The Appeal of Political Liberalism

Abstract

The appeal of liberalism derives to a considerable extent from its commitment to tolerating diverse ways of life and schemes of value. Yet this same commitment is also responsible for much of what is puzzling about liberalism. For what is the basis of liberal toleration? One answer rests the case for toleration on a pluralistic understanding of the nature of human value, on a conviction that the realm of value is irreducibly heterogeneous. Diverse ways of life should be tolerated, on this view, because they are routes to the realization of diverse human goods. A very different answer rests the case for tolerance on a general skepticism about value, on a conviction that there is no good sense to be made of the idea of objective value or the notion of a good life. On this view, diverse ways of life should be tolerated because there is nothing to the thought that some ways of life are better than others, and so there is no legitimate basis for intolerance. If the case for liberal toleration rests on some pluralistic thesis about the nature of human values, then both the depth of such toleration and the extent of its appeal seem called into question. For, inevitably, the pluralistic thesis will itself be controversial. Thus, on this interpretation, liberalism's professed toleration of differing conceptions of value turns out to depend on a more fundamental commitment to a particular conception of value, a conception which will be uncongenial or even abhorrent to some of the very evaluative outlooks that liberalism purports to tolerate, and which will not, therefore, serve to recommend liberal institutions to people who share those outlooks. Much the same will be true, it seems, if toleration is seen as the outgrowth of skepticism rather