School of Political and International Studies

Flinders University

VALUE PLURALISM AND THE VIRTUES OF LIBERALISM

Abstract

Does Berlinian value pluralism assist or impede the justification of liberalism? In contrast with recent commentators such as John Gray, I argue that a reasoned case for liberal universalism is not only compatible with value pluralism but can be derived from it. Pluralism implies that there are many different legitimate conceptions of the good, and it might seem that the liberal good is only one such among others. But pluralism also implies that reasoned choices among conflicting plural and incommensurable values in particular cases require a particularist form of practical reasoning which is supported by certain pluralist ‘virtues.’ These, in turn, overlap or are reinforced by the civic virtues distinctive of liberal forms of politics. The value-pluralist outlook thus endorses liberalism (the liberal virtues) as an ethical framework for the best lives under pluralism, hence it endorses a perfectionist liberal state in which such lives are actively promoted.

VALUE PLURALISM AND THE VIRTUES OF LIBERALISM

What is the relation between liberalism and value pluralism? This question is attracting a rapidly growing literature.¹ Its starting point is the political philosophy of the late Isaiah Berlin, who was both a pluralist and a liberal.² Berlin’s pluralism consists in the view that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural, potentially conflicting, and incommensurable. His liberalism is signalled by a defence of human rights and personal liberty as fundamental to any decent or humane form of politics. Berlin evidently thinks that value pluralism and liberalism are compatible. Moreover, in some places he seems to go further, arguing that pluralism justifies liberalism. In the seminal ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ he argues that if values are plural and incommensurable, then when such values come into conflict we cannot escape making radically hard, perhaps tragic, choices among them; in which case we must value the freedom to make such choices, a freedom best promoted by liberal political institutions (Berlin 1969, 168).

The claim that value pluralism and liberalism are compatible, even mutually supportive, has been increasingly challenged in recent years, most prominently by John Gray.³ For Gray, the political implications of Berlin’s pluralism are much more radical and much less sympathetic to liberalism than Berlin himself realised. If values really are plural and incommensurable, then none is inherently superior or inferior to any other, each makes its own distinctive claim. Rankings of such values in particular cases must then be the result not of universal reason but merely of subjective preferences or at best of local cultural inheritance. It seems to follow that liberalism itself represents no more than one such subjective or local ranking of values among others. The universal priority accorded by Berlin and other liberals to goods such as human rights and personal liberty cannot be defended in the rational and universal terms characteristic of the liberal tradition. At best, the truth of value pluralism is compatible with what Gray calls an ‘agonistic’ liberalism, clear-sighted in its modest claim to being only one solution among others to the problem of conflicting incommensurables, with no pretensions to universal superiority (Gray 1995b, Ch. 6).

In this paper I shall respond to Gray’s argument not by tackling it head-on, but by the more oblique strategy of setting up an alternative view of the political implications of value pluralism, showing how pluralism itself can generate a distinctive and powerful case for liberalism. How is this possible? It is hard to deny the weakness of many attempts to argue from pluralism to liberalism, Berlin’s included. From the fact of value plurality and incommensurability it does follow that people must make hard choices when plural and incommensurable values conflict, but it does not follow that we must value such choices or (therefore) the freedom with which to make them (Crowder 1994, 298). Pluralism does not imply a case for liberal freedom of choice in the direct way that Berlin seems to suppose.

However, even if the pluralist-liberal arguments offered by Berlin and others are unsuccessful as they stand, that does not show that there could be no successful argument of the kind.⁴ While such a case may be supported by several lines of argument, here I shall focus on one in particular. Pluralism implies that there are many different legitimate conceptions of the good, and it might seem that the liberal good is only one such among others. But pluralism also implies that reasoned choices among conflicting plural and incommensurable values in concrete cases require a particularist form of practical reasoning which is supported by certain pluralist ‘virtues.’ These, in turn, overlap or are reinforced by the civic virtues distinctive of liberal forms of politics. The value-pluralist outlook thus endorses liberalism (the liberal virtues) as an ethical framework for the best lives under pluralism, hence it endorses a perfectionist liberal state in which such lives are actively promoted. Moreover, this argument is universal in scope, since it rests on a view of moral experience that applies universally. Far from yielding the modestly agonistic liberalism favoured by Gray, there is good reason to believe that value pluralism implies a case for liberalism in a robustly universalist and perfectionist form.

1. Value pluralism and practical reasoning

I begin by sketching the main conceptual elements of value pluralism before drawing out its implications for moral and political thinking. ‘Value pluralism’ is a highly contentious idea, and I have space here to do no more than offer my own working interpretation.⁵ Nor shall I attempt to pursue in detail the difficult question of why, if at all, we should believe value pluralism to be true.⁶ My overall question will be, supposing pluralism to be true, what are its implications for liberalism? In this section I set out the idea of value pluralism in a degree of detail sufficient for my purposes.

I take the idea of value pluralism to consist of four main elements: universality, plurality, conflict, and incommensurability. First, pluralists claim that there are certain fundamental values that are universal in the sense that they contribute to the flourishing of any human life (Berlin 1992, 79-80; Kekes, 1993, 17-19, 38-44; Nussbaum 1990, 1992a, 1992b, 2000). These values range from the satisfaction of survival needs, such as the need for food and shelter, to benefits required for any human life to count as a good life, such as friendship and intimacy, to the social and political values that frame the potentialities and limits of individual lives, including values such as justice, liberty and equality. Such values may be understood or instantiated in different ways in different cultural or material circumstances. They are also objective in the sense that these things make any human life go better than it would otherwise, even if particular individuals or societies do not recognize this.

Secondly, the things that are valuable for human beings - including both universal and local values - are plural or several. They cannot be reduced to a single good or narrow range of goods, unless this is a trivial or empty category such as ‘happiness’ understood as meaning no more than ‘what is good for human beings.’ Furthermore, values are themselves internally complex, containing distinct components (also subject to material and cultural variation in particular instantiations) that add further to moral diversity.

