Value-Pluralism

Abstract

Abstract A view with some considerable influence in current moral and political philosophy holds that there is a plurality of values, all of them fundamental and authoritative and yet, in some genuinely disconcerting way, in coflict. I shall call it ‘value-pluralism’. It is a philosophical thesis. It does more than record the fact that choice often involves conflicts, moral and other, and that choosing can be a difficult and sometimes even an appalling thing to do. That experience any serious ethics must acknowledge. It is basic, but it is not a surprise, philosophically or otherwise; whereas the claim of the value-pluralist is meant to be philosophically surprising and significant. Further, value-pluralism is to be distinguished from what Mill, Moore, and Rawls call ‘intuitionism’ in ethics: the view that there is no single moral principle to which all principles of conduct must conform, but a number of moral principles all equally fundamental.1 ‘Deontological pluralism’ would be a good term for this view; it is a philosophical thesis, and certainly not uncontroversial-but value-pluralism is meant to go beyond it.