A common objection to political liberalism is that since reasonable citizens agree that some ways of life are worse than others – for instance that the life of a drug addict is less worthwhile than the life of a person who spends her time with family and philosophy – political liberals must concede that the state can sometimes permissibly use perfectionist reasons. I argue in this paper that this challenge is mistaken, because the comparison only tells us something about relative, not absolute, value. And because the real question concerns what the right justificatory constituency looks like, not what counts as reasonable in some other sense, the implication is that perfectionists and political liberals could construct equally plausible idealised constituencies. This stalemate gives us reason to develop arguments in favour of our preferred justificatory constituency. We cannot view local comparative judgements in isolation.

对政治自由主义的一个普遍反对意见是，由于理性的公民同意某些生活方式比其他方式更糟糕——例如，吸毒者的生活不如花时间陪伴家人和哲学的人的生活有价值——政治自由主义者必须承认，国家有时可以允许使用完美主义的理由。我在这篇论文中认为这个挑战是错误的，因为比较只能告诉我们一些关于相对价值的东西，而不是绝对价值。并且因为真正的问题涉及正确的辩护选区是什么样的，而不是其他意义上的合理选区，这意味着完美主义者和政治自由主义者可以构建同样合理的理想化选区。This stalemate gives us reason to develop arguments in favour of our preferred justificatory constituency. 我们不能孤立地看待当地的比较判断。