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AUTONOMY AND PERFECTIONISM
IN RAZ'S MORALITY OF FREEDOM
JEREMY WALDRON
1097
I. INTRODUCTION
A. THE NEUTRALITY PRINCIPLE
The idea that the law should be neutral between different views in
society about what makes life worth living has become a prominent
theme in modem liberal thought. Though it was originally rooted in the
view that the state should. refrain from any particular religious commit-
ment, recent arguments have extended the idea of neutrality to embrace
secular ethics as well.
The neutrality principle's formulation is reasonably familiar. Ron-
ald Dworkin presents it as a distinctively liberal conception of equal
respect. He says that liberal equality:
supposes that political decisions must be, so far as possible, independ-
ent of any particular conception of the good life, or of what gives value
to life. Since the citizens of a society differ in their conceptions, the
government does not treat them as equals if it prefers one conception
to another ....1
Bruce Ackerman imposes neutrality as a dialogic constraint on what
counts as a good reason for the differential distribution of power or
advantage in society: "No reason is a good reason if it requires the power
holder to assert ...that his conception of the good is better than that
asserted by any of his fellow citizens ...." And we find similar views
* Acting Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, University of Califor-
nia at Berkeley. B.A. 1974, LL.B. 1978, D.Phil. (Law) 1986, Oxford University. An earlier version
of this Article was presented at the American Political Science Association's meetings in Washing-
ton D.C., in August 1988. The author is grateful to the other participants in that presentation for
their comments and also to Jill Frank for her assistance in the preparation of the Article.
1. R. DWORKIN, A MATrER OF PRINCIPLE 191 (1985).
2. B. ACKERMAN, SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE LIBERAL STATE 11 (1980).
3. The locus classicus of the utilitarian commitment to neutrality is the remark in J. BEN-
THAM, The Rationale of Reward, in II THE WORKS OF JEREMY BENTHAM 253 (J. Bowring ed.
1838): "Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music
and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either." Cf J.S.
MILL, UTILITARIANISM 257-63 (M. Wamok ed. 1962).
4. R. NOZICK, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA 33, 272-73 (1974); J. RAWLS, A THEORY OF
JUSTICE 94, 211-12, 327 (1971); cf Rawls, Fairnessto Goodness, 84 PHIL. REv. 536, 539 (1975)
(comparing morality and justice).
5. For examples of both types of argument, see J. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, in
LOCKE: THE SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT AND A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION (J.
Gough ed. 1976).
6. R. DWORKIN, supra note 1, at 203.
7. See, ag., N. MACCORMICK, Against Moral Disestablishment, in LEGAL RIGHT AND
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY (1982) (a collection of MaeCormick's essays); Nagel, Rawls on Justice, in
READING RAWLS: CRITICAL STUDIES ON RAWLS' A THEORY OF JUSTICE 7-10 (N. Daniels ed.
1975); Schwartz, Moral Neutrality and Primary Goods, 83 ETHICS 294 (1973); and the essays col-
lected in LIBERAL NEUTRALITY (R. Goodin and A. Reeve eds. 1989) (publication forthcoming).
11. N. MaeCormick, Access to the Goods, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (June 5, 1987, at
599. The only book that comes remotely close to the complexity of Raz's discussion of these issues is
V. HAKSAR, EQUALITY, LIBERTY AND PERFECTIONISM (1979).
12. See J. RAz, supra note 10. There is an excellent discussion in L. GREEN, THE AUTHORITY
OF THE STATE (1988).
13. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 71.
14. See id. at 157-62.
15. Bentham's view is discussed in H.L.A. HART, ESSAYS ON BENTHAM: STUDIES IN JURIS-
PRUDENCE AND POLITICAL THEORY (1982), chapters IV and VII. See also D. Lyons, Rights,
Claimantsand Beneficiaries,6 AM. PHIL. Q. 173 (1969) (defining "right"). For the Interest Theory,
see N. MacCormick, Rights in Legislation, in LAW MORALITY AND SOCIETY: ESSAYS IN HONOUR
OF H.L.A. HART 189 (P. Hacker and J. Raz eds. 1977); J. Raz, On the Nature ofRights, supranote
10.
16. THEORIES OF RIGHTS 9-12 (J. Waldron ed. 1984); J. WALDRON, THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE
PROPERTY (1988), Ch. 3. I have discussed some difficulties in Raz's claims about the connection
between rights and individualism in Waldron, Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?, 27
ARCHIVES EUROPEENNES DE SOCIOLOGIE 296, 302-09 (1987).
II. AUTONOMY
that it is not libertyper se that is really important but rather these differ-
ent values? Or is it that liberty is more at stake (or more liberty is at
stake) in the first kind of case than the second?
Another part of the controversy concerns how liberty itself is under-
stood. Liberals are often taken to be defenders of a "negative" concep-
tion of liberty, in which liberty consists simply in the absence of certain
restraining conditions. To say that a person is free to do X says no more
than that no obstacles or restraints (of some specified type) stand in the
way of doing X.25 But liberty defined purely in this negative way seems
odd and empty. It suggests that we simply value the absence of obstacles
without valuing what may positively exist and thrive in the space that is
left when the obstacles are cleared away. The negative definition sounds
oddly as though we have nothing affirmative to say about those values,
and this oddness has led many people to favor a more "positive" concep-
tion of freedom.2 6
A positive conception seems necessary anyway even for someone
who wants to focus only on restraints and impediments. For people
expound all sorts of claims about the things that make us "unfree." I am
unfree to do X if someone deliberately restrains me physically from doing
X. But what about foreseen but unintended constraints? Do they make
me unfree? What about constraints that I have been led to believe exist
which do not in fact exist? Do psychological constraints-fears and pho-
bias-make me unfree? Does it make a difference how they were brought
about? Does fear of penalties or sanctions make me unfree? (Hobbes
thought the answer was "no," but if that is the case it is hard to get any
grip at all on the notion of political freedom.)27 Am I unfree when all
that is required of me is that if I do a certain action, I do it in a certain
way (driving with a seat belt, for example)? If fear of penalties makes me
unfree, can fear of destitution do the same? Are the poor free not to take
25. The classic conception of negative liberty is that of Thomas Hobbes. See T. HOBBES,
LEVIATHAN 261 (C.B. Macpherson ed. 1968) ("Liberty, or Freedome, signifieth (properly) the
absence of Opposition; by Opposition, I mean external Impediments of motion").
26. The distinction between "negative" and "positive" conceptions of freedom is discussed in I.
BERLIN, FOUR ESSAYS ON LIBERTY 118-72 (1969). The case against a purely negative conception is
stated most cogently in Taylor, What's Wrong with Negative Liberty?, in THE IDEA OF FREEDOM:
ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF ISAIAH BERLIN 175-93 (A. Ryan ed. 1979). Raz uses the term "positive
freedom" to refer to the background conditions (mental and physical capabilities, etc.) for the exer-
cise of autonomy. See J. RAZ, supra note 8, at 408-09. But that is too restrictive. "Positive free-
dom" is the name of a full-blooded conception of liberty (or family of conceptions). See, e.g.,
G.W.F. HEGEL, PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT 105-08 (T.M. Knox ed. 1967).
27. T. HOBBES, supra note 25, at 262-63 ("Fear and Liberty are consistent .... And generally
all actions which men doe in Commonwealths, for fear of the law, [are] actions, which the doers had
liberty to omit.").
minimum wage jobs if they have no other way to satisfy their needs and
those of their families? Am I free to refrain from something to which
there is no rational alternative? Can ignorance make one unfree? And so
on.