Thirdly, these plural values may in particular cases come into conflict with one another. That is, they may be incompatible or mutually exclusive, such that one may be realizable only at the cost of sacrificing or curtailing another - as for example if ‘liberty’ may be increased only by sacrificing some degree of ‘equality’.

The fourth component of pluralism is the most distinctive. This is that values are not only potentially incompatible, they may also be incommensurable with one another. An ethical monist could allow that there are many different values and that these may clash, but add that such conflicts can be resolved by reference to a universal ranking procedure. Such a procedure would set up either a super-value to which all other goods are subordinate, or a common denominator in terms of which all goods could be quantified. Classical Benthamite utilitarians, for example, hold that all values are quantifiable, and therefore rankable in particular cases, in terms of their capacity to produce ‘pleasure.’ For the value pluralist, however, no basic value is inherently superior to any other, and none embraces or summarizes all other values. Rather, there are many different values, all bearing their own unique character and force, and none is always subordinate or reducible to any other. In contrast with classical utilitarians, for example, value pluralists will regard pleasure as merely one value among others, a value grounding claims of its own which are no more fundamental or authoritative than claims based on, say, liberty or justice. (More accurately, on the value-pluralist view there will be no single good of ‘pleasure’, but many different pleasures, each with its own character and ethical force.)

It follows from the notion of incommensurability in particular that value pluralism is opposed to value monism, the view that a single super-value or narrow range of such values overrides or serves as a common denominator for all others. Berlin observes that monism has been the dominant view of the nature of value, in one version or another, throughout the history of Western thought (Berlin 1992, 4-7). In one version the monist structure of morality is thought to be contained in the will of God or the fabric of the universe, yielding a natural law that human beings could discover by the use of their reason. Alternatively a monist system might be implied by the nature of human wants or preferences, as in the case of utilitarianism. What is common to all monist views is the idea that in some sense human morality forms a unified or harmonious whole. Its practical implication is that all moral conflicts can be solved, at least in principle, by reference to a single ranking of values, or method of commensurating them, that applies in all cases.

For pluralists like Berlin, value monism is false because moral conflict goes deeper than this. ‘The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others’ (Berlin 1969, 168). Monism need not deny moral conflict altogether. But according to value pluralists, monism (like relativism) underestimates the depth of moral conflict, regarding it as a superficial or temporary phenomenon, or as at least in principle surmountable by a clearer conception of the essential unity of moral values and principles. Value pluralism, on the other hand, takes actual ethical conflicts as an accurate sign that the moral fissures we regularly experience run all the way down.

Many people will find the pluralist picture of the nature of values persuasive and even attractive. It fits with salient aspects of modern moral experience: our sense of the multiplicity of values, and of the distinctness of those values which shows up, in particular, in those cases where we have to choose among them. Value pluralism seems to explain why we sometimes find that even a decision that is the best possible in the circumstances still leaves us with a sense of uncompensated loss or regret. As Bernard Williams puts it, ‘that there is nothing that one decently, honourably, adequately, can do in a certain situation seems a kind of truth as firmly independent of the will or inclination as any truth of morality seems’ (Williams 1979, 225). The idea of value pluralism, of goods as not merely plural and conflicting but incommensurable, answers to this experience.

But here we come to the central problem: if goods are plural and incommensurable, then how can we decide what to do in cases where they conflict? Some philosophers believe that if values are incommensurable then we can choose among them only in some non-rational way: by ‘plumping’ arbitrarily for one or another, by relying on preference or desire or intuition, or by employing some random decision-procedure like tossing a coin.⁷ The better view is that value pluralism need not exclude reasoned value judgement. True, there may be cases where conflict between plural values yields no resolution that is decisively more rational than the alternatives. The truth of value pluralism certainly does not exclude the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas; on the contrary it helps to explain how such dilemmas can occur. But to allow that there may be no uniquely right answer in some situations is not to deny the possibility of such an answer in others. The claim that pluralism excludes reasoned value judgement altogether depends on a false assumption, namely that rational choice requires commensurability (Richardson 1997, 89). Pluralists can account for the possibility of rational choice despite the incommensurability of values.

What account of practical reasoning can pluralists give that does not depend on commensurability of values? I believe they can give two such accounts. Both of these, moreover, generate arguments for broadly liberal forms of politics (pace Gray). The first is a universalist account, according to which certain ethical or normative principles are implicit in the notion of value pluralism itself. If we reflect on the four elements of pluralism, we find that they suggest a set of normative criteria applicable to judging moral and political arrangements. First, the claim that there are at least some universal goods implies that these ought to be respected universally: an embryonic account of human rights (Riley 2000). Secondly, to emphasize the plurality of legitimate human goods is to commend the pursuit of a diversity of goods and ways of life, the accommodation of which is a natural goal of liberalism. Thirdly (a point stressed by Berlin), the notions of plurality, conflict and incommensurability, taken together, suggest the unavoidability of significant value conflict in human affairs, and consequently of reasonable disagreement about how one should live. They point, that is, to a form of politics which accepts such conflict as permanent and tries to manage rather than transcend it. Again this reinforces a liberal politics of accommodation rather than, on the one hand, a conservative or strongly communitarian politics of cultural orthodoxy or, on the other hand, a radical politics of transformation and perfectibility (classical Marxism or anarchism, for example). The value-pluralist case intersects at this point with neutrality-based arguments for liberalism familiar from Rawls (1971, 1993), Dworkin (1977, 1985) and others.

