LIBERAL NEUTRALISM AND THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PROJECT

Liberalism is either nonneutral toward, or unfair about, ways of life that fail to produce goods that are instrumental to social purposes. N onredistributive, Nozickian liberalism is neutral toward such ways of life, but it unfairly fails to make them accessible to those who lack the means to pursue them at their leisure. Social-democratic liberalis m attempts to universalize access to all ways of life, but in practice it violates neutrality by drawing everyone into the production of red istributable primary goods. This is why the notoriously noninstrumenta list humanities have been marginalized; challenging the belief in libe ral neutrality may therefore be essential to their survival.