One of the lovely things about Raz's book is his insistence that it is
fatuous to try to answer these questions by techniques of "linguistic anal-
ysis.""z These questions arise precisely because there is no agreement on
the meaning of the word "freedom"; it is thus hopeless to appeal to its
settled meaning in order to answer them. Even if "freedom" had a set-
tled definition allowing a pedant to say confidently, for example, that fear
of penalties can make a person unfree even though fear of destitution
cannot, someone who disagreed could still suggest that we rewrite the
dictionary to replace the offending term with one more sensitive to the
underlying moral analogy. The point is that we do not know how to
answer these questions until we know why freedom matters. Once we
have a grip on that, then we can ask how these various alleged impedi-
ments relate in fact to the deep values supposedly at stake when talk of
freedom is in the air.2 9
Clearly, none of the issues about freedom that I have outlined-the
different importance of different liberties, the emptiness of a purely nega-
tive definition, and the controversies over what counts as a restraint-can
be dealt with adequately without a deeper investigation of what it is we
value when we call for people to be free.
B. PERSONAL AUTONOMY
For Raz, the deeper value is personal autonomy: "The ideal of per-
sonal autonomy is the vision of people controlling, to some degree, their
own destiny, fashioning it through successive decisions throughout their
lives." 3 Autonomous people are, in a large part, the authors of their
lives in the sense that the shape and the direction of their lives can be
explained substantially in terms of the deliberate choices they have made:
His life is, in part, of his own making. The autonomous person's life is
marked not only by what it is but also by what it might have been and
by the way it became what it is. A person is autonomous only if he
had a variety of acceptable options available to him to choose from,
and his life became as it is through his choice of some of these options.
A person who has never had any significant choice, or was not aware
of it, or never exercised choice in significant31matters but simply drifted
through life is not an autonomous person.
Raz further adds the notion of "significant autonomy." Signifi-
cantly autonomous persons are those who not only make choices but use
their capacity for choice to "adopt personal projects, develop relation-
ships, and accept commitments to causes, through which their personal
integrity and sense of dignity and self-respect are made concrete. ' 32 By
exercising their capacity for choice in this way, they define success and
failure in their lives and what is ultimately to be taken as making their
lives worth living.33
This account of autonomy resembles, and subtly improves upon,
John Rawls' account of life plans and individual conceptions of the good.
Rawls believes that "a person may be regarded as a human life lived
according to a plan . . . [and that] an individual says who he is by
'34
describing his purposes and causes, what he intends to do in his life."
The main idea is that a person's good is determined by what is for him
the most rational long-term plan of life given reasonably favorable cir-
cumstances .... We are to suppose, then, that each individual has a
rational plan of life drawn up subject to the conditions that confront
him. This plan is designed to permit the harmonious satisfaction of his
interests. It schedules activities so that various desires can be fulfilled
without interference. It is arrived at by rejecting other plans that are
either less likely to succeed or do not provide for such an inclusive
attainment of aims.35
Robert Nozick develops a similar conception. What is important about
the idea of a person, he says, is that it is the idea of
a being able to formulate long-term plans for its life, able to consider
and decide on the basis of abstract principles or considerations it for-
mulates to itself and hence not merely the plaything of immediate
stimuli, a being that limits its own behavior in accordance with some
principles or picture it has of what an appropriate life is for itself and
changes his tastes can be as4 1autonomous as one who never shakes off
his adolescent preferences.
Impatience with liberal talk of autonomy comes easily for the fol-
lowing reason. Many people have neither the opportunity nor the leisure
to contemplate the shape and direction of their lives; it is all they can do
to keep themselves and their loved ones fed and housed, these are the
considerations which determine most of their choices. That impatience
is important for any theory which proposes autonomy as an ideal for
humans, as opposed to the rather ethereal "persons" who populate the
pages of so many works of political philosophy. One does not have to be
a socialist to be reminded by one's "profane stomach" that, as Marx put
it, "life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation,
clothing" and so on.4 2
Raz takes seriously the role of personal needs in a theory of auton-
omy. He recognizes that it is for need driven, rather than abstract,
beings that autonomy is proposed as an ideal, and he develops a powerful
analysis of how abject need and deprivation may undermine even the
autonomy that is possible for beings with our nature.
The first point is responsible for Raz's rather careful formulation
that autonomous people are only in part or merely to some degree the
authors of their lives. No one can comprehensively determine her life, if
only because life is always lived among others, and the choices others
make, the options they establish, and the meanings they sustain affect
what is available to any individual. But in addition, each individual has
inescapable basic functions requiring satisfaction, apart from whatever
else she wants to do. It is no derogation from either our freedom or our
autonomy that we must eat or even that we (or some of us) must work.
Nor are these needs regrettable features of a "second-best" theory of
autonomy that would provide perfect freedom for angels. They are nec-
essary incidents of the fact that autonomy is being proposed precisely for
creatures like us.43
Our potential for autonomy consists partly in our ability to deter-
mine how we satisfy our needs-what to eat, where to live, what work to
perform, and so on-and partly in the happy fact that, for some of us in
developed societies, satisfying our needs does not consume all our time
44. Raz is a little ambiguous on this point. Sometimes he talks about pursuits which go
beyond biologically determined needs, id. at 290. In other places, however, he suggests that even our
distinctively autonomous pursuits involve the engagement of "innate drives" such as "drives to move
around, to exercise our bodies, to stimulate our senses, to engage our imagination and our affection,
to occupy our mind." Id. at 375.
45. Id. at 290.
46. Id. at 300.
47. Id. at 297.
48. Id. at 155.
The first point, moral pluralism, lies at the heart of Raz's account of
morality. Warnings are often issued against any easy assumption that
everything good in life can fit into a coherent scheme. Isaiah Berlin, for
example, maintains that "not all good things are compatible, still less all
the ends of mankind," and he regards the denial of pluralism as the basis
of moral totalitarianism, and that denial as more responsible than any
other belief "for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great
historical ideals."5 2 But Raz sees that there is more to be said about
pluralism. Even if the ends of life are mutually incompatible, that incom-
patibility does not excuse political philosophy from providing a coherent
account of how the state should respond to the truth (including the plu-
ralistic truth) about value.
He recognizes, for example, that it makes a difference whether the
various ways of living a good life seriously rival one another. Different
pursuits may emphasize some abilities and virtues and exclude others.
Indeed, it is possible that cultivating the abilities and virtue required for
certain (morally worthy) ways of life might actually dispose one toward
impatience and intolerance of the abilities and virtues required for others.
For example, committee types who are excellent at getting things done
are often impatient with single-minded devotion to a cause.5 3 Or, the
virtues of universal philanthropy may make a person contemptuous of
the skills involved in maintaining a comfortable family life. If any of this
is correct, we cannot assume the morally good person's tolerance of
others who also lead morally good lives. Our theory of toleration will
have to become more complicated and sensitive to take account of the
diversity and competitiveness which exist among rival and incompatible
ways of living life well.5 4
Raz's moral pluralism is spelled out in terms of incommensurability.
Certain options, pursuits, and careers are widely thought incomparable
with one another in terms of value. As Raz points out, "[P]eople are
likely to refuse to pronounce on the comparative value of a career in
teaching and in dentistry. They deny the comparability of playing a
musical instrument and cycling to visit old churches as pastimes, etc.""
Their refusal does not always mean that the options are equally valuable
nor that we cannot tell which is more valuable; it sometimes means that
comparing the options in terms of value is simply out of place, and that
incompatible options A and B may both be good for reasons a single
person can recognize and yet neither option be better than the other.5 6
Moreover, the fact that people do choose between options does not belie
this refusal to make comparisons; choice may be revealed preference
57
without necessarily being the revelation of comparative judgment.
