So far, I have criticized a number of attempts to ground neutralism in the demands of autonomy, and a number of others to ground it in the dangers posed by nonneutral states. But what, finally, of the third main class of arguments, which seek to ground neutralism in the impossibility (or the inordinate difficulty) of knowing the good? In the current chapter, I shall conclude my critique of neutralism by arguing that these arguments also fail. However, because the question of how we can know the good leads naturally to the question of what is good, the chapter also marks the transition to a more positive discussion of the values that governments should promote.

Historically and conceptually, the epistemological defense of neutralism is less important than the others. The majority of neutralists either say nothing about whether we can know the good or else say or imply that we sometimes can. Rawls, for example, has written that “it would be fatal to the idea of a political conception to see it as skeptical about, or indifferent to, truth, much less as in conflict with it.” Similarly, Ronald Dworkin has observed that “skepticism seems exactly the wrong answer to make, because if… each person should be free to choose personal ideals for himself, then this is surely because the choice of one life over another is a matter of supreme importance, not because it is of no importance at all.”