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Article Excerpt
Abstract
Recent debates about the concept of value pluralism have sought to draw out important implications for political thought and practice. A key issue has been the idea that there exists a set of "universal values 'that captures the outline of a common core of humanity. These values have been deployed as an objective critical standard and evaluative tool to avoid a perceived tendency towards relativism that haunts all discussion of the diversity and plurality of values. However, it will be argued that upon closer inspection the idea of universal values as expressed by William Galston and George Crowder, amongst others, must be called into question. Specifically, the nature and status of such universal values are unclear, and the content of these values is defined in vague and uncertain ways. It will be further argued that these problems can be overcome by developing an alternative vocabulary to express the fundamental insights that value pluralism suggests.
Introduction
A key issue within recent debates about value pluralism has concerned the relationship between value pluralism and liberalism. Critics of liberalism have suggested that the fundamental insight of value pluralism is that there exists a plurality of values, of which rational ordering is not possible in the abstract, which has implications for liberal theory that have not been fully appreciated. On the other hand, liberal theorists have maintained that value pluralism is not just consistent with liberalism, but provides positive arguments in support of a liberal political regime.
Crucial to the attempt to draw a connection between value pluralism and liberalism is the idea that there exist certain values that we can describe as universal. These values are considered essential to the living of all meaningful lives in all societies at all times. By specifying the content of these values, liberal pluralists such as Isaiah Berlin, George Crowder and William Galston have sought to show that liberalism is the best candidate for securing the recognition and protection of what we might describe as essential preconditions for the flourishing of human life. (2) On this account, failing to recognise the existence of universal values will lead to a moral relativism that denies any transcendent standards of judgement and analysis. The existence of universal values therefore serves as one important link between value pluralism and liberalism.
However, the use of universal values by liberal pluralists is often problematic. The identification of such values remains unclear because there is considerable disagreement as to what rightly constitutes a universal value and to what the specific content of these values actually is. If it is difficult or impossible to come to any agreement on such fundamental matters, it is hard to see how universal values can be used as a critical standard for assessing the relative merits of value systems and ways of life. This confusion also raises doubts about the issue of ethical relativism within the value pluralism debate, as universal values are seen as an important objective standard that operates as a corrective to the more relativistic implications of value pluralism.
It will be argued that the strong liberal emphasis on the importance of universal values is fundamentally flawed to the extent that it actually subverts the positive potential that value pluralism offers by importing into the value pluralism discourse a range of liberal values and norms that those committed to the truth of value pluralism need not necessarily accept. While our current understanding of value pluralism has emerged from, with and against such liberal norms, there is an important need to develop alternative vocabularies that better express the insights that value pluralism offers. By developing the value pluralism discourse in such novel ways, it is possible to draw upon a range of different theoretical insights that have to this point been excluded from the value pluralism debate. These alternative approaches will open new avenues of inquiry for those committed to facilitating dialogue and coexistence between adherents of diverse value systems.
The Concept of Value Pluralism
The recent debates about the status and implications of value pluralism have their origins in the thought and contested legacy of Isaiah Berlin, who argued repeatedly, if not always explicitly, that the world of human values is comprised of a fundamental plurality of values that make rival and conflicting claims upon all moral agents. (3) Building upon Berlin's insight, a range of scholars has sought to flesh out the specific nature of value pluralism and to work through the implications that it has for political theory. Among these scholars have been Joseph Raz, John Gray, John Kekes, William Galston and George Crowder. (4) As is to be expected, there is some disagreement about these fundamental matters, yet it is possible to give a basic overview of the central claims that value pluralism makes. For our current purposes, the four basic claims of value pluralism are plurality, universality/objectivity, incommensurability and uncombinability.
The first claim of value pluralism is that moral agents are presented with a fundamental plurality of values, both in terms of sheer numbers of values, but also in the nature or character of these values. Of the many values that present themselves to the moral actor, there are the obvious candidates of traditional moral discourse, such as truth and virtue, and those of political thought, such as justice, liberty and equality. But value pluralism allows for a very wide range of values, as well as differences in types of values, so that we may also recognise values of spirituality, aesthetics, or industry. It is also the case that many of these individual values make rival and conflicting claims on moral actors at different levels, an obvious example of this being Isaiah Berlin's discussion of the competing demands of negative and positive liberty. (5)
The second fundamental claim of value pluralism is that these plural values have a status that is objective, and in some cases universal. What this means is that while a value may be recognised by different individuals or groups at different times and in different places, we are still able to identify these as instances of the same value. In this way we can identify a value, or group of values, that we call liberty, despite the fact that we can also identify different liberties, different forms of liberty, and rival and conflicting claims that liberty makes upon us. The stronger part of this claim is that certain of the plural values have a 'universal' status, meaning that they are, or should be, recognised by all individuals and groups at all times. The status of these values is largely an empirical question, which values have been recognised as such, but it also opens up important normative questions about what values should be recognised as universal. The issue of universal values is particularly controversial and will be the central focus of the discussion to follow below.
The third claim of value pluralism is that between any two of the plural values a relationship of incommensurability may exist. The concept of incommensurability has been one of the most important and confused parts of the value pluralism debate, so it is crucial to be clear about what...
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