The Good Life as a Public Good

According to the neutrality thesis, in designing state policies governments should not allow themselves to be informed by any particular conceptions of the good life. The aim of this book is to contribute to the debate about this thesis in two specific ways. Firstly, the limits of acceptable state perfectionism are examined, not on a general level but by reference to some particular concerns of government policy: transgenic animals; future generations; the promotion of the arts; minority cultures; the allocation of scarce health care resources; the integration of mentally handicapped people into the community; and the expression of national identities. Secondly, the book as a whole evaluates the argument that the government has a special task to produce or to maintain intrinsically collective aspects of the good life, because these are to be seen as public goods.