I want, though, to focus here on a different route from pluralism to liberalism, one resting on a second account of practical reasoning under pluralism. This is a particularist account, according to which reasons to choose among plural values are generated by attention to the context of the choice. It takes as its starting point the observation that although value pluralism appears to make more abstract or general rankings of values problematic, there seems to be less difficulty in choosing rationally among plural values in particular cases or contexts. How does attention to context enable rational choice among plural values? The short answer is that specification of context reveals the values that are most important to us, hence the values that guide choice. Conversely, to get clearer about the values guiding my choice in a particular case involves my specifying the choice situation or context.

This picture of ethical judgement may be at odds with commensurating accounts like those of the utilitarians, but it is supported by a powerful and subtle tradition of moral philosophy, namely that of Aristotle. Martha Nussbaum (1986, 1992b, 1993, 1995) provides an especially useful interpretation of Aristotle for my purposes because she emphasizes the extent to which his account of practical reasoning is conditioned by an implicit notion of value pluralism.⁸ According to Nussbaum, Aristotle’s starting point is his rejection of the ‘scientific’ conception of moral knowledge found in Plato. For Plato, the Good is like any other object of knowledge in that it can be understood from a detached, ‘god’s-eye’ standpoint as a single entity with an essence, the implications of which can be formulated as law-like rules of universal application. Aristotle, by contrast, sees ethical thinking as phronesis, or ‘practical wisdom’, the making of ‘concrete situational judgments of a more informal and intuitive kind’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 66). Moreover, Aristotle sees the good not as a seamless unity but as irreducibly plural. Its component parts each raise distinct considerations among which there is no common denominator - goods are plural and incommensurable. Choices among such goods must therefore be qualitative rather than quantitative: ‘choice among alternatives will involve weighing these distinct natures as distinct items, and choosing the one that gets chosen for the sake of what it itself is’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 59).

Such choices will be strongly particularist, primarily informed by the demands of a situation rather than being merely one application of a general rule. For Aristotle, practical wisdom is concerned with ‘ultimate particulars’, concrete situations that cannot be subsumed within universal principles ‘but must be grasped with insight through experience’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 68). This point is connected with incommensurability, since attention to the particularity of goods leads to attention to the particularity of cases. Rules may still play an important role, but only as rules of thumb or convenient summaries of experience, useful for those who lack experience themselves or for situations where there is insufficient time for proper reflection. Rules should not be normative for experience. It follows that the question of how one should choose among conflicting plural values cannot be given a wholly general or rule-based answer. The nearest approach to a general rule on this account is: ‘choose as the person of practical wisdom would choose.’

Nussbaum denies, however, that Aristotle’s particularist ethic is empty. The Aristotelian agent cannot rely wholly on antecedently formulated rules, but that does not mean that anything goes. Nussbaum draws an analogy between Aristotelian practical judgement and improvisation in the theatre or in music. The improvisor does not merely follow a prepared script or score, but neither is her performance random or arbitrary: she must attend and respond to the evolving situation and to other performers (Nussbaum 1992b, 94). Attention and responsiveness to the concrete context might thus be advanced as a general guideline, even a rule, on the Aristotelian view. Furthermore, attention to context will include attention to the agent’s own background values and concerns. ‘The perceiver brings to the new situation a history of general conceptions and commitments, and a host of past obligations and affiliations (some general, some particular), all of which contribute to and help to constitute her evolving conception of good living’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 94). It is not that the Aristotelian account leaves us without guidance in choosing among plural values. Rather, that guidance is supplied not by abstract rules alone, but by a combination of rules, attention to context, and (as part of context) reflection on one’s background values and concerns, in particular one’s conception of the good life.⁹

2. Pluralist virtues

Particularist ethical reasoning requires, as Aristotelians are well aware, certain skills or excellences or ‘virtues’. Taking Nussbaum’s version of Aristotle as my model, I list four of these as follows: generosity, realism, attentiveness, and flexibility.

In order to reason successfully under value pluralism we must first have an appreciation of something of the great range of values that are part of human experience, and so potentially available to be pursued. This appreciation may be termed (following Walzer 1995) generosity. A person who can conceive of no more than a narrow range of values, or who has only a vague notion of all but a few limited ends, cannot cope well with the demands of rational choice under value pluralism. Such a person would be unaware of, or would ignore, genuinely valuable options (Macedo 1990, 219).

The person of practical wisdom under pluralism consequently needs to have an awareness of the diversity and incommensurability of universal values, and of the forms taken by those values in different ways of life. This awareness includes, first, a basic notion of the generic human goods, that is, of those goods that contribute to any form of human flourishing. Secondly, the pluralist chooser must also appreciate that the values from which one must choose are not only multiple but radically distinct from one another - that is, incommensurable. Pluralist choosers must therefore have a capacity to appreciate each value in its own right and for its own sake. Thirdly, some understanding would be needed of the multiplicity not only of human goods but also of legitimate ways of life in which those goods are instantiated. Value pluralism does not imply a duty to endorse existing ways of life to the same extent as it implies respect for generic human values. The general principles which I mentioned earlier as derivable from value pluralism itself (universality, incommensurability, and diversity) all place limits on what can count as a legitimate form of life from a pluralist point of view. But within those limits an appreciation of the range of legitimate forms taken by human life must be part of the pluralist outlook, if only as a consequence of the necessary grasp of the plurality of goods.

It follows that the pluralist person of practical wisdom will need those qualities or dispositions of mind that enable him or her to achieve the necessary appreciation of the diversity of values and ways of life. These qualities will include knowledge, experience, and what may be called ‘moral imagination’, or the ability to conceive of goods or forms of life as valuable even when one does not pursue them oneself. Pluralist persons of practical wisdom must therefore be generous in the sense that they are capable of envisaging a range of values and ways of life as genuinely good, and as comprising a number of irreducibly distinct goods, even though these are not their own values or ways of life.

