While it is often thought that pluralism is best accommodated by a liberal state, John Kekes has recently argued that pluralism and liberalism involve inconsistent commitments. He maintains that liberalism is committed to the idea that one or more of the “liberal values” must override all other values, while pluralism is committed to the idea that there are no overriding values whatsoever. In this paper I challenge Kekes' position by arguing that ethical pluralism does not require an absence (...) of overriding values, and that liberalism does not require that one or more of the liberal values must override all others. (shrink)

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the possibilities (...) of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

The pluralist liberal defends a conception of liberal politics grounded in the thesis of value pluralism. Since he argues from a particular metaphysical thesis – value pluralism – to a particular understanding of politics – liberalism – his account will feature two separable, but interrelated, components: a distinctive justification of liberalism, and a conception of politics with distinctive content. The particular flavor of liberalism to which the pluralist is led is a species of what I (...) term “accommodationism” – an understanding that sees as a polity’s central task the accommodation of many divergent conceptions of the good life. I argue that the pluralist liberal’s case is hampered by four difficulties. Two of these difficulties challenge the justification of liberalism in terms of value pluralism, and two of them plague the particular accommodationist understanding of liberalism to which the pluralist is led. I conclude by arguing that classical liberalism is a view that is immune to these latter two criticisms. In fact, I suggest a more general claim: that classical liberalism provides the most promising resources for the articulation and defense of a conception of politics dedicated to accommodating the diverse and heterogeneous versions of human flourishing countenanced by value pluralism. (shrink)

In Liberalism and Pluralism, Richard Bellamy explores the challenges posed by conflicting values, interests and identities to liberal democracy. Conventional liberal thought is no longer suited to the complex, plural societies of today. By analyzing the three major strands of liberal thought as represented by Hayek, Rawls and Walzer, the author reveals how standard liberalism has tried to circumvent unstable settlements. This book establishes a more satisfactory alternative: namely, negotiated compromise.

This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.

Political liberalism’s central commitments to recognizing reasonable pluralism and institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice are inconsistent. If reasonable pluralism applies to conceptions of justice as it applies to conceptions of the good, then some reasonable people will reject even many liberal conceptions of justice as unreasonable. If so, then imposing these conceptions of justice on citizens violates the liberal principle of legitimacy and related public justification requirements. This problem of justice pluralism requires that political liberals abandon their commitment (...) to institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice. Instead, political justification should be limited to the public justification of a modest scheme of rights and a set of constitutional rules. Justice pluralism chastens the ambitions of political liberalism while pushing the political liberal research program in new and promising directions. (shrink)

One of the most fascinating debates in the field of political theory has been the one about the relationship between value pluralism and liberalism. Based on their different conceptions and definitions, various theorists have often theorized a tension in the relationship between pluralism and liberalism. On the one hand, liberal authors who believe in the universality of liberal values that have to do with the safeguard of freedom (conceived at least to some extent as “negative freedom”), in the (...) expressions and the free choices that individuals within a society or group can make, tolerance, in their individuality, in the equality of opportunities for everyone, etc., and on the other hand, the pluralists, who emphasize that different values, beliefs and human goods (the diversity) in society are essentially incompatible with one another, and as such, also incommensurable. Against the positions of some various authors who theorize an inherent conflict between these two ideas, in this paper, we argue that in practice, but also theoretically justified, there is a connection and a mutual support relationship existing between pluralism and liberalism. Therefore, the main principles that pluralism protects, such as pluralism of value, incommensurability between multiple conceptions of the goods, etc., can find themselves best in the context of a liberal society. (shrink)

