Liberalism and value pluralism
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Liberalism and value pluralism
（Political theory and contemporary politics）
Continuum, 2002
- : hbk
- : pbk
- Other Title
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Liberalism & value pluralism
Available at / 19 libraries
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Kobe University Library for Social Sciences
: pbk4-7-3609011200306045,
: hbk309.1-CR011200501406 -
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Note
Bibliography: p. 263-273
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
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: pbk ISBN 9780826450470
Description
Value pluralism is the view that fundamental human goods, such as liberty, equality and justice, are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Where such goods conflict, we must make hard choices betweem them, unguided by determinate hierarchies of value such as those proposed by the utilitarians and by Kant. In this book, George Crowder looks at the implications of value pluralism for political theory and in particular for the foundations of liberalism. He argues that while pluralism presents a serious challenge to some of the standard approaches to political theory, it is nontheless compatible with a substantial range of argumants grounded in context. The second focus of the book concerns the arguments put forward by Isaiah Berlin and others showing how pluralism might give us a reason to accept liberalism. Crowder offers an extended attempt to argue for liberalism from a pluralist point of view. He goes on to make a case for liberalism in its more egalitarian and multicultural version, as the political form most hospitable to a mulitplicity of values.
- Volume
-
: hbk ISBN 9780826450487
Description
Value pluralism is the idea, associated with the late Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Ends like liberty, equality and community are intrinsic goods which can neither be ranked in an absolute hierarchy nor translated into units of a common denominator. If that is true, how can we choose among such values when they come into conflict in particular cases? In particular, what reason is there to justify the value ranking characteristic of liberal democracy, favouring personal autonomy and toleration? Recent commentators have seen value pluralism as undermining the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one political form among others with no greater claim to legitimacy. Against that view, George Crowder argues that a strong distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project is implied by value pluralism itself. Reflection on the elements of value pluralism yields a set of ethical principles, including respect for universal values, rejection of political utopianism, promotion of value diversity, accommodation of reasonable disagreement, and cultivation of civic virtues.
Those principles are best satisfied by a liberal form of politics characterised by a strong commitment to personal autonomy, by policies of moderate redistribution and multiculturalism, and by constitutional restraints on democractic politics. This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Liberalism and value pluralism: liberalism and its justification
- value pluralism. Part 2 Pluralist arguments - liberal and antiliberal: from pluralism to anti-utopianism - Berlin's case
- pluralism against liberalism? the conservative case. Part 3 From pluralism to liberalism: from pluralism to liberalism 1 - diversity
- from pluralism to liberalism 2 - reasonable disagreement
- from pluralism to liberalism 3 - virtues
- pluralist liberalism
- conclusion.
by "Nielsen BookData"
