Ethic Theory Moral Prac DOI 10.1007/s10677-010-9229-8

Value Pluralism and Liberal Politics Robert B. Talisse

Accepted: 21 April 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Contemporary Neo-Berlinians contend that value pluralism is the best account of the moral universe we inhabit; they also contend that value pluralism provides a powerful case for liberalism. In this paper, I challenge both claims. Specifically, I will examine the arguments offered in support of value pluralism; finding them lacking, I will then offer some reasons for thinking that value pluralism is not an especially promising view of our moral universe. Keywords Pluralism . Liberalism . Values . Regret . Berlin, Isaiah . Galston, William . Crowder, George Contemporary Neo-Berlinians contend that value pluralism is “the best account of the moral universe we inhabit” (Galston 2002: 30); they also contend that value pluralism provides “a powerful case for liberalism” (Crowder 2002: 11). In this paper, I challenge both claims. Specifically, I will first examine the arguments offered in support of value pluralism; finding them lacking, I will then offer some reasons for thinking that value pluralism is not an especially promising view of our moral universe. It should be noted that I do not aim to refute value pluralism so much as to show that we do not have strong enough reasons to adopt it as a theory about value. Although I will argue against value pluralism, I do not take myself here to be making a case for value monism. Monist theories face difficulties of their own, discussion of which lies beyond my present purposes. Perhaps neither view is adequate in the end. In any case, after raising objections to the pluralist’s view of the moral universe, I shall turn to the claim that value pluralism provides a powerful case for liberalism. I have elsewhere challenged the supposed entailment from pluralism to liberalism, and will not rehearse those arguments here.1 Instead, I shall make a case for thinking that value pluralism frustrates or weakens liberal politics.

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See my 2004; 2007; and forthcoming.

R. B. Talisse (*) Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, 111 Furman Hall, Nashville, TN 37240, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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1 What Pluralism Is and Is Not Certain philosophical terms come with a built-in halo. One employs words like inclusion, participation, empowerment, and diversity only when describing the institutions, ideals, or policies one intends to praise. That is, opponents of practices popularly characterized as, say, inclusive have the burden of showing how the practice in question is, indeed, not inclusive, or not properly so. Almost no one opposes inclusiveness, nearly no one condemns diversity. When we disagree in such cases, we disagree over what should count as inclusive. More cynically, when we disagree over some policy or institution, we are at least in part fighting for control over the vocabulary by means of which the competing positions will be described. Pluralism is one of these haloed terms. In common parlance, pluralism is used to characterize the attitude of open-mindedness and the willingness to non-repressively tolerate (perhaps even positively appreciate) the diversity of worthwhile pursuits to which humans may devote themselves. The life of the impulsive artist and the life of the disciplined monk manifest their respective goods, and there’s no clear way for us—from the outside, so to speak—to declare that the artist would be better off being monkish, or that the monk is missing out on something important. It is best to leave each individual to his own vision of the good life. Live and let live. That’s the central tenet of pluralism in the common sense of the term. To reject this kind of pluralism is to endorse some form of moral tyranny or to press a “demand for consensus” (Rescher 1993). I shall have something to say about the monk and the artist later in the paper; for now, the point is that I do not oppose pluralism in the “live and let live” sense. The pluralism I shall examine is a decidedly philosophical doctrine associated with Isaiah Berlin and his many contemporary disciples, including William Galston, George Crowder, John Kekes, and John Gray.2 This pluralism is often called value pluralism, but I shall henceforth drop the qualifier. Pluralism of the sort I’m targeting involves an explanation of the fact that there are many worthwhile ways of living, and many distinctive values that a human life can manifest. According to the pluralist, the manyness of good ways of life, along with the persistence of conflict among distinctive goods, the inevitability of hard moral choices, and the apparent interminability of moral disagreements are all due to a fact about the structure of value. More specifically, the pluralist holds that although there are objective goods, many of these goods are heterogeneous. The heterogeneity of value entails that there is no summum bonum or common denominator by means of which one could commensurate different values, and no way of rationally rank-ordering them. Accordingly, in cases where heterogeneous values make conflicting demands, there is no uniquely rational resolution to the conflict, and no way of avoiding moral loss.