Indeed, we simply do not know enough about how options are cho-
sen in real life to say anything much about the evaluative processes
which choice necessarily implies. A recurring theme in Raz's book is the
rejection of what he calls "over-intellectualized conceptions of auton-
omy." 8 Though he defines autonomy to contrast with "drifting through
life without ever exercising one's capacity to choose,"5 9 he concedes that
many of the most important things in our lives, rather than being con-
sciously chosen, may be projects we have grown up with and aspirations
we discover when we first autonomously deliberate.6 0 What matters for
autonomy is not so much the genesis of our projects and aspirations, but,
first, that we recognize the possibility now of abandoning them or contin-
uing to embrace them; second, that when we choose among these options,
we do so for reasons that play a conscious role in our continuing practi-
cal deliberations; and third, that we identify in good faith with the
choices we have made." Parents may have begun nurturing their chil-
dren's musical talent long before they became capable of autonomous
deliberation; but the latter's pursuit of a musical career still counts as
autonomous if, aware of the alternatives, they later embrace consciously
and wholeheartedly the course of life on which their parents set them.
Autonomous people regard themselves as having reasons for the goals
they pursue. But, as Raz puts it, this need have little to do with the way
one comes 62 by one's goals; it has everything to do with the way one holds
them now.
56. Raz's formal definition of incommensurability is in fact slightly stronger than this and
involves a limitation on transitivity as a condition on rational choice: "Two valuable options are
incommensurable if (1) neitheris better than the other, and (2) there is (orcould be) anotheroption
which is better than one but is not better than the other." Id. at 325.
57. Id. at 338.
58. Id. at 371.
59. Id.
60. Id. at 290-91.
61. This third point defines Raz's notion of integrity. See id. at- 383-85. If we say that keeping
faith with one's choices involves a readiness consciously to deploy the reasons that inform them
elsewhere in one's practical life, id. at 291, then one can start to see an oblique relation between
Raz's notion of integrity in personal life and Ronald Dworkin's notion of integrity as a systemic
interpretive virtue in jurisprudence. Cf. R. DWORKIN, LAW's EMPIRE 176-224 (1986).
62. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 389.
63. .See J. RAz, PRACTICAL REASON AND NORMS 35-45 (1975), for the notion of exclusionary
reasons as an explication of normativity.
64. J. RAZ, supra note 8, at 389.
could be so essential that turning away from it would call into question
the person I am.65
Like much talk about identity and ontology in political theory,
Sandel's position is exaggerated and ill thought out. The ontological
sense in which we as individuals might be understood as "wholly
detached from our aims and attachments,16 6 has nothing to do with how
our projects grip us or the extent of our commitment to them. Liberals
may deny that a commitment makes a difference to our essential being, in
some suitably uninteresting metaphysical sense, while conceding, as Raz
shows, that a commitment makes all the difference in the world to our
reasons for action, the hierarchy of our goals, and the way we picture
ourselves in practical life. Moreover, Raz shows how our commitments
can make this difference without blinding ourselves to the role that
choice plays in our embracing them and without stunting that part of our
imagination which modulates our most fervent commitments with the
thought that we could always revise them if we chose.
This part of the Article has attempted to indicate the depth and
subtlety of autonomy as Raz understands it. Though his arguments are
complicated and often difficult, what emerges is a conception that is
humane rather than severe. Unlike much modem philosophy which con-
nects an analytical style with a forbiddingly abstract content, Raz's
account of autonomy recognizes the messy reality of concrete choices
about life and work and love. He takes seriously the view that liberal
politics must rest on a distinctive and articulate account of moral choice
and value, and he provides such an account. The difficulties begin only
when he attempts to build a politics on that basis.
A. AUTONOMY AS CAPACITY
Others cannot make my autonomous choices for me. 68 But they can
make a difference as to whether I am capable of making these choices
myself. Raz notices that "autonomy" is used sometimes in the sense of
an achievement, sometimes in the sense of a capacity. In the former
sense, people are autonomous if their lives are largely of their own mak-
ing, in the way that we have already discussed. In the latter sense, call-
ing people autonomous means only that they can determine the course of
their lives if they want, and that they live in an environment where self-
determination is possible. Many people lead lives which are not autono-
mous despite their capacity for autonomy. Raz believes that the second
sense derives from the first: we define the capacity by seeing what would
be involved in the achievement. And he believes that only the achieve-
ment is of ultimate value: it is "the value of the exercise which endows
the capacity with what it is worth." 6 9
Still "one cannot exercise an ability one does not possess,"' 70 and we
must ask what is requisite for people to have this capacity. Among the
several conditions required, some pertain to the individual and some to
the environment in which options are presented and endowed with moral
meaning. 71 The individual attributes are fairly straightforward and need
not detain us here. They include cognitive abilities "such as the power to
absorb, remember and use information," emotional and imaginative
capacities, character traits like "stability, loyalty and the ability to form
personal attachments and to maintain intimate relationships," and of
course basic health and physical well-being. 72 As we shall see shortly,
the idea is not that the lack of any of these attributes prevents a person
from living the autonomous life; rather the idea is that we value each of
these things partly (indeed substantially) for their contribution to the
autonomous life.
choose their company, follow outdoor pursuits and so on. Negative free-
dom, in the brute Hobbesian sense, is an indispensable condition for
autonomy.7 3
Freedom from coercion is a much more complicated idea. Raz
notices, quite rightly, that if someone threatens to harm me unless I do as
ordered, there is still a sense in which I make a choice: "[T]he coerced
prefer to comply with the threat and avoid the penalty. The coerced may
regret the circumstances they are in, but so do many people who face
hard unpleasant choices."'74 So what is wrong with coercion? How does
it undermine autonomy? And what distinguishes situations that are
coercive from those that are not?
Suppose someone threatens to break my fingers unless I make a cer-
tain choice. If the threat is credible, my choice lacks autonomy presuma-
bly for the same reason that any choice dominated by the need to
preserve the basic integrity of one's body lacks autonomy. This insight
provides the basis of an important connection between the view (com-
monly held by "negative" libertarians) that threats undermine freedom
and the view (commonly reviled by negative libertarians) that poverty
undermines freedom. Raz properly argues that the two views stand or
fall together.7 5
In addition, Raz points out that threats that go beyond biological
needs can coerce us. For example, threatening to break someone's fin-
gers is especially significant to concert pianists, for although we all have
reasons not to have our fingers broken, pianists have a special reason
derived from the way they shaped their lives. A career aspiration like
piano playing may occupy such a high position in the hierarchy of a
person's goals 76 that losing her fingers may make a worthwhile life
impossible. Therefore, it is also presumably true that threats to deprive
people of something required for the pursuit of their life projects consti-
tutes coercion even if that something has nothing to do with their biolog-
ical needs. Threatening to smash a sculptor's nearly completed life work
might be one example. And since "projects" embraces relationships,
77
threatening harm to a loved one can also undermine one's autonomy.
73. T. HOBBES, supra note 25.
74. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 151.
75. Id. at 156.
76. See id. at 292-93.
77. See id. at 153.
Coercion also has significance for autonomy that goes beyond its
impact on the circumstances of its victims' lives. Coercion, being inten-
tional, involves an element of insult: The victim is "being treated as a
non-autonomous agent, an animal, a baby, or an imbecile. ' 78 Raz's work
is much more sensitive to issues of hermeneutics than is most liberal the-
ory: Meaning and significance are determined for actions and practices
at a social, rather than an individual, level. 9 It is thus possible for a
threat to constitute disrespect for autonomy even when it does not signifi-
cantly diminish it:
The natural fact that coercion and manipulation reduce options or dis-
tort normal processes of decision and the formation of preferences has
become the basis of a social convention loading them with meaning
regardless of their actual consequences. They have acquired a sym-
bolic meaning expressing disregard or even contempt for the coerced
or manipulated people.80
This, as we shall see, is important for Raz's later explication of the liberal
opposition to the use of coercion in pursuit of perfectionist ideals.
