.

3 Difficulties for radical disentanglement

In this final section I consider the most salient difficulties for radical disentanglement, both

practical and theoretical. First, I consider difficulties for the implementation of this

conception of neutrality under conditions of religious uniformity. Second, I consider

theoretical objections that have been raised against radical disentanglement when conceived

of as a response to religious pluralism.

Practical difficulties under conditions of religious uniformity

I consider three difficulties that are directly caused by the social and political

conflict that motivates neutrality in the first place.

The first difficulty concerns the peril of departing from neutrality by engaging in

criticism of religion. Since radical disentanglement emerged in the context of an ideological

war between the state and the dominant religion, breaches of neutrality do not proceed from

the inclination to favor religion but from the inclination to reject it. Early sympathetic

critics of radical disentanglement often objected that neutrality was not enough to limit

effectively the Catholic Church’s power as a social moral authority. According to such

critics, citizens had to be enlightened out of Catholicism. They usually privileged

mandatory public schooling as the site where future citizens would learn to engage in the

criticism of received views and authorities, i.e., of religious views and authorities. In the

context of an ideological confrontation between the state and the dominant Church,

neutrality appeared vastly insufficient. In light of this criticism of neutrality in the Mexican

case, neutrality was, at least for a while, rejected in official political speech. Politicians

openly expressed views hostile to religion in the first half of the last century. In France, by

contrast, neutrality was not officially rejected, but had to coexist with an emancipatory

conception of individual freedom that clashed with it. This conflict between republican

neutrality and the ideal of individual autonomy played out most clearly in official public

schooling. The latter was supposed to be neutral with regard to religion but, at the same

time, also in charge of teaching pupils to emancipate themselves from prejudice and

tradition.31 The aim was to teach pupils to become autonomous individuals who subjected

all belief, authority, and tradition (i.e., religious belief, authority, and tradition) to criticism.

This emancipatory conception of individual freedom clashed with neutrality insofar as the

expression of religious belief was not only absent from official schooling, but was also

subjected to criticism.

The second difficulty concerns the state’s tendency to assume as neutral, from a

religious point of view, social conventions that, in fact, have a religious origin. In this case,

breaches of neutrality favor a particular religion inadvertently when state officials are blind

to the religious origin of what they assume to be religiously neutral social practices.

Though the first and second difficulty pull in opposite directions, it would not be surprising

for state officials to fall prey to both of them at the same time, as political history has

shown. The critical attitude towards religion has historically coexisted, both in France and

in Mexico, with the tendency to take as mere social conventions what in fact are religious

traditions and requirements. Specifically Catholic holidays, dietary restrictions, dress codes,

and socially accepted forms of worship are often assumed, in largely Catholic societies, as

binding on everyone regardless of religious affiliation (or lack of it): the official calendar

partly assumes the Catholic religious calendar for the weekly days of rest and for many

official holidays; meals at publicly funded institutions incorporate specifically Catholic

dietary restrictions but not those that are specific to other religions; acceptable dress styles

at publicly funded institutions are only those that conform to Catholic social traditions, and

so on. Since most of the population affirms the dominant religion, it appears sensible to

adequate official norms of this sort to social conventions that happen to have a religious

origin. The problem, of course, is that, by proceeding in this way, the state fails to live up to

31 For a discussion of this conflict see Laborde (2002).

the ideal of neutrality. Although no religious words and symbols need to appear in an

official calendar or in enforced dress codes in state institutions (such as the prohibition of

the foulard in France), the state fails to offer a thoroughly secular face by upholding social

conventions that have a religious origin. The main point here is the difficulty to stick to

neutrality in the social context that motivates it, which is a social milieu fully infused with a

dominant religion. The forceful questioning of the symbiosis between what appeared to be

religiously “neutral” social conventions, on the one hand, and religious traditions and

requirements, on the other, had to wait the growth of religious pluralism in recent decades.32

The third practical difficulty lies in the temptation to extend radical disentanglement

beyond the bounds of state institutions and formal politics to the wider realm of the public

sphere. As the first difficulty, this one emerges in light of the ideological confrontation

between the state and the dominant religion, which is what motivates neutrality in the first

place. As the state is engaged in its own secularization in order, at least partly, to cancel

venues for the dissemination of moral values that directly oppose liberal and republican

ones, it appears suitable to confine the expression of such religious moral values behind the

doors of temples, private clubs and organizations, and private dwellings. This extension of

neutrality is not enforced, but works through the persuasive power (or coercion?) of social

disapproval.33 When neutrality is thus extended, it becomes unacceptable to express one’s

own religious affiliation or convictions in informal public political debate, let alone appeal

to religious reasons in support of a particular public policy.