This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic (...) virtue of reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Politics, morality, and pluralism -- Liberal morality and political legitimacy -- Political legitimacy and social justice -- Williams's concept of the political -- Legitimacy, stability, and morality -- The politics of morality -- A moral point of view -- Manners and morality -- Morality and conflict -- Moral conflict and political theory -- The morality of politics -- Feminism and multiculturalism -- A defense of culture -- Politics and normative conflict -- The political as moral viewpoint -- (...) Morality and politics: a review -- Political unity and pluralism -- The liberal archipelago -- Loose linkage and political legitimacy -- Political unity and the body politic -- Social justice and political unity -- The bonds of civility -- Nationhood and the liberal polity -- The nature of nationhood -- Pluralism and nationalism -- Nationalism and social justice -- Deliberative democracy and the liberal polity -- Liberalism and democracy -- Democracy and deliberative discourse -- The terms of deliberative discourse -- Normative discourse and political legitimacy -- Deliberative democracy and intragroup politics -- Group autonomy and intergroup discourse -- Politics, history, and reason -- Principle and justice in the liberal polity -- Liberal institutions and liberal ideals -- Stopping history -- Rationalism and politics. (shrink)

Issues relating to diversity and pluralism continue to permeate both social and political discourse. Of particular contemporary importance and relevance are those issues raised when the demands associated with forms of pluralism clash with those of the liberal state. These forms of pluralism can be divided into two subcategories: thin and thick pluralism. Thin pluralism refers to forms of pluralism that can be accommodated by the existing liberal framework, whereas thick pluralism challenges this liberal framework. -/- This thesis is an (...) examination of four forms of political association that may be able to accommodate and support the demands of pluralism. These four models are Rawls’ political liberalism, Crowder’s value pluralism, Rorty’s post-foundational liberalism, and Mouffe’s radical democratic project. What unites these four forms of political association is their capacity to avoid the exclusionary effects of a form of liberalism that I, following Gaus, refer to as Enlightenment liberalism. As the name suggests, this conception of liberalism is anchored in the Enlightenment, and in particular with what may be considered as the Enlightenment view of reason. As such, therefore, Enlightenment liberalism is both universal and perfectionist. In this context, I argue that Enlightenment liberalism is a species of what Berlin refers to as ‘moral monism’. -/- These four forms of political association are ordered in such a way as to chart an intellectual trajectory. Rawls and Crowder are both situated firmly within the liberal tradition, whereas Rorty and Mouffe move beyond this, and embrace a form of post-foundational politics. It is in this trajectory that the second theme of this thesis emerges. This is centred on a paradox: in order to avoid the exclusionary effect of Enlightenment liberalism and embrace a form of political association that meets the demands of pluralism and diversity, the models examined still promote autonomy as the dominant virtue. (shrink)

Under free institutions the exercise of human reason leads to a plurality of reasonable, yet irreconcilable doctrines. Rawls's political liberalism is intended as a response to this fundamental feature of modern democratic life. Justifying coercive political power by appeal to any one (or sample) of these doctrines is, Rawls believes, oppressive and illiberal. If we are to achieve unity without oppression, he tells us, we must all affirm a public political conception that is supported by these diverse reasonable doctrines. (...) The first part of this essay argues that the free use of human reason leads to reasonable pluralism over most of what we call the political. Rawls's notion of the political does not avoid the problem of state oppression under conditions of reasonable pluralism. The second part tries to show how justificatory liberalism provides (1) a conception of the political that takes seriously the fact that the free use of human reason leads us to sharply disagree in the domain of the political while (2) articulating a conception of the political according to which the coercive intervention of the state must be justified by public reasons. (shrink)

Following hints in the writings of Isaiah Berlin, some political theorists hold that the thesis of value pluralism is true and that this truth provides support for political liberalism of a sort that prescribes wide guarantees of individual liberty.1 There are many different goods, and they are incommensurable. Hence, people should be left free to live their own lives as they choose so long as they don’t harm others in certain ways. In a free society there is a strong (...) presumption in favor of letting individuals act as they choose without interference by others. William A. Galston has developed this argument with exemplary clarity.2 He is wrong. The idea that value incommensurability is a reason for toleration of diverse ways of life and protection of the individual’s freedom to choose among diverse ways of life is a mistake. In his paper for this volume, What Value Pluralism Means for Legal Constitutional Orders, Galston undertakes to resolve a further problem, namely, whether the presumption in favor of individual liberty that value pluralism establishes can be kept within bounds. In his words, “Within the pluralist framework, how is the basis for a viable political community to be secured?”3 On one construal of these words, Galston is seeking the solution to a non-problem. Value pluralism does not establish any normative presumption in favor of liberty, so the worry “does this presumption hold without limit” or, “are there good reasons that constrain it at some point”, is otiose. On another construal, Galston is addressing a different question: if most of the members of society came to believe that given value pluralism, they ought to be left free to live according to their own conception of values, then would a “decently ordered public life” be impossible to sustain?4 On the second construal, the issue being posed is a genuine empirical question, which philosophical arguments cannot answer. (shrink)