A second set of virtuous dispositions necessary for good choice under pluralism can be labelled the virtues of realism. When incommensurable values come into conflict, one of the senses in which choices among them are ‘hard’ is that there can be no complete compensation for whatever value or combination of values is chosen against. Where such values are very important, pluralist choices can be genuinely tragic; even in less momentous cases inescapable choices among competing plural values can be cause for regret despite one’s best efforts. The clear-headed pluralist is thus, as Nussbaum observes, faced with the experience of ‘vulnerability to loss’: in having to choose among important plural values, we cannot escape forgoing some genuine good. ‘Aristotelianism fosters attention to the ways in which the world can impede our efforts to act well; it indicates that caring about many things will open us to the risk of these terrible situations’ (1992b, 67, 64).

The quality of mind required for this aspect of the pluralist outlook is honesty or even courage. Those who genuinely adopt a pluralist point of view cannot fool themselves that conflicts of this kind can be resolved without ultimate, perhaps tragic, cost. Rather, they must face the depth and permanence (as well as the pervasiveness) of value conflict and the absolute nature of the losses that result from it. They are ‘realists’, in contrast with ‘utopians’ who deal in final solutions and complete compensations.

Thirdly, rational choice under value pluralism requires attentiveness. We have seen that particular decisions in cases of conflict among incommensurables must be determined by a particularist approach, one in which close attention is paid to the particulars of the concrete situation. It is only by specifying the precise facts and values that constitute the context for choice that the pluralist chooser can specify what is most important to him or her in the situation. Only then can the chooser arrive at reasons to subject the contending considerations to some kind of ranking.

The idea of particularist attentiveness can be seen to have different aspects or levels, three of which can be distinguished as follows. First, attention must be paid to the distinctive character of the different goods involved in a choice situation. ‘The Aristotelian agent scrutinizes each valuable alternative, seeking out its distinct nature’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 63). Secondly, the agent must attend to the distinctive particularity of the situation, which is constituted partly by the values at stake but also by the relevant facts. For the pluralist or Aristotelian chooser, ‘the subtleties of a complex ethical situation must be seized in a confrontation with the situation itself’ (Nussbaum 1992b, 69). Thirdly, again closely connected with the first two aspects, we must attend to the individual persons involved in the situation, to their claims and needs. As Nussbaum reminds us, we should beware of losing sight of the human reality behind conflicts of values, and of allowing ‘numbers and dots’ to take the place of real men and women (1992b, 101).

The final virtue required for pluralist practical reasoning is flexibility. Having attended to the particulars of the concrete situation in which she finds herself, the pluralist chooser must be able to respond flexibly. That is, she must not insist on trying to resolve the situation by rigid application of a general rule, but rather be prepared to reach a balance between general rule and particular judgement tailored to the circumstances. Illustrating the idea of ethical flexibility, Nussbaum recounts Aristotle’s metaphor of the ‘Lesbian Rule.’ The person who persists in choosing according to a rigidly predetermined standard is like an architect who tries to apply a straight ruler to a fluted column. The architect who knows his business will use the Lesbian Rule, a flexible ruler that ‘bends to the shape of the stone and is not fixed.’ Nussbaum concludes that ‘good deliberation’, like the Lesbian Rule, accommodates itself to to the shape that it finds, responsively and with respect for complexity’ (1992b, 70).

Again, this does not mean that rules are irrelevant and that pluralist choices must be arbitrary or ad hoc. Even in the strongly particularist account of practical reasoning presented by Nussbaum, general rules have an important role to play as useful summaries of decision-making experience. But rules will not by themselves determine particular decisions. Rather, such decisions will require a process of ‘interplay’ or ‘conversation’ between general rules and concrete particulars in which each may be modified by the other (Nussbaum 1992b, 94-95). Especially important here is the ‘evolving picture of the good or complete human life’ that the agent brings to the situation. ‘She views the good particular judgement as a further articulation of this evolving conception of the human good - or as a revision of it, if it should seem defective. Nothing is unrevisable’ (1992b, 95).

The habit or cast of mind necessary for thinking and choosing in this way is that of flexibility. The pluralist chooser must be prepared to balance background commitments, including those summarized in the form of general principles or a conception of the good life, against considerations brought forward by attention to the concrete situation. Achieving such a balance means being open to reconsidering and revising either principles or particular judgments. The pluralist chooser must be flexible enough to consider changes in either direction.

Having shown how pluralist practical reasoning requires certain virtues, I shall now argue that those virtues flourish best under a broadly liberal form of politics. Liberalism promotes values and attitudes, indeed virtues, that in various ways complement or support the pluralist virtues identified in the previous section. I shall proceed by reviewing each of the pluralist virtues and articulating its connections with attitudes distinctively promoted by liberalism.

First, the generosity required by the pluralist outlook is virtually identical with the kind of broad-mindedness encouraged by liberalism at its best. We have seen that to be genuinely conscious of the plurality of values is to acknowledge as legitimate and valuable something of the range of distinct (incommensurable) goods and ways of life pursued not only by oneself but also by others. The same sort of generosity is a virtue of liberalism. It is true, as Galston points out, that liberals can sometimes be ‘decidedly ungenerous when faced with traditional ways of life they regard as stultifying and benighted’ (1999, 777). But at its best liberalism is guided in part by its foundational commitment to the peaceful accommodation of multiple forms of life. The attitude encouraged by this commitment is one ‘receptive to a wide although not unlimited range of value-based claims. It will be generous to ways of life that reflect unusual but not indefensible choices among, or orderings of, basic values’ (1999, 777). A similar point is made by Macedo: ‘the character that flourishes in a liberal, pluralistic social milieu, will have broad sympathies’ (1990, 267). This is because a liberal politics is one which balances the acceptance of disagreement with the acknowledgement of human commonalities. Liberals will acknowledge that although others may pursue different substantial goods and ways of life from their own, those others are still, like themselves, moral agents worthy of respect and therefore that their choices are also worthy of respect, at least prima facie. ‘As we come to realize that those who engage in lives different from our own are nevertheless like us in important ways, we may come to sympathize not only with these persons but also with their projects and commitments’ (Macedo 1990, 267). Liberal respect for persons leads at least to toleration of other cultures, and perhaps to a more positive celebration of cultural diversity.