C. MANIPULATION
That last point bears expanding. Under Raz's theory, people's goals
(and thus their preferences and their sense of what constitutes their well-
being) can hardly be chosen utterly independently of others. Parents
instill aspirations in their children, lovers thrust projects upon one
another, and society as a whole makes certain options available and
others unavailable. What matters for autonomy is not that we hold our
goals independently of others, but that we currently embrace them for
reasons that appeal to us using our own evaluative capacities. Those rea-
sons may include impersonal ones that would or should appeal to us
independently of others' having given us these goals; but, as we have
seen, they need not. One's only reasons for embracing a goal may be
reasons that derive entirely from its original adoption, and its adoption
may be nothing but the result of others' intervention in one's life. Given
his boot-strapping conception of goals and reasons, Raz simply cannot
afford to regard this as manipulation.
The same point can be made more generally about the conditions for
autonomy. One does not develop one's capacity for autonomy "natu-
rally" or in isolation. The social environment generally and one's inter-
action with others are going to affect it. Some of those interactions may
be deliberate, others may not. But deliberateness surely cannot be the
morally relevant distinction, for we want people to affect one another in
ways that are designed to enhance one another's capacities to choose.
Notice that Raz will not want to say that affecting a person's capaci-
ties counts as manipulation just in case it increases the likelihood that
person will make bad choices. That would be too easy. Raz wants to
banish manipulation as well as coercion even in the service of enlightened
perfectionist ideals.8 8 It follows that we must at least be able to imagine
cases where people are manipulated to choose options that are good and
where that still counts as a derogation from their autonomy.
I think that in the end Raz will want to settle for a fairly modest
idea of manipulation which involves something as simple as the inculca-
tion of false beliefs. People have hierarchies of goals, so that they pursue
some goals because of a belief about their connection with others: I write
this Article only because I believe it will contribute to the discussion of
Raz's book. If someone leads me to adopt that belief, knowing it to be
false, in order to get me to write the Article, then I am being
manipulated.
88. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 420.
But even this idea, of the inculcation of true and false beliefs, is far
from straightforward in a social and political context. If I contribute
deliberately to the symbolic loading of some option (for example, if I
propose or support the establishment of some faith as the official English
religion), am I misleading people about what it is to be English or patri-
otic? Am I manipulating people's choice of religion? Any affirmative
answer seems to presuppose that there is such a thing as an option's "real
merits" apart from the social meaning with which it has been endowed.
And that presupposition seems naive given the rest of Raz's theory. But
if my behavior is not manipulation, then loading toothpaste with a con-
notation of sex appeal is not manipulation either, and it becomes hard to
see what work the concept is doing.
understood only as an individual choice. Raz even points out that those
who see the importance of autonomy in modem society by no means
commit themselves to thinking it is a good thing:
It would be a mistake to think that those who believe, as I do, in
the value of personal autonomy necessarily desire the extension of per-
sonal choice in all relationships and pursuits. They may consistently
with their belief in personal
96
autonomy wish to see an end to this pro-
cess, or even its reversal.
The situation is analogous to the relation between justice and scar-
city (or courage and danger). If there were no scarcity, there would be
no place for considerations of justice, and if there were no danger, there
would be no call for the virtue of courage. As things stand and are likely
to remain for any plausible future we can imagine, justice and courage
will continue to be important. The importance of these virtues, however,
is no reason for promoting or perpetuating the circumstances that make
them desirable; the virtue of courage does not justify creating danger, nor
does the importance of justice warrant perpetuating scarcity. 97 The
worry that I have about Raz's position lies in his derivation of the duty to
provide options for the exercise of autonomy. If autonomy is morally
valuable only because of the sort of options we have in modem society,
then the importance of autonomy is no more a reason to promote or even
sustain the options that exist than the virtue ofjustice is a reason to resist
the abolition of scarcity. The availability of options has to be seen, on
Raz's account, as one of "the circumstances of autonomy." 98 That those
circumstances may change is not deplorable or regrettable on the basis of
the importance of autonomy, for the fact that they change may have an
impact on the actual importance of autonomy.
I should add that none of the above would follow if one were to
abandon Raz's coyness and say simply that autonomy is unequivocally
good and that the growth of the social circumstances that make it both
possible and important is to be celebrated unconditionally as one of the
advances of modem life. It would then be true that we would have duties
derived from the value of autonomy to sustain the environment that
makes its exercise possible. I find that position more attractive, but it
seems to go beyond the limits of Raz's enthusiasm for modernist versions
of liberalism.9 9
103. Cf. Reaume, Individuals, Groups, and Rights to Public Goods, 38 U. TORONTO L.J. 1
(1988) (considering whether an individual's interest in a cultured society can justify imposing a duty
on others to create such a society); see also Waldron, supra note 16, at 305-06 ("[Pleople enjoy
participating in the production of a cultured society.").
104. See supra note 10.
F. MORAL INDIVIDUALISM
IV. PERFECTIONISM
and temperance and yet have all the unmitigated wrongness of a care-
fully planned and executed conspiracy to defraud. We do not need to say
that because courage, temperance, and prudence have evaluative signifi-
cance, they must therefore make the acts or lives they qualify better or
worse. They are virtues everyone has reason to want, but not because
they enhance the value of anything a person chooses to do. t l6 I suspect
that all the virtue concepts work like this; certainly some of them do.
Thus, Raz's argument, quoted above, will not go through unless he
shows that autonomy is unlike other virtues in that regard.
Maybe there is a better argument for the proposition that auton-
omy's value depends on the value of what the autonomous person
chooses. An autonomous choice is a choice made or embraced for rea-
sons. We saw earlier that it is not supposed to be a choice made arbitrar-
ily, though some of the reasons that make it non-arbitrary will flow from
the fact of the choice itself. It is not supposed to look arbitrary from the
outside nor feel arbitrary from the inside. It is true that sometimes peo-
ple choose for the wrong reasons or because of considerations that are
not really reasons (for them) at all. Even so, we cannot capture the
chooser's intent except by saying that the person thinks she is choosing a
goal on account of its value." 7 And objectively, we would want to say
that, when people pursue goals they think valuable but which are not,
then their well-being would be better promoted if they fail in their pur-
suit than if they succeed. We would expect too, in normal circumstances,
that if the goal lacks the value that the chooser thinks it has, we should
be able to draw this to that person's attention in a way that brings her to
regret its pursuit." 8
Raz's discussion of all this is complex and profound," 9 though it
does rest on a broad identification of morality with reasons for action
which may seem question begging to some. At any rate, it provides a
basis for a version of his claim that autonomy is valuable only when exer-
cised in the pursuit of what is valuable. The considerations just outlined
establish that, if one neglects the aspiration to value implicit in the
choices of an autonomous person, then one is likely to misrepresent what
it is that she values in her autonomy and why autonomy matters. People
value their autonomy because they value choosing projects and a way of
116. Indeed, Raz seems to concede this when he criticizes right-based theorists for thinking that
the only value a virtue has is its contribution to the likelihood that virtuous people will do their duty.
See id. at 197.
117. See id.at 411-12.
118. See id.at 141.
119. See id. at 300-20.
life for reasons. They do not value it in spite of this aspect; they value it
precisely because of the opportunity it provides to shape their lives them-
selves in accordance with the reasons that they apprehend. One does
violence to the self-understanding of people aspiring to autonomy if one
advises them that the moral quality of their choices is unimportant so far
as the value of their autonomy is concerned.
But now, having established the third of Raz's propositions, we may
want to re-examine the second. For the purposes of the perfectionist
argument, the second proposition is as follows: Governments have a
duty to promote autonomy only because and insofar as it is valuable (in
the sense just established). This argument seems innocuous: The reasons
for promoting something are of course the reasons that make it desirable.
But appearances may be misleading. One cannot come away from a dis-
cussion of autonomy this complex and dense without a suspicion that the
reasons that governments promote autonomy are not exactly or simplisti-
cally identical with the value of autonomy to autonomous individuals.
