Volume 49, Issue 4, October 2023
Chris Mills
Pages 709-738
The Case for Restricted Perfectionism in Upbringing
Political liberals aim to treat citizens as free and equal participants in a society governed by principles endorsable from a wide range of reasonable conceptions of the good. This popular account of political morality struggles to accommodate child citizens yet to develop the capacities for freedom and equality enjoyed by citizens under political liberalism. It appears political liberals must either accept political liberalism should not apply to all citizens or intrusively constrain parental rights to shape the values of their children in line with anti-perfectionism. I defend a third possibility that justifies perfectionism in parenting and anti-perfectionism in education.