Liberal broad-mindedness will not be unlimited, since it cannot embrace those choices and ways of life that are themselves hostile to toleration and respect for persons. But on the score of broadness of mind the liberal outlook is likely to be superior to the viable alternatives. This connects with the general pluralist principle of diversity. From the point of view of pluralist diversity, liberalism is superior to those conservative or strongly communitarian approaches that sanction the political enforcement of a single local tradition. The politics of postmodernism or ‘difference’ may be in a sense even more broad-minded than liberalism, but that is only because it lacks the limits that would make it coherent.¹⁰

The second virtue required for pluralist reasoning, realism, overlaps and is supported by the liberal virtue of moderation. Pluralists accept that incommensurable values will sometimes come into conflict and that such conflict will result in uncompensated, perhaps tragic, losses. Consequently, pluralists are realists in the sense that they accept that the harmonious realization of all genuine values is not to be achieved in human life, either the life of an individual person or a society. Liberals, similarly, accept the inevitability of conflict, loss, and personal and social imperfection – the theme emphasized by Berlin. The good political system, for liberals, is one that accommodates and manages conflict rather than trying to transcend it. It follows that the liberal outlook is moderate in two senses. First, liberalism is not excessively demanding or ambitious; it does not expect moral or social perfection. Secondly, those principles to which liberals are committed are themselves held and pursued subject to revision rather than with single-minded fanaticism.

In these senses moderation is a virtue for both citizens and leaders in a liberal society, and for both citizens and leaders moderation is underscored by pluralist realism. In his virtues-based defence of liberalism, Galston lists several ‘virtues of citizenship’, among which is the requirement that liberal citizens ‘be moderate in their demands and self-disciplined enough to accept painful measures when they are necessary’ (1991, 224-5). According to Galston, this virtue is especially important in counteracting a besetting vice of popular governments, namely their ‘propensity to gratify short-term desires at the expense of long-term interests and the inability to act on unpleasant truths about what must be done’ (1991, 224). The insistence that ‘unpleasant tuths’ about the costs of our decisions be faced honestly is precisely the message of pluralist realism. Moderation in the demands of liberal citizens must be complemented by moderation in the conduct of their leaders: the citizenry must not ask for too much, but the leadership must not promise too much. In addition, Galston argues that liberal leaders must exhibit virtues of patience in accepting the limitations of a diverse society, and integrity in resisting the temptation to curry favour ‘by pandering to immoderate public demands. Against desire liberal leaders must counterpoise restraints; against the fantasy of the free lunch they must insist on the reality of the hard choice...’ (1991, 226). Here again, in the emphasis on ‘the reality of the hard choice’, liberal moderation and pluralist realism overlap.

Another dimension of overlap between pluralist realism and liberal moderation is the provisional nature of liberal commitment. The experience of value conflict and loss that results from value pluralism may be ‘internalized’ (to borrow a term from Macedo 1990, 238) at either of two levels. First, it may be internalized by a society as a whole, with the effect already discussed, namely moderation in the sense of realistic social and political expectations. Secondly, value conflict and loss may be internalized by individual persons. The effect of this is also to encourage moderation, this time in the sense of moderating or qualifying the nature of one’s commitments. If pluralism means that the particular way a person ranks goods is only one legitimate way among others, then to appreciate that is to see that one’s preferred ranking might have been otherwise, and may yet be open to revision. To see this is to be discouraged from regarding one’s commitments as incontestable absolutes, and so to make it less likely that those commitments will be held fanatically, to the detriment of every other concern and to the concerns of others. Pluralist realism will thus lead again to liberal moderation. Conversely, living in a liberal society characterized by diversity and toleration encourages the thought that such features are justified by an underlying value pluralism: liberal moderation in this sense reinforces pluralist realism.

We come now to the third of the central virtues implied by pluralist practical reasoning, namely attentiveness. Due regard to value pluralism means that reasoned choices among conflicting plural values cannot be wholly determined by general rules, since these imply abstract rankings of values that pluralism renders questionable. Pluralist practical reasoning must be particularist, or attentive to the particularity of the case in hand. I distinguished three aspects of this attentiveness, namely attention to the particularity of values, of situations, and of persons.

Is pluralist attentiveness promoted by liberalism? At first sight it may seem that attention to particularity is not one of liberalism’s strong points. Liberal thought places a strong emphasis on the acceptance of general rules, derived by abstraction from particular cases and uniformly applicable across a range of such cases. One thinks immediately of principles such as the rule of law and universal rights. But while liberal commitments to rules and to generality cannot be denied, that does not mean that liberalism neglects the virtue of attentiveness altogether. In fact liberalism promotes attentiveness in all three of the respects listed earlier.

First, attention to the range and distinctiveness of values is already implied by the ‘generosity’ or broad-mindedness common to both pluralism and liberalism. Secondly, attention to the particularity of concrete situations is present in the liberal outlook in two ways. To begin with, general rules, whether liberal or non-liberal, are usually themselves the product of reflection on concrete situations. As Nussbaum points out, Aristotelian particularism can accept a universal rule as authoritative ‘insofar as it is a summary of wise decisions’ (1992b, 69). Many liberal principles are defensible in just this way. For example, the notion of human rights can be defended as encapsulating many particular judgments made in the past to the effect that in concrete situations more good comes of allowing people certain claims and liberties than of witholding these (Lukes 1993). This aspect of rules is not, of course, peculiar to liberal rules. More distinctive of liberalism is the way rules are applied in particular situations – the second sense in which the liberal outlook implies attention to concrete situations - but this involves the notion of personal autonomy, which I shall come to in a moment.