Think back to the account of the importance of autonomy. That
account was based on the facts of life in modern society: "For those who
live in an autonomy-supporting environment there is no choice but to be
autonomous; there is no other way to prosper in such a society." 120 That
suggests that a government which fails to promote autonomy, or inter-
feres with it in a social environment of this kind, makes life unbearable
for its citizens. When the government engages in this type of activity it
takes away from its citizens the only chance to prosper that they have.
Stifling autonomy might be a permissible political strategy in a society
where traditional ways of life are still available; where the conditions for
non-autonomous life have disappeared, however, the government must
accept autonomy as the only route left open for the individuals it gov-
erns. When an account of the duty to promote, or not to interfere with,
autonomy is presented along these lines, it is not clear at all that it is a
duty to promote autonomy only to the extent that autonomous choices
are good choices. Though the value of autonomy to the people who exer-
cise it will certainly be bound up with the values they pursue in their
choosing, the importance of promoting autonomy as an imperativefor
governments can be defended quite independently of that.
As I argued earlier, Raz could strengthen his case immeasurably by
coming out and saying with us moderns that autonomy is uncondition-
ally a good thing. But so long as its importance is made relative to social
circumstances in which no other mode of life is possible, then there is an
B. IMMORAL OPTIONS
Does it matter that Raz says almost nothing about what makes an
option or an individual's conception of the good repugnant or immoral,
even though the central thrust of his argument is to establish the govern-
ment's right, indeed its duty, to extirpate options of this sort?
Strategically, there is a good reason for this reticence. Raz does not
want the debate about perfectionism to become entangled in the debate
about whether a particular style of life is moral or immoral. If he placed
much emphasis on examples, then the book would be read as Raz's
attack on pornography or Raz's attack on bullfighting. In real life, per-
fectionist principles are sometimes invoked to discourage certain behav-
ior like homosexual relationships, atheism, or the use of harmless
narcotics. Liberals respond by saying that the alleged immorality does
not justify the state's interference. But Raz is surely right to imply that
the stronger response is to say that these things are simply not immoral
at all. These activities are perfectly decent ways of living life, and any
legal ban is, therefore, an abuse of perfectionist principles. At any rate,
he is right to ask whether there is anything left in the liberal critique of
perfectionism once we set aside the possibility that perfectionism might
be deployed to support mistaken standards. As a practical matter that
possibility always remains, but it is worth being clear all the same about
where exactly the critique is directed. For this reason, perfectionism is
better defended without examples.
It is worth noting that Raz's theory does not have much in common
with the sort of legal moralism Patrick Devlin advocated some years
ago.121 Devlin opined that society was entitled to use legal means in sup-
port of its established mores, irrespective of their objective moral quality:
[T]he law-maker is not required to make any judgement about what is
good and what is bad. The morals which he enforces are those ideas
about right and wrong which are already accepted by the society for
which he is legislating and which are necessary to preserve its integ-
rity .... Naturally he will assume that the morals of his society are
good and true; if he does not, he should not be playing an active part in
either. 126 But Raz goes on to draw a faulty inference from this
argument:
Putting such general skepticism to one side, the question is: is there
reason to think that one is more likely to be wrong about the character
of the good life than about the sort of moral considerations which all
agree should influence political action such as the right to life, to free
expression, or free religious worship? I know of no such arguments.
The argument in the rest of the book.., showing that all aspects of
morality derive from common sources refutes such a possibility. 127
In fact, it does no such thing. Algebra and arithmetic stem from a com-
mon source, but that does not show that one is no more likely to make
mistakes in the former than in the latter. That morality is coherent
through all its departments and that rights are not cut loose from prem-
ises about the good, does not establish that it is either homogenous or
smoothly unstructured. It may well be that questions of political moral-
ity are easier to answer than questions of personal ethics, even though
they are rooted in the same sources. 128 1 have, for example, much more
confidence in my view that religious freedom is necessary for people to
have any chance of making a decent life for themselves than I have in my
view that the religious life is a repugnant and depraved way to live. The
considerations, if any, that establish the latter position may spring from
the same premises about human dignity that ground the former, but they
become more complex, more elusive, and certainly less demonstrable as
we move into the realm of personal ideals.129
A little later in the book, Raz distinguishes something he calls "nar-
row morality": narrow morality comprises restrictions on each person's
pursuit of her goals imposed in the interests of others. 130 It is pretty
clear that the political morality which perfectionists and their opponents
agree should be upheld by law falls into this category. The basic princi-
ples of criminal law, property law, economy, and distributive justice, are
imposed to determine the extent to which one individual may affect or
compromise others' pursuit of their interests for the sake of the pursuit of
126. See J. RAZ, supra note 8, at 160. Failure to see this point disfigures the discussion in B.
ACKERMAN, supranote 2, at 11,368-69. For a better view, see G. HARRISON, Relativism and Toler-
ance, in 5 PHIL., POL. AND Soc'V 273 (P. Laslett & J. Fishkin eds. 1979).
127. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 160-61.
128. There is also the point N. Simmonds made in his Article, The Morality of Freedom (Book
Review), 46 CAMBRIDGE L.i. 167, 168 (1987) ("the ultimate basis of a moral institution may be
more uncertain [than] the institution itself. derivation from a common source therefore shows noth-
ing about relative certainty or possibility of error.").
129. For an excellent discussion, see P. F. STRAWSON, Social Morality and IndividualIdeal, in
FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT, AND OTHER ESSAYS 26 (1974).
130. See J. RAZ, supra note 8, at 213-14.
her own. No one denies that the state may act to discourage or even ban
the pursuit of individual lifestyles which impose an unacceptable cost on
others, and that substantive moral reasoning is necessary to determine
which costs are fair and acceptable and which are not. John Rawls, for
example, insists that this reasoning, about justice as fairness, has norma-
tive priority over the exercise of individual autonomy: "The principles of
...justice... impose restrictions on what are reasonable conceptions of
one's good. In drawing up plans and in 13deciding
1
on aspirations men are
to take these constraints into account."
But perfectionism goes beyond this, into the realm of "wide moral-
ity"-"the art of life," i.e., the precepts instructing people how to live
and what makes for a "successful, meaningful, and worthwhile life,"' 3 2
even when the interests of others are not directly involved. Again, with-
out placing too much emphasis on examples, these precepts will include
such things as: monogamous love;133 respect for the arts;' 34 the impor-
tance of friendship; 135 the need to avoid putting a price on love and
37 138
friendship;' 36 the importance of loyalty;' the value of spontaneity;
and the preference for a tasteful, rather than a vulgar, urban environ-
ment.139 If Raz's perfectionism is distinct from the commitment to jus-
tice which he shares with Rawls and others, it is because it implies that
the state may act on the basis of these considerations as well.
C. LIBERAL NEUTRALITY
What I have termed the traditional liberal position holds that the
state should be neutral at least on aspects of morality involving what Raz
calls "the art of life."'" If people choose to live lives that are (for exam-
ple) polygamous, philistine, solitary, mercenary, rigid, or vulgar, the gov-
ernment should do nothing to discourage them. The depravity of these
ways of life is, of course, a reason for others to remonstrate with these
people, reason with them, entreat them, persuade them and, if that does
not work, avoid their company. But it is not a reason for compelling
them or taking political action to visit upon them any evil or disadvan-
1 41
tage if they will not mend their ways.
Neutrality, as Raz argues, is an ambiguous principle. It may mean,
on the one hand, that the government must take care not to do anything
which makes it more likely that one conception of the good will flourish
rather than another. This imposes a duty of care on the government to
see that its actions are evenhanded. On the other hand, neutrality may
mean that, whatever the effects of it's actions, the moral merits of com-
peting conceptions of the good do not provide the government with any
valid reason for promoting one rather than the other. I shall call the first
neutrality of effect and the second neutrality of reasons. The difference
between these concepts can be delineated by considering a case posed by
John Locke:
[I]f any people congregated upon account of religion should be desir-
ous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be prohibited by a law.
