Gray and the Politics of Pluralism

Abstract

John Gray has played a leading role in reinterpreting the political implications of Isaiah Berlin’s notion of value‐pluralism. While Berlin saw pluralism as intimately linked to liberal values and institutions, Gray questions that connection. At most, he argues, pluralism – the idea that human values are irreducibly multiple, potentially conflicting, and sometimes incommensurable – implies an ‘agonistic’ form of liberalism, conscious of its limitations as no more than one legitimate political form among others. In this essay I trace the development of Gray’s view through three successive stages: an early ‘subjectivist’ phase, in which political choice among plural values is seen as fundamentally non‐rational; a middle ‘contextualist’ period, where reasoned choice among plural values is allowed to be possible within specific cultural traditions, implying a broadly conservative politics; a recent ‘pragmatic’ turn towards the notion of modus vivendi as a means of adjudicating conflicts among competing traditions. I argue that, while Gray’s contribution has helped to set the terms of the debate over the politics of pluralism, none of his various formulations should be accepted as the best pluralist view. Rather, Berlin’s linkage of pluralism with liberal universalism should be reasserted, although on the basis of arguments that are stronger than those offered by Berlin – arguments strengthened by the encounter with Gray.