Vol.11 No.4 ---- Fall 1997
Contents
Pluralism or Relativism?
Pluralism or Relativism? | Jeffrey Friedman
Daniel Weinstock | The Graying of Berlin
In Isaiah
Berlin, John Gray interprets Berlin as having made value pluralism the basis
of an anti-rationalist, "agonistic" liberalism. Gray argues that Berlin's value
pluralism actually stands in tension with his liberalism, and that a
whole-hearted affirmation of value pluralism should have led him to reject the
claim that liberal institutions are morally superior. But Berlin's pluralism is
more moderate than that ascribed to him by Gray, in that it does not allow for
diminishing the value of liberty beyond a certain point. This version of
pluralism is more compatible with the objectivity Gray claims for pluralism than
is his own version.
Pratap B. Mehta | Pluralism after Liberalism?
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.
Richard Boyd | Frank H. Knight and Ethical Pluralism
For Frank Knight, the fact that we are free to engage in economic pursuits
brings out what is both best and worst in human nature. The same competitive
economy that liberates individuals to choose their own desired ends also provides
them with socially undesirable wants and fosters habits potentially at odds with
the demands of liberal democracy. Given Knight's desire both to defend human
liberty and his concession that liberty is likely to be abused, his version of
liberalism must of necessity be anticonsequentialist. Paradoxically, Knight's
philosophical pluralism - his insistence that there are any number of
incommensurable perspectives on the good or just society - underlies both his
criticism of the "ethical" possibilities of the competitive order and his defense
of human liberty against the dangers of social planning.
Michael Allen Gillespie | Nietzche and the Premodernist
Critique of Postmodernism
The crisis of modern reason culminates in Nietzsche's proclamation of
nihilism. Drawing upon Nietzsche, postmodernists suggest that reason itself is
defective, while "premodernists" argue we can regain our balance by returning to
premodern rationalism. Peter Berkowitz suggests, however, that Nietzsche is a
contradictory thinker who fails in his attempt to combine ancient rationalism
with modern voluntarism. Postmodernism thus rests upon a defective foundation.
Berkowitz's critique of postmodernism is telling, but he does not recognize
dangerous millenarian elements in Nietzsche's thought. Moreover, the concept of
ancient reason he holds up as an alternative is under-developed and
undifferentiated.
Greg Hill | Solidarity, Objectivity, and the Human Form
of Life: Wittgenstein vs. Rorty
Reason, objectivity, and human nature are now suspect ideas. Among
postmodern thinkers, Richard Rorty has advanced an especially forceful critique
of these notions. Drawing partly on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Rorty
contends that objectivity is no more than metaphysical name for intersubjective
agreement, and that "human nature" is an empty category, there being nothing
beneath history and culture. Wittgenstein himself, however, recognized within
the world's many civilizations "the common behavior of mankind," without which
Rorty's ethnocentric "solidarity" would be inconceivable. This common form of
life - the life of those who speak - encompasses countless human activities that
presuppose and are interwoven with the concepts of reason and objectivity.
Edward Feser | Hayek on Social Justice: Reply to Lukes
and Johnston
Hayek's attack on the ideal of social justice, though long ignored by
political theorists, has recently been the subject of a number of largely
unsympathetic studies (those of Lukes and Johnston being the most recent) in
which his critique is dismissed as at best simply mistaken and at worst
frivolous. The responses to Hayek's case against social justice, however, fail
to draw any blood, for they do not seriously deal with Hayek's central claim that
the very notion of social justice is incoherent.
David Johnston | Is the Idea of Social Justice
Meaningful? Rejoinder to Feser
Hayek claimed that the idea of social justice is meaningless in a market
economy because in that context, no identifiable agent intentionally brings about
the distribution of wealth. But the assumption that the existence of injustice
entails an identifiable agent of injustice is erroneous. Moreover, Hayek ignores
the fact that in a market economy, the broad pattern of economic outcomes is
foreseeable even if detailed, person-by-person outcomes are not. Hayek's
rejection of the idea of social justice reveals a striking naivete' about his own
ethical presuppositions.
Return to Home Page
