Abstract

Liberalism is either nonneutral toward, or unfair about, ways of life that fail to produce goods that are instrumental to social purposes. Nonredistributive, Nozickian liberalism is neutral toward such ways of life, but it unfairly fails to make them accessible to those who lack the means to pursue them at their leisure. Social‐democratic liberalism attempts to universalize access to all ways of life, but in practice it violates neutrality by drawing everyone into the production of redistributable primary goods. This is why the notoriously noninstrumentalist humanities have been marginalized; challenging the belief in liberal neutrality may therefore be essential to their survival.