Meliboeus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and burn
any part of it that he thinks fit. For no injury is thereby done to any
one, no prejudice to another man's goods. And for the same reason he
may kill his calf also in a religious meeting. Whether the doing so be
well-pleasing to God or no, it is their part to consider that do it....
But if peradventure such were the state of things that the interest of
the commonwealth required all slaughter of beasts should be forborne
for some while, in order to the increasing of the stock of cattle that had
been destroyed by some extraordinary murrain, who sees not that the
magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all his subjects to kill any calves
for any use whatsoever? Only 'tis to be observed, that in this case the
law is not made about a religious, but a political matter; nor is the
sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby prohibited.142
147. Nagel, supra note 7, at 9. Raz appears to accept Nagel's argument. J. RAZ, supra note 8,
at 118.
148. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 391.
149. Nagel, supra note 7, at 9-10. Raz appears to accept this argument also J. RAZ, supra note
8, at 119.
150. See J. RAZ, supra note 8, at 307-13.
action to support the good. What is more natural than that one should
act to encourage worthy ideals and discourage unworthy ones? Unless
good reasons are provided for restraint, perfectionism follows simply
from one's evaluation of the worthiness or unworthiness of an ideal. The
perfectionist can afford to sit back and pick off the mainstream liberal
arguments as they come.
In fact, however, the connection between evaluation and perfection-
ist intervention is not nearly so straightforward. That an ideal is unwor-
thy provides a person with a reason not to choose it as her ideal, but it is
not at all clear that it provides others, let alone the state, with a reason to
discourage her from choosing it. It does so if it is true that the others
have an independent reason to see to it that she chooses well. But that is
problematic in the context of a theory which finds virtue in people choos-
ing options for themselves.
Raz attempts to finesse this point by asking what he thinks is a rhe-
torical question:
Is one treating another with respect if one treats him in accordance
with sound moral principles, or does respect for persons require ignor-
ing morality (or parts of it) in our relations with others? There can be
little doubt that stated in this way the question admits of only one
answer. One would be showing disrespect to another if one ignored
moral considerations in treating him.151
As Raz states the point, one must agree. But perfectionism is not
the theory that we should treat others morally. A more honest way of
putting the question would be: "Is one treating others with respect if one
tries to get them to act in accordance with sound moral principles"?
That is a genuinely open question, and, moreover, it seems helpfully sen-
sitive to the nature of the means that are used to promote moral action, a
concern which Raz's formulation neglects.
So one may need a positive justification for perfectionist intervention
even if the defender of neutrality provides no valid argument for political
restraint. Unfortunately, Raz sketches only one such argument and it is
rather unconvincing.
Supporting valuable forms of life is a social rather than an individual
matter. Monogamy, assuming that it is the only morally valuable form
of marriage, cannot be practiced by an individual. It requires a culture
which recognizes it, and which supports it through the public's atti-
tude and through its formal institutions .... [P]erfectionist ideals
require public action for their viability. Anti-perfectionism in practice
would lead not merely to a political stand-off from support for valuable
conceptions of the good. It would undermine 52
the chances of survival
of many cherished aspects of our culture.'
the ability to use whatever other means they have at their disposal.15 7
Raz, however, has never been convinced that the use of force is dis-
tinctive of states and legal orders. In earlier work, he argued that,
although as a matter of fact all existing legal systems use sanctions
imposed by force, still a legal system can be imagined which makes no
resort to such methods.1 58 In the present work, he says that a state is
defined by the generality of its claim to authority: "[the state] claims
authority to regulate all aspects of life."15' 9 Unfortunately, this is distinc-
tive neither of the state nor of the legal order. All sorts of normative
orders claim comprehensive authority-the law of the Catholic church,
for example, which (on its own account and that is all that interests Raz
in this passage) claims to apply to all mankind and, potentially, to
actions of any and every sort. The state cannot be distinguished from
other orders claiming comprehensive authority except by reference to the
greater likelihood that its claims will be upheld. Despite what Raz says,
its supremacy ultimately springs from its command of considerable
means of violence.
This general point provides a background for evaluating Raz's claim
1 60
that "[p]erfectionist goals need not be pursued by the use of coercion."
It is certainly true that individuals may pursue perfectionist goals non-
coercively by banding together in self-improvement groups, setting up
culture collectives, raising the tone of their conversation, making dona-
tions to athletes and artists and such. But Raz's claim is supposed to be
true of the state. In its pursuit of human excellence, a government might
choose to tax some kinds of leisure activities and subsidize others, or to
confer public honors on artists, for example, or people of exemplary vir-
tue, or use its authority in a range of areas from urban planning to educa-
tion to promote various noble conceptions of the good, or provide a legal
framework to house some types of relationship but not others, as it does
in the case of monogamous marriage. If such non-coercive means are
used, Raz thinks there can be no objection at all to the official pursuit of
perfectionist goals. The background to mainstream liberal concern about
this view is, as I have said, the fact that even if governmental activity is
157. The heart of John Locke's case for toleration centered around this understanding of the
state in terms of its distinctive means. "[Tihe care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate,
because his power consists only in outward force.. ." J. LOCKE, supra note 5, at 129. Cf. Waldron,
Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution, in JUSTIFYING TOLERATION (S. Mendus ed.
1988) (criticizing Locke's case for toleration as "inadequate and unconvincing").
158. J. RAz, supra note 33, at 154-62.
159. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 4.
160. Id. at 417.
not overtly coercive, still in the last resort the government's ability to
undertake any activity at all rests on its coercive power.
Is it possible to divide the means available to the state into those that
are coercive and those that are noncoercive? It can be done, superficially,
no doubt: There is nothing overtly coercive about a subsidy. But that is
not the end of the matter. Given that the subsidy is paid by a govern-
ment, we have to ask whether there is anything deeper about government
subsidies which engages the same sort of concerns that arise with out-
right coercion.
What are these concerns? Why does Raz rule out overtly coercive
action for perfectionist purposes? The short answer is that lie does not-
at least for certain perfectionist purposes. In order to ensure a fair degree
of autonomy for all, in at least a capacity sense, the government is enti-
tled to deploy its coercive power. The argument is complex and involves
Raz's version of Mill's famous "harm principle." '6 1 Coercion is both
actually and symbolically a threat to autonomy. 6 2 But "harm" can be
defined in terms of the diminution of a person's prospects for the autono-
mous life she has chosen.1 63 Hence, to say that coercion may be used
only to prevent harm is to say that the autonomy of one person may be
threatened only where it is necessary to avoid some unacceptable diminu-
tion of the autonomy of another. And Raz subscribes to this view.lM
Now, we saw earlier in our discussion of "narrow" morality that
perfectionist ideals go beyond principles of respect for the interests of
others. They open up into wide morality, the precepts of "the art of life"
that we considered at the end in Part IV. One could attempt to use coer-
cion in this area as well. Certainly many if not all legal systems have
tried to do so sometime in their history, and many still do so now; ban-
ning certain forms of consensual sex is the most obvious example. But
Raz believes coercion would be wrong in this area, even if the values
upheld were acceptable ones. Though coercion imperils autonomy,
[a] moral theory which values autonomy highly can justify restricting
the autonomy of one person for the sake of the greater autonomy of
others or even of that person himself in the future. That is why it can
161. J. S.MILL, supra note 141, at 13: "[Ihe only purpose for which power can be exercised
over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
162. J. RAz, supra note 8,at 418.
163. See id. at 413-14.
164. See id. at 417-18. He would also, I take it, subscribe to Mill's view that the harm principle
has two sides to it, legitimating coercion in certain cases, as well as restraining it in others. See J.S.