Liberalism and pluralism are seen as being in tension in liberal Western nation-states, while multiculturalism, as a policy of resource allocation to minority groups, has been the standard response to pluralization. This limits the pluralist potential of a constitutional liberalism. The fusion of a liberal theory of autonomous individuality with a pluralist theory of multiple belonging has to look beyond multicultural policy in order to enhance liberal commitments to citizens through pluralist provisions. An analysis of (...) the Indian Constitution's Fundamental Rights, as a normative document, shows that the citizen can be understood as an autonomous individual given identity through belonging to a plurality of groups. Consequently, rights are taken to accrue to all citizens equally as autonomous individuals, but also by virtue of their belonging to groups, with special provisions made available for vulnerable ones. Rights for a plurality of vulnerable groups should not be seen as illiberal additions but integral to the conception of liberalism. If such a view of citizenship were to be integrated into the liberal constitutions of irreversibly pluralizing Western democracies, then a pluralistic constitutional patriotism could be fostered amongst members of vulnerable groups, while demonstrating that standard liberal rights guarantee equal citizenship for all. (shrink)

While aligned with John Neville Figgis’ pluralism and Marxist socialism, Harold Laski endorsed liberal and democratic values. However, he synthesised several elements from older liberal theories in a way that diluted the division to which these theories had adhered, namely that between the private and the political spheres. The resulting combination preserves privacy’s status as the realm where individuals are free to pursue their separate ends, but enables essentially private activities based in voluntary social spaces to infuse the space of (...) politics. From this emerged a vision of liberal democracy, in which freedom plays out in multiple private spaces that do not require an autonomous civic arena to complement them. The combination was reached within the contexts of mid-century thinking about the welfare state and a broader project of reformulating democracy by reducing its equation with representation. (shrink)

In this brief comment on Chandran Kukathas’s “Ethical Pluralism from a Classical Liberal Perspective,” I present the other side of the liberal dialogue on diversity. It sets out the responses of deliberative liberals to the difficulties of pluralism where these responses are different from those presented by Kukathas’s liberals. One of the best examples of this other strand of classical liberalism today is John Rawls’s “political liberalism,” a view of liberalism founded on the ideal of the exchange (...) of public reasons among ethically plural citizens. Of course, both types of liberals share a great deal and most are members of both schools under some descriptions. However, important differences remain and their continuous contestation within liberalism make this a living and evolving tradition. The aim of this comment is thus to supplement Kukathas’s excellent account by bringing in these other liberal voices where they dissent from the views of the minimal liberals on pluralism. (shrink)

Liberalism is no longer defensible as a strategy for coping with conflicts in a pluralistic society, but is itself one of the pluralities in conflict. Hence its strategy for coping with plurality---tolerant suspension or privatization of the deep commitments that are the roots of conflict, coupled with rational discussion to form a public consensus not connected to the plurality of commitments---can no longer serve as a common sense approach for all citizens. In this paper I explore as a solution (...) the continuation of discussion toward shared public policy, but now discussion openly tied to underlying commitments. Truth in this context is pursued not as a matter of argument, but as fruitful consequences of action. (shrink)

