Two Value-pluralist Arguments for Liberalism

Abstract

John Gray has argued that Berlinian value pluralism undermines the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one legitimate political form among others. That view is mistaken; value pluralism implies a distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project by way of two principal lines of argument. First, pluralism implies the desirability within a given political arena of a diversity of goods and ways of life, a diversity best accommodated by liberalism. Second, the rational resolution of particular cases of value conflict under pluralism is possible (where it is possible) only by way of a particularist, Aristotelian form of practical reasoning, which requires the exercise of certain characteristically liberal virtues. Overall, pluralism not only supports liberalism, but supports liberalism in a strong, universalist and perfectionist form.