On Berlin’s liberal pluralism : an examination of the political theories of Sir Isaiah Berlin, concentrated around the problem of combining value pluralism and liberalism

Abstract

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) has contributed greatly to the fields of ethical and political theory, as well as in the study of the history of ideas, with probably his lectures on the intellectual history of freedom – Four Essays on Liberty – and his critique of Utopian political theory – The Crooked Timber of Humanity – being the most widely read and discussed. In this study, however, it is mainly his combination of value pluralism in ethical theory – the belief that there are several objective values or ends and that these on occasion collide, leaving us with hard choices – and a cautious and moderate liberalism in political affairs that is drawn to the readers’ attention.

It has been said in recent times, most prominently by John Gray and John Kekes that Berlin’s attempt at combining value pluralism and liberalism was and will always be a failure, as an endorsement of ethical pluralism actually leads away from liberal conclusions in politics. Against this view, I have pointed to the fact that both these authors base their rejection of any possibility of liberal pluralism on their own subtle, but in the end far-reaching, changes to Berlin’s ethical theory, as well as in an unhelpfully restrictive view of what kind of theory liberalism is. What they have found, I argue, is not that liberalism and value pluralism simpliciter are perpetually locked in metaphysical combat – a finding which would indeed be devastating to Berlin’s political theories – but the far less disturbing discovery that their own rather eccentric versions of ethical pluralism and some more ambitious forms of liberal theory are incompatible.

During the last years, also, several defences of liberal pluralism have been published, most notably by George Crowder and William Galston. While both of them rather astutely point to several compelling arguments against there being any fundamental and unbridgeable conflicts between liberalism and value pluralism, I find the fact that they believe that pluralism leads directly to quite different types of liberal theory to raise a few questions of their own. I have therefore attempted to argue that pluralism instead has few direct, political consequences outside of a commitment to moderation and prudence, and that pluralists, and anyone else for that matter, should instead be persuaded by the apparent successes of liberalism and liberal ways of organising societies, and equally discouraged by the demerits of its alternatives.