Few would disagree that contemporary society is characterized by ‘pluralism’, but what this means is widely disputed. Among the many senses of pluralism current in contemporary political theory, ‘value pluralism’ is one of the most keenly contested. The classic account is found in Isaiah Berlin, who sees basic human values as irreducibly multiple, often conflicting, and sometimes incommensurable with one another.Berlin’s pluralist views are scattered throughout his work, but major statements include the Introduction and last section of ‘Two Concepts (...) of Liberty’ in Berlin (2002), Berlin (1990), and Berlin (2000). Other accounts of pluralism influenced by Berlin include Raz (1986); Hampshire (1989); Stocker (1990); Nussbaum (1992) chapter 2; Kekes (1993); Gray (1995a, b); Chang (1997); Crowder (2002, 2004); Galston (2002, 2005). In the Continental tradition the concept of value pluralism is often traced to Max Weber (1948). Berlin seems in general to have believed that the pluralist outl .. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Plusieurs libéraux modernes soutiennent que le pluralisme des valeurs a d’importantes conséquences pour l’élaboration des procédures et des institutions politiques. Mais les arguments fondés sur l’incommensurabilité et sur l’indétermination de la rationalité ou de la délibération se révèlent tous compatibles avec le monisme; et certaines formes de pluralisme sont compatibles soit avec une hiérarchisation des valeurs soit avec une hiérarchisation méta-éthique de certains types de concepts normatifs. En outre le «pluralisme» en tant que thèse métaphysique concernant les valeurs est (...) souvent confondu avec la thèse descriptive qu’il existe une pluralité de conceptions du bien dans les sociétés modernes, qui, elle, fournit la véritable justification du libéralisme dans l’organisation politique. Or cette forme de pluralisme est également compatible avec le monisme des valeurs. Le libéral pluraliste se trouve ainsi confronté à un dilemme: soit certaines valeurs sont d’importance prioritaire pour la justification de l’organisation politique, soit les conséquences du pluralisme des valeurs en pareil domaine sont indéterminées. (shrink)

Critics of John Rawls' conception of a reasonable pluralism have raised the question of whether it is justified to demand that religious individuals should 'bracket' their essential, identity-constituting convictions when they enter a political discourse. I will argue that the criterion for religious beliefs of being justified as grounds for political decisions should be their ability of being 'translatable' in secular reasons for the very same decisions. This translation would demand 'epistemic abstinence' from religious believers only on the basis of (...) a rigid distinction between the spheres of private opinions and public reasons. To give a more adequate account of the relation between religious beliefs and political reasons in a pluralistic society it seems to be helpful to make use of Niklas Luhmann's functionalistic theory of religion. Key Words: democracy and religious beliefs • philosophy of religion • pluralism • political liberalism • political theory. (shrink)

Liberal theory seems to be caught in an impasse. On the one hand, since it has social order as its object, it appears to be committed to resolving the problem of disagreement between the various conceptions; on the other, insofar as it is philosophical theory, it seems destined to cause conflict. How, then, can liberalism offer a solution which guarantees the duration in time of a society, without, however, proposing a theory that would merely be one among others? And (...) how can it do this without adopting reductionist strategies, and by trying to remain faithful to the idea that a society should be ordered by a conception of justice? This is the paradox of liberal political philosophy. And this same paradox is the theme that Rawls confronts in Political Liberalism. (shrink)

In popular parlance the term "liberalism" denotes a collection of welfarist and progressive social policies, but I am here concerned with liberalism as the theoretical framework within which familiar debates over distributive justice and the scope of state power typically are conducted. To be sure, liberalism in this sense is a complex doctrine, but its core has been well captured by Martha Nussbaum.