MILL, supra note 141, at 127: "[O]wing to the absence of any recognized general principles, liberty.
is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted ...."
The position is not an easy one for Raz to defend, for his perfection-
ism tends to push him further than this. It is true that if we ban an
option which is depraved but not harmful, we will be compromising the
autonomy of those who would otherwise be tempted to choose it. But
according to Raz, we would not be compromising autonomy in any sense
that mattered, for he claims that autonomy to choose a depraved option
has either no value or negative value. So what is wrong with a ban on
harmless depravity? Raz's answer is a ultimately a pragmatic one:
[C]oercion by criminal penalties is a global and indiscriminate invasion
of autonomy. Imprisoning a person prevents him from almost all
autonomous pursuits. Other forms of coercion may be less severe, but
they all invade autonomy, and they all, at least in this world, do it in a
fairly indiscriminate way. That is, there is no practical way of ensur-
ing that the coercion will restrict the victims' choice of repugnant
1 66
options but will not interfere with their other choices.
We might imagine circumstances in which this concern about coercion
would not be applicable; and if so, then of course the restraint should
evaporate. 167 In any case, the passage makes clear that Raz's liberal
reluctance, if it can be called that, to use legal power in the service of
perfectionist ideals applies only and at most to those forms of power
which invade the autonomy of the individuals affected on a fairly broad
and indiscriminate front.
E. NON-COERCIVE PERFECTIONISM
Whatever the case with coercion, "Raz does not believe it is wrong
for the state to use its fiscal powers to promote perfectionist ideals. It
may tax activities that are depraved in order to discourage them and to
mark its disapproval. It may subsidize those that are particularly noble,
if that makes it more likely that they will prosper. And it may embody
morally good practices in the framework of the law of the land-in the
way monogamous marriage is embodied-if that can be done without
coercive invasions of autonomy.
1. Taxation
restrain any hunters who try to ride to hounds without paying the stipu-
lated fee. That restraintwill be coercive, even if one wants to insist that
the tax is not.
The point is an important one, because it reiterates the theme that
the coercive power of the state stands in the background even when it is
not overtly deployed. It also indicates the complexity of the notion of a
threat, and it may be worth unpacking that complexity in order to get a
grip on the permissibility of perfectionist taxation. For example, suppose
A threatens to break B's vase unless B hits C. There are many reasons
why A's making that threat might be wrong. Here are some of them:
(i) Because the threatened sanction is wrong (i.e., it is wrong to
break other people's pottery), the announcement of one's intention, even
one's conditional intention, to do it may be wrong also. 169 Not all threats
are wrong in this way. Blackmail, for example, often involves a threat to
perform an act that is independently right (e.g., reporting the victim's
wrongdoing to the appropriate authorities).
(ii) In order to make a threat credible, the threatener must have
some power over the victim, and holding that power may be wrong. The
threat's credibility, in our example, depends upon A already having hold
of B's vase. It may have been wrong of A to get hold of it or keep hold of
it once B realized what was happening.
(iii) The action one is trying to get the victim to do may be wrong,
so a fortiori it is wrong to try (by whatever means) to get him or her to
do it. In our example, it is wrong for B to hit C, and so wrong of A to try
to encourage the act.
(iv) The threat may be of such magnitude as to interfere with the
autonomy of the victim. It may be wrong therefore simply because it
undermines something that is valuable. In our case, this will depend on
how important the vase is to B. As we have seen, Raz argues quite con-
vincingly that a threat may interfere with an individual's autonomy even
though it is not a threat of serious injury or death. If the good threatened
is strategic to a person's conception of the good, then the cost that the
threatener is attaching to one of the options is the cost of giving up the
worthwhile life one has chosen. Clearly not all threats have this charac-
ter. If B does not cherish the vase in the special way just mentioned, the
threat may be wrong for reasons (i)-(iii), but not for reason (iv).
169. This is one of the reasons many people have misgivings about the morality of nuclear
deterrence: Since the killing of millions of civilians is wrong, then presumably any threat to kill
them is wrong also, irrespective of the purpose for which the threat is made.
Presumably, the same is true for the small fines associated with cer-
tain legal bans: The loss of fifty dollars for smoking marijuana is hardly
going to overwhelm my pursuit of the good. But fines have one feature
that distinguishes them from taxes. In the latter case, all that the author-
ities may do is collect the money from those who choose to engage in the
activity. But in the case of fines arising under criminal law, the authori-
ties also have the responsibility of actually preventing the offending con-
duct if they can, whether or not the offender is willing to pay. This
means that there is an extra coercive dimension associated with criminal
restrictions that it is not associated with taxes.
In many cases, a threat which is wrong for reason (iv) will be also be
a threat which justifies or excuses the victim's compliance. Raz makes
much of this in his discussion,17 but I think he exaggerates the connec-
tion. Whether a threat excuses is one thing, whether and how it is wrong
is another. They are different types of normative significance. There may
be some acts which are never justified or excused by coercion.171 That is,
there may be some occasions on which one is morally required to surren-
der one's autonomy rather than obey the threatener. But even in these
cases, making the threat will still be wrong for autonomy-related
172
reasons.
(v) Finally, it may be that there is something wrong with trying to
influence someone's choices with a threat even if the threat falls short of
reason (iv). Certainly that is wrong in some cases, even when the threat
is not wrong in any other way. Suppose a man threatens a woman with
the loss of some favor which he has it in his power to bestow if she does
not consent to sex with him: for example, "Unless you sleep with me, I
will revoke the $100 legacy to you that is presently in my will." The
threatened sanction is not wrong; the threatener does not need wrongful
power over the victim in order to impose it; the act he is trying to get her
to do is not wrong in itself or its consequences; and the loss of the small
legacy is hardly likely to overpower her will. Nevertheless the threat is
wrong, I think, just because this is the sort of decision to which one
should not attach costs in an artificial sort of way. In deciding whether
to sleep with him, the woman might want to consider a range of factors.
But he should not try to manipulate her by adding to that range factors
that are not part of the inherent "merits" of the issue.
2. Subsidies
Taxing an activity thought to be depraved may be wrong because it
interferes with autonomy in a manipulative way. But what about subsi-
dizing an activity thought to be noble?
The argument is not quite so straightforward, since there is no sim-
ple symmetry between taxes and subsidies. A tax is an inducement to
refrain from an activity, but a subsidy is not necessarily an inducement to
participate in it. Usually, a subsidy decreases the cost of participating in
the activity in question, rather than giving an additional reason to par-
ticipate in the activity. The trouble with a perfectionist tax is that it
provides a reason for refraining from an activity that is not one of what I
have called "the merits" of the case. A subsidy would be objectionable
on similar grounds if it were so substantial as to provide a positive
inducement to an activity thought to be noble. We would then worry
because people were responding, not to the nobility of the activity, but to
the bribe that was being offered for pursuing it.
But if people's reasons for participating in an activity are good and
noble, is it wrong to use tax revenue to facilitate their participation, to
make it easier for them? Raz says it is no objection that the tax is raised
coercively:
I assume that tax is raised to provide adequate opportunities, and is
justified by the principle of autonomy in a way consistent with the
harm principle.... The government has an obligation to create an
environment providing individuals with an adequate range of options
and the opportunities to choose them. The duty arises out of people's
interest in having a valuable autonomous life.... Not every tax can be
justified by this argument. But then not every tax is justified by any
argument. A tax which cannot 179
be justified by the argument here out-
lined should not be raised.
This last point, of course, is absurd: there are other justifications for
taxes besides the one mentioned here. But it does sound as though Raz
wants to restrict the subsidization of options only to cases where it is
necessary to provide an adequate environment for autonomy. If such an
environment exists already, the government may not use coercively
raised funds to subsidize existing or additional options purely on the
grounds of their goodness.
