• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.144
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• pp.83-111
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• 2017

The purport of this essay is to examine the possible compatibility of liberalism and perfectionism. Liberalism is typically considered as anti-perfectionism. So communitarian critique of liberalism focused on the effects of its anti-perfectionism. But liberalism could be interpreted as compatible with perfectionism. Joseph Raz attempts to develop and defend "perfectionist" liberalism. He rejects anti-perfectionist "neutrality" and claims that the goal of political action is to encourage pursuit of what is truly good and discourage pursuit of what is morally unworthy. Despite this strong perfectionist claim, Raz's political philosophy gives pride of place to individual liberty, or autonomy, which he considers to be intrinsically valuable. One exercises autonomy in choosing among a plurality of human goods. Nonetheless, Raz forthrightly denies the value of autonomy used to choose what is morally bad and says that society has no reason to protect worthless, much less morally evil, options. Raz is more conventionally liberal, however, in espousing a version of J. S. Mill's "harm principle", arguing that a due regard for autonomy rules out government use of coercive means to discourage "victimless" immoralities. However, there are some serious questions about whether Raz's strong perfectionism can support his principled rejection of "morals legislation". I think that if his strong perfectionism could be a little "weakened" and his autonomy could be interpreted as having only formal value rather than having intrinsic value, then his perfectionism could be compatible with liberalism.