Advocates of political liberalism hold it as a superior alternative to perfectionism on the grounds that it avoids superfluous and/or controversial claims in favor of a maximally-inclusive approach undergirded by a "free-standing" justification for the ideology. These assertions prove difficult to defend: political interpretations of liberalism tend to be implicitly ethnocentric; they often rely upon a number of controversial, and even empirically falsified, assumptions about rationality--and in many ways prove more parochial than their perfectionist cousins. It is possible (...) to reform political liberalism to address these challenges, but generally at the expense of the supposed normative force and universality of the liberal project. However, this para-liberal approach is much better in keeping with contemporary findings in sociology, psychology and cognitive science--and can much more effectively accommodate the illiberal challenge. (shrink)

If you asked me a few years ago ‘what is postcolonial liberalism?’, I’d have said ‘an oxymoron’. As an undergraduate, I thought liberalism was a dirty word. The idea that it could accommodate the aspirations of those who would challenge colonial authority, authority that called itself liberal, seemed naïve. As I have begun researching indigenous political movements, and their responses to democratic theory, I have been surprised to discover that people who call themselves liberals have been some of (...) those most responsive to the challenges these movements pose. Aside from confronting my prejudices about liberalism as a political doctrine, my research has brought to my attention the importance of democratic participation in organising just societies. I am becoming more convinced that democracy, rather than equality or freedom, should be the watchword of progressive politics. Of course democracy presupposes a measure of equality and freedom, but it is more than either of these taken alone. (shrink)

Robert Talisse charges as doomed the Berlinian effort to infer liberal politics from value pluralism, based on the observation that it unavoidably vio- lates Hume’s law and that the two in fact clash in their basic logic. In arriving at this diagnosis, however, Talisse relies on several problematic assumptions about practical reasoning as well as about value pluralism and liberalism. As a result, he fails to appreciate the practical nature of practical reasoning and also fails to see the negative (...) aspects of value pluralism and of liberalism. Once these misconceptions get straightened out there is an increased opportunity for the Berlinian inference to succeed. (shrink)

This article tackles one of the most burning issues discussed by adherents of the dynamically developing movement in ethics which bears on political and legal philosophy, that is value-pluralism. In particular, the article is devoted to an investigation into the highly controversial issue of the relationship between pluralism and liberalism, based upon the three crucial, divergent approaches represented by Isaiah Berlin and his two main opponents, John Gray and George Crowder. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the two (...) concepts in question are neither mutually exclusive nor logically connected, but actually overlapping, which signifies the existence of a loose, de facto connection between them. Such a final thesis proves to be consistent with the position of Isaiah Berlin, and contrary to the final statements endorsed by his critics, John Gray and George Crowder. (shrink)

The later Rawls attempts to offer a non-comprehensive, but nonetheless moral justification in political philosophy. Many critics of political liberalism doubt that this is successful, but Rawlsians often complain that such criticisms rely on the unwarranted assumption that one cannot offer a moral justification other than by taking a philosophically comprehensive route. In this article, I internally criticize the justification strategy employed by the later Rawls. I show that he cannot offer us good grounds for the rational hope that (...) citizens will assign political values priority over non-political values in cases of conflict about political matters. I also suggest an alternative approach to justification in political philosophy (that is, a weak realist, Williams-inspired account) that better respects the later Rawls’s concern with non-comprehensiveness and pluralism than either his own view or more comprehensive approaches. Thus, if we take reasonable pluralism seriously, then we should adopt what Shklar aptly called ‘liberalism of fear’. (shrink)

Rawls theorizes principles of justice as defining a ‘pact of reconciliation’ between diverse conceptions of the good. What does fulfillment of this pact entail when reasonable pluralism is recognized as having an environmental dimension? Fair acknowledgment of the plurality of citizens’ relationships with the natural world challenges the neutrality of aims conventionally used to justify ecocide, including the promotion of economic growth and development. This paper explores how ecocide constitutes a violation of equal basic liberties and state neutrality as per (...) Rawlsian political liberalism. It further considers hard cases in which ecocide is enacted for meeting citizens’ basic needs. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading political thinkers of the twentieth century, and his work continues to attract admiration and debate. In Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism and Liberalism, George Crowder provides both an accessible introduction to Berlin's ideas and an original contribution to political theory. Berlin's range of interests and learning was vast but united by a single overarching project: the uncovering of the conceptual roots of twentieth-century totalitarianism. He traces these through three levels of analysis: the distortion (...) of the concept of freedom by thinkers such as Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Marx; the scientism of the Enlightenment and irrationalism of the Counter-Enlightenment and romanticism; and moral monism, the idea that all ethical questions can be answered by reference to a single moral law. Against monism, Berlin asserts the claims of value pluralism, which he aligns with a politics of liberal moderation. In this new assessment, Crowder argues that Berlin's critique of the modern enemies of liberty is exciting and powerful, but also that the coherence of his thought is threatened by a tension between its liberal and pluralist elements. Crowder goes on to suggest how that tension can be resolved by appeal to arguments that go beyond the case actually presented by Berlin but which remain within the spirit of his general outlook. (shrink)