It is pretty clear why this would be. To begin with, there would be
the problem of selecting which good options to subsidize. For example,
may the government subsidize some among the plurality of good options
but not others? May it choose to subsidize sport, for example, rather
than opera, provided that the necessary range of cultural opportunities
will exist anyway? And how should these choices be made? If the good
options are incommensurable interse and if, as we have seen, many of the
reasons for favoring one of them over another spring from the choice to
engage in the favored option, may government officials choose the
options they happen to engage in themselves? Remember we are not now
asking whether their "say so" makes it right. The question is simply:
How do they choose between incompatible goods if a choice has to be
made? If they choose to subsidize option A rather than option B, is that
not unfair to the adherents of B who, in virtue of their choice of B, have
no reason to favor A? (To sharpen these questions, assume for the sake
of argument that religion is a good thing, and ask how a government
should choose which church to subsidize.) Though Raz talks of moving
from neutrality to pluralism,180 and though he says a government may
take a hand "in directing or initiating" the processes by which some
options flourish and others wither away,' 8 ' he offers no guidance on how
governments should choose among a plurality of goods, when all cannot
be favored.
The other worry about subsidies is really an echo of the argument
about taxation. To subsidize an activity is to lessen the costs that must
be borne by those who choose to engage in it. Once again, to clarify the
argument, we must assume that there is no redistributive argument for
the subsidy, and that the pre-subsidy costs are a fair reflection of the
impact that an activity has on one's resources available for other pur-
suits.'" 2 (If these assumptions do not hold, then no specifically perfec-
tionist argument for the subsidy is necessary.) What a subsidy does,
180. Id. at 130.
181. Id. at 410-11.
182. Dworkin emphasizes that the arts are public goods in the economists' sense, and so their
pre-subsidy market costs may not be an accurate reflection of their impact on community resources.
then, is to give those who benefit from it a misleading and distorted pic-
ture of the real costs and benefits of engaging in the subsidized activity.
It seems to me that, for example, those who consider cultivating a taste
for opera ought to give some consideration to the resources that must be
used to produce live opera and to the opportunities that are foregone in
society when resources are used in that way. But if their opera tickets
are subsidized by the state, because opera is a noble and wonderful art,
then they are not being encouraged to consider the matter on its merits.
Instead, they make their choices blithely unaware of the extent to which
their enjoyments deprive them and others of the use of social capital.
Once again, the underlying point is about respect for autonomy. In
choosing which activities to encourage through subsidization, the gov-
ernment is making its decision on the merits of those activities. Is this
not a decision that each person should be making? Is it not treating peo-
ple like children to make that decision for them, and then adjust the
payoffs so that they will accept it more easily. We must keep hold of one
of the deepest insights in the liberal tradition: Governments are merely
composed of people who happen to wield extraordinary power. There-
fore, when a decision is made to subsidize an activity, one group of peo-
ple is deciding a moral issue that ought essentially to be decided by other
people acting on their own. Raz stresses rightly, throughout the book,
that the fact that a government thinks something is good is not a reason
in itself for acting as though it were good."8 3 But he does not place
nearly enough stress on the insult involved when the government actu-
ally takes it upon itself to think about such matters in the first place.
3. Legal Frameworks
There is not room in this Article to review all the putatively non-
coercive means by which Raz believes perfectionist ideals might be pur-
sued. The final one that I want to consider, however, is the embodiment
of some perfectionist ideal in a legal framework for social relations. The
case that springs to mind is the special preference given to long term
monogamous relationships, over, say, polygamy or casually serial
monogamy, in the legal institution of marriage."8 4 In what follows, I
R. DWORKIN, supra note 1, at 221-33. Raz, however, does not link his account of subsidies to his
theory of public goods. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 198-203.
183. J. RAz, supra note 8, at 412.
184. Id. at 161.
What, then, does the legal preference for monogamy over polygamy
involve? The fact is that the law gives the one kind of relationship a
certain status and effect elsewhere in the system which it denies to the
other. If I go through the proper ceremony, then my monogamous rela-
tionship. with my lover takes on a powerful significance in law, for all
sorts of purposes ranging from tax benefits to alimony to visiting and
consent rights in hospitals. But I and my several lovers can go through
all the ceremonies we please, and our polygamous relationship will never
be given that special legal status or effect. No matter how hard we try,
we will be treated like any other band of people who are rooming
together for the time being. (The same is true of monogamous relation-
ships between homosexuals, and so on.)
Is this a threat to autonomy? It is, and for roughly the same reasons
that we found taxes and subsidies objectionable. The decision to favor
one type of relationship with a legal framework but not another artifi-
cially distorts people's estimate of which sort of relationship is morally
preferable. Let me explain.
Everyone who chooses to live with another and to make a life
together has to contemplate the possibility that things may go wrong.
The relationship may break up or one of the partners may die, and then
property and financial entanglements will have to be sorted out. One of
the partners may fall ill, and medical staff may have to decide who
should make decisions about the patient's well-being, and who should
have visiting rights when these must be restricted. Even if things do not
go wrong, they may be complicated. A child may be born, and questions
will then arise about who should take care of it and make decisions about
its future. The people in the household must be taxed, and questions
may arise about how their incomes should be determined, and so on.
Everyone contemplating entering a relationship of whatever sort ought to
give some attention to these problems."8 9 And, if they are considering,
for example, living in a menage a trois, they must give some considera-
tion to the possibility that these problems may be intrinsically more com-
plicated for them to sort out than for a couple. These are the sorts of
moral factors people should appeal to in determining whether polygamy
is preferable to monogamy.
The government has decided on the basis of its estimate of these
factors to distort the matter by making it even easier for monogamous
couples to sort these problems out than for polygamists. Monogamous
189. See also Waldron, supra note 67, passim (it is a necessity that people have something to fall
back on if an attachment fails).
couples have a framework to appeal to, and a set of familiar and well
understood rules and procedures for. dealing with these matters.
Polygamists have none of these benefits and therefore someone contem-
plating the choice has to consider this further factor. Apart from the
legal institution of marriage, problems in monogamy are arguably easier
to sort out than those in polygamy; but, the existence of the legal institu-
tion means that the "arguably" disappears, and monogamy becomes infi-
nitely more straightforward. Once again, as we saw in the case of taxes
and subsidies, the state insults its citizens by doing their moral calcula-
tions for them, and using the results as a justification for making the
citizens' own calculations easier than they should be.
V. CONCLUSION
None of this adds up to a conclusive case against perfectionism.
Raz may be right that there are some forms of political action which may
legitimately be used in the service of perfectionist ideals.' 9 ' But I hope I
have been able to say something to indicate the complexity of the misgiv-
ings that mainstream liberals feel about political action in this area. The
state may not show its guns when it takes such action. But ultimately it
is what it is on account of its guns, and there seems to be some special
insult involved in its taking advantage of that sort of position to do our
moral thinking for us. I hope it is also clear how much of this critique
depends precisely on the conception of autonomy that Raz developed.
Without Raz's account of the relation between moral choice, self-author-
ship, and the plurality of options, the points I have made about manipu-
lation and moral thinking would not have been nearly so clear to me.
Near the end of the book, Raz mentions a number of practical and
political difficulties which might impede the prospects for liberal perfec-
tionism.' Particular governments may be morally inept; power may
corrupt; freedom may be so fragile that the symbolism of any govern-
mental action to promote an ideal becomes problematic; society may be
so divided that perfectionist policies may lead to civil strife. These are all
things to bear in mind, and Raz is right to be unashamed of the vulnera-
bility of his argument to such empirical considerations. But he is right
also to insist that the main philosophical issue is deeper than this, and
that is the ground on which I have tried to meet his case.