  A popular answer appeals to a moral norm of respect for persons, where persons are understood as rational agents. The distinctive feature of persons is “that they are beings capable of thinking and acting on the basis of reasons” (Larmore 1996, 137). To respect another person one must engage his capacity to respond to reasons. In politics to respect another person is “to insist that coercive or political principles be as justifiable to that person as they are to us” (Larmore 1990, 137). The mutual justification of political principles, it is then argued, is possible only if all citizens bracket their controversial views about the good and seek to argue from common ground. Note that this way of grounding state neutrality explains why the principle, on its second and third formulations, does not rule out state promotion of shared or uncontroversial conceptions of the good. Since a shared conception of the good could figure in common ground justifications for political principles, its promotion need not express disrespect to any citizen. State neutrality thus applies only to disputed conceptions of the good.