In Two Faces of Liberalism, John Gray pursues the dual agenda of condemning familiar liberal theories for perpetuating the failed “Enlightenment project,” and promoting his own version of anti‐Enlightenment liberalism, which he calls “modus vivendi.” However, Gray's critical apparatus is insufficient to capture accurately the highly influential “political” liberalism of John Rawls. Moreover, Gray's modus vivendi faces serious challenges raised by Rawls concerning stability. In order to respond to the Rawlsian objections, Gray would have to reinstate the (...) aspirations and principles characteristic of Enlightenment theories of liberalism. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin repeatedly attempted to derive liberalism from value pluralism. It is generally agreed that Berlin 's arguments fail; however, neo-Berlinians have taken up the project of securing the entailment. This paper begins with an account of why the Berlinian project seems attractive to contemporary theorists. I then examine Berlin 's argument. With this background in place, I argue that recent attempts by William Galston and George Crowder to rescue the Berlinian project do not succeed.

[Samuel Scheffler] Some egalitarian liberals have proposed a division of moral labour between social institutions and individual agents, but the division-of-labour metaphor has been understood in different ways. This paper aims to disentangle some of these different understandings, with an eye to clarifying the appeal of the egalitarian-liberal project and the challenges that it faces. The idea of a division of moral labour is best understood as the expression of a strategy for accommodating diverse values. It is not an apology (...) for economic self-interest or a device for justifying personal acquisitiveness. /// [Véronique Munoz-Dardé] Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

John Gray argues that the doctrine of value pluralism poses a serious challenge for liberalisms of the Rawlsian and Millian kind. The only proper political doctrine that is compatible with value pluralism is a modus vivendi that can take various forms. But in truth, value pluralism does little to diminish the appeal of liberalism. Under modern conditions, any half‐decent modus vivendi will look more like liberalism than Gray supposes.

Recent debates in liberal political theory have sought to come to terms with the post-secular condition, characterised by deep religious pluralism, the resurgence of right-wing populism, as well as new social movements for economic, ecological and racial justice. These forces represent competing claims on the public space and create challenges for the liberal model of state neutrality. To better grasp this problem, I argue for a more comprehensive engagement between liberalism and political theology, by which I understand a mode (...) of theorising that reveals the theological basis of modern secular political concepts. In considering two contrasting approaches to political or public theology – Carl Schmitt’s and Jürgen Moltmann’s – I argue that liberal political theory can and should open itself to a diversity of social movements and ecological struggles that pluralise the political space in ways that unsettle the boundary between the secular and religious. (shrink)

John Gray claims that ‘value pluralism’, or the plurality and incommensurability of basic values, undermines any attempt to make a reasoned case for the superiority of liberalism (or any other ideology) over its rivals. Incommensurable values, he says, cannot be subjected to a rational ranking, except in particular cases, yet liberalism appears to advocate the promotion of certain values rather than others in general terms. I argue that Gray’s critique has force against some traditional justifications of liberal politics, (...) but that he exaggerates its reach against other, more recent forms of liberal theory. In particular, Gray’s view of liberalism as merely one form of life among others, with no rational claims to precedence, rests on a mistaken understanding of the implications of value pluralism. The incommensurability of values does not imply the absolute incommensurability of forms of life, such as those of liberal and non‐liberal cultures. Far from being incompatible with the reasoned advocacy of liberalism, value pluralism may itself provide liberalism with a rational grounding. (shrink)