32 The debate over the permissibility of wearing a foulard in French public schools is a case in point. Insofar as the public school enforces neutrality, religious symbols are not allowed in it. However, pupils have been always allowed to wear religious symbols such as jewelry with Christian symbols and Jewish Yarmulkas. It was only when some Muslim girls wore the foulard that the discussion began regarding the permissibility of pupils wearing religions symbols. 33 In Mexico, however, it used to be forbidden by law to wear religious attire outside temples. This prohibition was overturned late in the previous century.

There are many other difficulties for the consistent implementation of radical

disentanglement. I have mentioned these three because they are directly caused by the

social and political conflict that motivates neutrality in the first place. Thus, they are not

accidental or easy to overcome. Instead, such difficulties are internal to radical

disentanglement and may even be hard to detect for political actors.

Theoretical challenges under conditions of religious pluralism

I consider the three most salient theoretical challenges for radical disentanglement

that have been put forward when this conception is conceived of as a response to religious

pluralism. Though I cannot do it here, I believe that these three challenges can be

successfully put to rest.

The first objection is that radical disentanglement has become dated with the growth

of religious pluralism. Since this conception of neutrality was originally motivated by an

ideological and political conflict between the state and a dominant religion, the

disappearance of this conflict with the growth of religious pluralism, has rendered radical

disentanglement irrelevant. Or so the objection maintains. I disagree. In the previous

section I presented this conception of neutrality as a response to religious pluralism because

I think that the former constitutes a plausible response to the latter. In a society in which

there is a plurality of religious conceptions and associations, some of which compete for the

state’s favor, it would not be implausible for the state to affirm radical disentanglement as a

complement of a regime of separation. In order not to single out a particular religion for

special favorable treatment, the state may claim its complete independence from religion as

such.

A second theoretical difficulty is that this type of neutrality works under the

assumption that it is possible to separate what counts as “religion” from what does not.

Otherwise, it would be unclear what are the religious words and symbols that must be

excluded. This problem does not arise under conditions of religious uniformity because, in

this scenario, “religion” primarily means the dominant religion. In contemporary pluralistic

societies, by contrast, the ever increasing number of religious and spiritual options makes it

hard to sort out what counts as religion from what does not. Nevertheless, radical

disentanglement can offer a straightforward if uninteresting answer. Insofar as this

conception works as a complement of a regime of separation, what counts as “religion” for

the purposes of neutrality is what the state recognizes as such and declares itself

subordinate to it. Usually, states relate themselves to religious institutions or associations

(sometimes called “churches”) for various social and juridical purposes. Whatever are the

words and symbols that within such institutions or associations can be taken as an

expression of endorsement or criticism of religion are the words and symbols that neutrality

excludes. Radical disentanglement need not rely on a separate account of what counts of

religion.

The third and final theoretical challenge that I will consider is the objection that

radical disentanglement is incompatible with freedom of religion. This objection has been

put forward in recent decades by the Catholic Church. It is interesting to notice that during

the times of Catholic religious uniformity, the same Church objected to the neutralist

defense of freedom of conscience. Today, the objection is that this type of neutrality

obstructs religious freedom.34 The objection relies on a distinctively Catholic conception of

religious freedom that rejects any limits to the expression of religious conviction or

34 Interestingly, some non-Catholic religious groups are among the staunchest defenders of this kind of neutrality in Mexico. Needless to say, those groups constitute religious minorities whose economic power and capacity for political influence are far inferior to the Catholic Church’s.

endorsement by individuals or institutions (including political institutions).35 At the limit,

this conception of religious freedom rejects the regime of separation between state and

religion insofar as this regime bars religious associations from receiving state support in the

form of material goods or symbolic recognition. It is clear that radical disentanglement

rejects this particular conception of religious freedom. The question is whether this type of

neutrality is therefore incompatible with any plausible conception of religious freedom.

Insofar as radical disentanglement pushes the expression of religious conviction out of the

bounds of the state and of formal politics, it leaves ample social space for such an

expression in the wider public sphere and the private domain. Whether this space is not

sufficient for the practice of religion is a contested political issue that cannot be settled on

theoretical grounds alone.

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that religious neutrality need not be motivated by the fact of

religious pluralism. A particular type of religious neutrality historically emerged in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under conditions of what I have called “religious

uniformity.” I have called this type of neutrality “radical disentanglement” because it calls

for the complete exclusion of words and symbols that can be taken as an expression of

endorsement or criticism of religion from state institutions and from formal politics at large.

As I explained, this type of neutrality does not stand alone, but works a complement of a

regime of separation between the state and religion. Through a comparison with the

familiar conceptions of traditional liberal neutrality, I argued that radical disentanglement is

35 Declaración Dignitatis Humanae sobre la libertad religiosa.

a distinctive alternative that can also be presented as a response to religious pluralism. My

purpose has not been to recommend this alternative as superior, but only to show that it is

conceptually coherent and plausible.

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