Some Comments about the Object and Realization of Neutrality as Fair Treatment in Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition

In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten aims at providing a firm philosophical foundation to minority rights. The main problem with the usual multiculturalist arguments defending such rights is that they are based on controversial conceptions of culture that are at odds with liberal neutrality. To avoid such difficulty, Patten’s argument for strong cultural rights is based on a commitment to neutrality. In a surprising way, the key concept of Patten’s book on recognition, minority rights, and culture is then liberal neutrality. Neutrality, Patten convincingly argues, should be understood as neutrality of treatment rather than neutrality of effects or neutrality of intentions. Fair treatment can be achieved in three different ways: privatization, generic entanglement, and evenhandedness. Privatization is the best way to realize neutrality, and the two other strategies ‘‘will at best approximate neutrality.’’ But in the case of culture, privatization and generic entanglement, which are both forms of nonrecognition, are not an option: the state cannot be completely culturally neutral. Some recognition is, therefore, unavoidable. This leaves us with only two alternatives: majoritarian recognition, or equal recognition. Patten then argues that ‘‘the majoritarian approach to recognition is plainly nonneutral,’’ and therefore that the best strategy to realize neutrality toward culture is equal recognition. There are two different points in this argument that might be challenged. First, we might disagree about what Patten calls the ‘‘domain of neutrality,’’ i.e. the type of conceptions of the good to which neutrality should apply. Second,