The third aspect of pluralist attentiveness was attention to the individual persons affected by a decision. In this respect liberal attentiveness is perhaps at its strongest, since the idea that individual persons matter, and matter equally, is the most fundamental of all liberal commitments. Among pluralist liberals, the ideal of respect for persons is seen, for example, in Berlin’s attack on those versions of positive liberty that make it possible for leaders ‘to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their "real" selves’ (1969, 133). Nussbaum’s warning against treating individual human beings as if they were ‘numbers and dots’ is another powerful expression of an attitude that is both pluralist and liberal (1992b, 101). Note also the link between liberal attention to persons and pluralist realism. What motivates attention of this kind is the ‘vulnerability to loss’ that pluralism implies, in this case the sense that each human being is something both valuable and irreplaceable.

It might be objected that what is being respected here is not so much the particularity of the persons concerned as the universal attributes of which persons are merely bearers. But this objection has more force against some versions of liberalism rather than others. The Kantian notion of respect for persons, it is true, takes as the focus of respect the capacity for moral autonomy that is possessed by all normal mature adult human beings equally. For Mill, on the other hand, liberty is to be defended in part as instrumental for ‘individuality’, the sense that as well as possessing a common humanity each individual human being is unique (1974, Ch. 3). In this notion of the human person as valuable in a way that is irreplaceable because incommensurable with the value of any other human being, the liberal view once more coincides with the pluralist.

So far I have argued that the pluralist virtues of generosity, realism and attentiveness are promoted by liberalism through the corresponding liberal virtues or attributes of broadmindedness, moderation and respect for persons. The question arises whether forms of politics other than liberalism may have the same effect. I believe that the points already made are sufficient to show that the claims of liberalism in this regard are superior to those of any rivals. This is true, for example, of a comparison between liberalism and conservatism (Kekes 1993, 1997, 1998). Conservatism may run liberalism close on the score of realism and moderation, but on the remaining criteria liberalism clearly has the stronger claim. The conservative stress on local tradition makes it less generous or broad-minded towards different goods and ways of life, and perhaps less attentive to the particularities of different situations.

If any doubt remains, however, liberalism decisively shows its advantages over its rivals in relation to the fourth of the pluralist virtues, namely flexibility. If pluralism requires that we attend to the particularities of concrete situations rather than insisting always on the application of general rules, whether universal or local, then we need to be able to respond flexibly to those situations. Corresponding to pluralist flexibility is the liberal celebration of personal autonomy. Since autonomy is the most distinctive of liberal virtues, a link between autonomy and flexibility will be the strongest of links between pluralism and liberalism.

The idea of personal autonomy is that of making one’s own life, judging and acting for reasons that one has not merely received uncritically from others, but rather endorsed through a process of critical reflection (Mill 1974, Raz 1986, Benn 1988). For liberals, autonomy is a virtue, perhaps the paramount virtue, the principal distinguishing mark of a developed personality. As Mill puts it, ‘it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way’ (Mill 1974, 122). To be autonomous contrasts with being coerced or manipulated. It also contrasts with the uncoerced and unmanipulated acceptance of what Mill calls ‘the despotism of custom’, the unquestioning reception of prescriptive tradition as one’s ethical standard (1974, 136). To be autonomous is to act on standards that are ‘one’s own’ in a strong sense. It is to deny that value conflicts can be resolved simply by the mechanical application of traditional or other rules. Thus far autonomy, in its opposition to unquestioning adherence to custom, is immediately on the side of flexibility against rigidity in ethics.¹¹

The link between the liberal idea of personal autonomy and the pluralist requirement of flexibility in practical reasoning turns on the demanding nature of rational choice under pluralism. To adopt the pluralist outlook is to recognize that in a particular situation one may have to choose among several incommensurable goods. Such choices are hard, in part because they cannot be determined by the universal application of simple rules such as those proposed by utilitarians and other monists. Pluralist choosers must therefore be flexible in their practical reasoning, attending and responding to the particulars of the situation. Rules may be useful as rough summaries of wise decision making in past experience, but they cannot be regarded as decisive. Still less can pluralists allow their unexamined desires to decide value conflicts for them, since that would amount to treating the satisfaction of de facto preferences as commensurating all other values - another essentially monistic approach. Rather, pluralist choosers are obliged to adopt a critically reflective attitude towards both their own desires and those rules and traditions that come to them from their social milieu. They are obliged, that is, to be autonomous.

4. Pluralist liberalism

To summarize, I have so far argued the following. Practical reasoning under value pluralism involves the exercise of certain ‘pluralist virtues’, namely generosity, realism, attentiveness, and flexibility. These pluralist virtues are promoted by liberalism through the cognate or overlapping liberal virtues of broad-mindedness, moderation, respect for persons, and personal autonomy. Liberalism is superior to rival forms of politics in its support for the pluralist virtues, especially through the link between pluralist flexibility and the key liberal commitment to autonomy. There is an especially strong link of mutual support between pluralism and liberal autonomy because of the distinctively demanding nature of pluralist choice.

What kind of liberalism does this argument commend? To focus on two major fault-lines in contemporary liberal thought, will it be neutrality-based or perfectionist, and will it be universalist or particularist? First, pluralist liberalism will, I believe, be ‘perfectionist’ (following Rawls’s definition: 1971, 25, 325-332) rather than neutralist. That is, the pluralist liberal state may legitimately promote liberal values as part of the best life for all of its citizens, rather than attempting to remain neutral on questions of the good. It is true that the universalist arguments I outlined briefly – those based on the elements of value pluralism itself – are broadly accommodationist in character, advocating liberalism as a framework for managing diversity and conflict among rival goods and ways of life. But the particularist argument that has been my main concern goes beyond this by deepening the sense in which, on the pluralist view, liberalism should enter into people’s lives. The effect of the virtues argument is that liberalism is presented as not merely a container for rival conceptions of the good, but in addition as involving values which ought to be part of those conceptions of the good. To live well under pluralism requires choosing well (i.e. for good reason) when plural values conflict, which in turn requires the practice of liberal virtues, including personal autonomy. In short, the best lives under pluralism are liberal lives. This is not to say that under pluralism there is only one way to live. Rather, there are many different legitimate conceptions of the good on the pluralist view, but the best of these have liberal components, namely the virtues required for pluralist choice. In other words, liberalism provides not only a political framework for a pluralist society, but also an ethical framework for the best ways of life under pluralism. The best lives under pluralism are liberal lives, but these come in many varieties.

Given that, on this argument, liberalism is justified not merely as a neutral framework for containing rival conceptions of the good, but as itself part of the best form of life under pluralism, the role of the state should reflect this. A liberal state, on this view, has a right, even a duty, to promote a certain (liberal) range of conceptions of the good: it will be a ‘perfectionist’ state in Rawls’s terminology. However, it does not follow that the best way of fulfilling that right or duty will be heavy-handed enforcement. That the massive use of force can be both a cruel and unproductive way of advancing a vision of the good is itself an insight of pluralism: as Berlin insisted, the doctrine that ‘the end justifies the means’ fits more comfortably with the monist view that certain ends can override all others absolutely. Pluralist liberal perfectionism, in other words, need not be identified with coercion and imperialism, indeed it ought not to be so. More consistently with the principles of liberalism, the liberal good is better pursued through argument, education and lived examples of actual liberal lives. Pluralist liberalism, then, although tending towards the more militant end of the liberal spectrum, should not be thought of as ruthless and aggressive. It will nevertheless be staunch in defence of liberal values in contrast with the claims of anti-liberal or non-liberal ways of life. This will be a form of liberalism that dares speak its name.

Secondly, value pluralism will be universalist rather than particularist. This may seem surprising given my emphasis on particularist practical reasoning under pluralism, but the point is that this kind of reasoning, together with its concomitant virtues, is required universally because it answers to a universal feature of ethical experience. Value pluralism is an account of the objective nature of values and the relations among them: its central thesis is that some human values are plural and incommensurable independently of the contingent beliefs of particular individuals and groups. If that is true, it follows that conflicts among such values are themselves objective phenomena – as observed by Bernard Williams, quoted earlier (1979, 225). People may be faced with pluralist choices whether or not they recognize them as such. The concept of value pluralism may be modern, but the experience it describes is as old as ethical experience: the Greeks’ awareness of dramatic tragedy is strong evidence of this (Nussbaum 1992b; cp. Larmore 1996). If so, then the virtues necessary to make such choices well also apply regardless of whether those concerned are clear-headed pluralists. Pluralist choices may arise under any way of life, and so the qualities of mind requisite to coping well with those choices will always be desirable, even if not recognized as desirable, and even if not always realizable in practice. So far as the pluralist virtues overlap liberal virtues, the latter must, on the pluralist view, be part of the best life for any human being. I do not wish to say that a life that lacks the pluralist or liberal virtues, or that does not acknowledge the plurality and incommensurability of values, cannot be a good life in some, perhaps many, respects. There are good lives other than liberal and self-consciously pluralist lives, and good lives lived in ignorance of significant truths. If value pluralism is true, however, such lives will not be among the best possible.

Further questions remain, of course, about the kind of liberalism that fits best with the value-pluralist outlook. For example, will pluralist liberalism take a classical or egalitarian form, and will it be monocultural or multicultural? Briefly, I believe that pluralist liberalism will be broadly ‘egalitarian’ or redistributive rather than ‘classical’ or laissez-faire in form, since the pluralist ideals of value diversity and personal autonomy, in particular, are better served by redistribution than by a regime in which the goods of the market dominate all others (Walzer, 1983, Ch. 4; Bellamy 2000, 190-191). It also seems to me that a pluralist polity will be moderately multicultural, that is, that it will offer official recognition and special rights to certain disadvantaged minority cultures, subject to the protection of civil liberties for all citizens. This is in line with the demands both of pluralist diversity (of ways of life as well as goods) and of the pluralist-liberal virtues. Personal autonomy, in particular, requires an adequate cultural basis (Kymlicka, 1989, 1995; Raz, 1986, 1995). But full discussion of these issues must wait for another time.

Notes

1. Recent publications include: Bellamy, 1999, 2000; Crowder, 1998, 1999, forthcoming; Galston, 1999a, 1999b; Gray, 1998, 2000a, 2000b; Dzur, 1998; Kenny, 2000; Newey, 1998, Riley 2000.

2. See in particular Berlin 1969, 1980, 1981, 1992, 1996, 1997, 2000. For a comprehensive and continually updated bibliography of writing by and about Berlin, see The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library, a website maintained by Berlin’s editor, Henry Hardy: <http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/.>

3. See Gray, 1989, 1993, 1995a, 1995b, 1998, 2000a, 2000b.

4. I depart here from my own earlier (1994) view that (1) past attempts to argue from value pluralism to liberalism have been unsuccessful, and (2) no such attempt is likely to succeed. I still maintain that (1) is true, but now believe that (2) was too precipitant.

5. My understanding of value pluralism is influenced by the following sources in particular: Berlin, as above, note 2; Chang, 1997; Galston, 1999a, 1999b, Gray, as above, note 3; Kekes, 1993, 1997, 1998; Lukes 1991; Nagel 1991; Nussbaum, 1986, 1990, 1992a, 1992b, 2000; Raz, 1986, 1995; Richardson, 1997; Stocker, 1990; Williams, 1980.

6. For recent discussions of this question, see MacKenzie, 1999; Newey, 1998.

7. Berlin, for example, sometimes seems to believe this, as when he refers to our being ‘faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute’, and to our ‘irrational and disordered lives’ (Berlin 1969, 168-169). Elsewhere, however, he repudiates that view, insisting that we do in fact make rational choices among plural values all the time, at any rate in particular cases (Berlin and Williams 1994). Gray’s position on this issue is similarly ambiguous: compare 1995b, 70 with 1995a, 154.

8. This value-pluralist reading of Aristotle is contested by Larmore 1996, Ch. 7. But even if Nussbaum’s reading is rejected as an accurate interpretation of Aristotle, it may still stand as a persuasive account of practical reasoning under pluralism.

9. For similarly particularist accounts of rational choice under pluralism, see Chang 1997; Kekes 1993, Ch. 5; Richardson 1997.

10. See Crowder forthcoming, where I argue that the kind of moral diversity that is desirable from a value-pluralist point of view involves coherence as well as sheer multiplicity, since multiple goods and ways of life may otherwise conflict.

11. This is not to say that custom or culture has no role to play in the autonomous life, merely that that role must be subject to critical assessment by the autonomous person: Caney 1992; Kymlicka 1989, 1995; Raz 1986, 1995.

References

Bellamy, R. 1999. Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a politics of compromise. London and New York: Routledge.

Bellamy, R. 2000. ‘Liberalism and the Challenge of Pluralism’, in Rethinking Liberalism. London and New York: Pinter.

Benn, S. I. 1988. A Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berlin, I. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Berlin, I. 1980. Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. H. Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Berlin, I. 1981. Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. H. Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Berlin, I. 1992. The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. H. Hardy. New York: Vintage.

Berlin, I. 1996. The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, ed. H. Hardy. London: Chatto & Windus.

Berlin, I. 1997. The Proper Study of Mankind: an Anthology of Essays, ed. H. Hardy and R. Hausheer. London: Chatto & Windus.

Berlin, I. 2000. Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. H. Hardy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Berlin, I., and Williams, B. 1994. ‘Pluralism and Liberalism: a Reply’, Political Studies 42: 306-309.

Caney, S. 1992. ‘Liberalism and Communitarianism: a Misconceived Debate’, Political Studies 40: 273-289.

Chang, R. 1997. ‘Introduction’, in R. Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.

Crowder, G. 1994. ‘Pluralism and Liberalism’, Political Studies 42: 293-305.

Crowder, G. 1998. ‘John Gray’s Pluralist Critique of Liberalism’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 15: 287-298.

Crowder, G. 1999. ‘From Value Pluralism to Liberalism’, in R. Bellamy and M. Hollis (eds), Pluralism and Liberal Neutrality, London: Frank Cass.

Crowder, G. forthcoming. Liberalism and Value Pluralism. London and New York: Continuum.

Dworkin, R. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. London: Duckworth.

Dworkin, R. 1985. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University

Dzur, A. 1998 ‘Value pluralism versus political liberalism?’, Social Theory and Practice 24: 375-392.

Galston, W. 1991. Liberal Purposes: Goods, virtues, and diversity in the liberal state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Galston, W. 1999a. ‘Expressive Liberty, Moral Pluralism, Political Pluralism: Three Sources of Liberal Theory’, William and Mary Law Review 40: 869-907.

Galston, W. 1999b. ‘Value Pluralism and Liberal Political Theory’, American Political Science Review 93: 769-778.

Gray, J. 1989. Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge.

Gray, J. 1993. Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought. New York and London: Routledge.

Gray, J. 1995a. Berlin. London: Fontana.

Gray, J. 1995b. Enlightenment’s Wake: Politics and culture at the close of the modern age. London and New York: Routledge.

Gray, J. 1998. ‘Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 6: 17-36.

Gray, J. 2000a. ‘Pluralism and Toleration in Contemporary Political Philosophy’, Political Studies 48: 323-333.

Gray, J. 2000b. Two Faces of Liberalism. Cambridge: Polity.Hardy, H. 2001. The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library. <http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/.>

Kekes, J. 1993. The Morality of Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kekes, J. 1997. Against Liberalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kekes, J. 1998. A Case for Conservatism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kenny, M. 2000. ‘Isaiah Berlin’s Contribution to Modern Political Theory, Political Studies 48: 1026-1039.

Kymlicka, W. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Larmore, C. 1996. The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lukes, S. 1991. ‘Making Sense of Moral Conflict’, in Moral Conflict and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lukes, S. 1993. ‘Five Fables About Human Rights’, in S. Shute and S. Hurley, eds, On Human Rights: the Oxford Amnesty Lectures. London: Basic Books.

Macedo, S. 1990. Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

MacKenzie, I. 1999. ‘Berlin’s defence of value-pluralism: clarifications and criticisms’, Contemporary Politics 5, 325-337.

Mill, J. S. 1974. On Liberty, ed. G. Himmelfarb. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Nagel, T. 1991. ‘The Fragmentation of Value’, in Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Canto.

Newey, G. 1998. ‘Value-Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism’, Dialogue 37: 493-522.

Nussbaum, M. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nussbaum, M. 1990. ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy’, in R. B. Douglass, G. Mara and H. S. Richardson (eds), Liberalism and the Good. New York and London: Routledge.

Nussbaum, M. 1992a. ‘Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism’, Political Theory 20: 202-246.

Nussbaum, M. 1992b. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum, M. 2000. Women and Human Development: the Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rawls, J. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Raz, J. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Raz, J. 1995. ‘Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective’, in Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 170-191.

Richardson, H. S. 1997. Practical Reasoning About Final Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Riley, J. 2000. ‘Crooked Timber and Liberal Culture’, in M. Baghramian and A. Ingram, eds, Pluralism: the philosophy and politics of diversity. London and New York: Routledge.

Stocker, M. 1990. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Walzer, M. 1983. Spheres of Justice. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

Walzer, M. 1995. ‘Are There Limits to Liberalism?’, New York Review of Books, 19 October.

Williams, B. 1979. ‘Conflicts of Values’, in A. Ryan, ed., The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.