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It should be emphasized that I am interested here in decidedly Berlinian version of pluralism. To be sure, there are many philosophical views that are pluralist, some of which are only loosely related to Berlin’s version of the doctrine. I count Raz (1986), Nussbaum (1986), and Stocker (1990) among those promoting versions of pluralism that are Berlin-inspired but yet not Berlinian; Rescher (1993) promotes a view of pluralism that is decidedly not Berlinian, whereas Williams (1973) and Flathman (2005) propose pluralisms that are indebted to Berlin, but importantly different from Berlin’s. In any case, I do not engage the nonBerlinian versions here and will use the term to refer solely to the Berlinian views. It should also be mentioned that I will focus on Berlinian pluralisms that are, like Berlin’s, liberal. Accordingly, although the work of Gray and Kekes will be helpful in getting clear on the details of pluralism as a conception of value, I shall be concerned later in the paper exclusively with Galston and Crowder, both of whom contend that pluralism provides a powerful conception of liberal politics.

Value pluralism and liberal politics

According to the pluralist, then, the classical idea of the good life, understood as a kind of life lacking nothing that would improve it, is confused. For the pluralist, a life without substantial moral loss is not merely difficult to achieve, but conceptually impossible. This is because some objective goods are not only heterogeneous, but also essentially hostile to other objective human goods. This hostility manifests in two ways, which, following Thomas Nagel, we may characterize as incompatibility and opposition (2001: 106). To explain: two goods bear the relation of incompatibility when the pursuit of one precludes the pursuit of the other. Again, the impulsive artist and the disciplined monk live lives devoted to incompatible goods; one cannot simultaneously pursue both kinds of life. By contrast, two goods are opposed when endorsing one involves the condemnation of the other. Millian individualism not only asserts the value of non-conformity, it also condemns conformity; it judges “the chief danger of our time” to be that “so few dare to be eccentric” (Mill 1978[1859]: 64), it sees the customary as despotic (1978: 67). In other words, to embrace the Millian ideal is to condemn Matthew Arnold’s conception of culture, and to embrace Arnoldian perfectionism is to regard the Millian as an advocate of barbarism and anarchy. This much is commonplace. The distinctively pluralist claim is that it is possible that a life devoted to Millian individualism and a life devoted to Arnoldian perfection are both flourishing lives, even though each necessarily involves the loss of the other’s good. Further, the pluralist claims that the flourishing of each of these lives is unique in kind; there is no common measure of flourishing by which one could rank-order the different flourishing lives. This is why judgments of the sort, The life of a monk is better than that of the artist, when taken as general assessments about the ways of life themselves, are, according to the pluralist, conceptually confused. There is no way to ground such judgments because there is no common measure of value between these two ways of life. It should be emphasized that pluralism is not only an account of conflict between those clusters of goods and values known as ways of life. Pluralists hold that conflict obtains among individual goods as well. Berlin famously thought that although liberty and equality are both vital goods, perhaps even necessary constituents of a good life, they are incompatible. Berlin writes: Values may clash in within the breast of a single individual . . . . Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries. But total liberty for the wolves is death to the lambs. These collisions of value are the essence of what they are . . . . Some among the great goods cannot live together. (1990: 12) According to Berlin we must trade off between equality and liberty, not because we do not command the resources to realize them both, but because it is in the nature of the values themselves to collide. They are “in perpetual rivalry” (Berlin 2002: 216); hence any increase in one is necessarily a loss of the other. If individual goods can clash in this way, then so, too, can obligations and duties. If equality and liberty are essential constituents of a flourishing life, perhaps, then, political communities have an obligation to realize both. But if equality and liberty are related in the way Berlin claims, then they cannot both be realized, since the extent to which the one is achieved is precisely the extent to which the other is diminished. Thus every society must fall short of its obligations. The same holds in the individual case. Keeping a promise I’ve made can require me to violate a duty of friendship. Being a promise-keeper and being a dutiful friend each make a distinctive claim on me, and there is no summum bonum by means of which I could measure precisely the strength of each claim. I simply must choose. Indeed, as Berlin says, I am “doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss” (Berlin 1990: 12).

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Given Berlin’s use of the word “doomed,” it is worth emphasizing that pluralism is not a form of irrationalism. Pluralists often defend the idea that rational choice is possible among conflicting incommensurable goods. The argument turns on a distinction between incommensurability and incomparability. They argue that although promise-keeping and friendship are incommensurable, they are nonetheless comparable. To explain: Comparison does not seek a common denominator among the conflicting values by means of which a cardinal rank-order could be established, but instead contextualizes and particularizes the conflict, seeking an ordinal judgment concerning the relative weight of this promise against that duty of friendship given this set of circumstances. The language of Aristotelian phronesis is often introduced at this point to make sense of how it is possible to weigh incommensurable demands against each other. To be sure, this is tricky business, and I cannot delve into the philosophical details here; however, I will touch on this issue at the end of the paper.3 The point for now is that although pluralists ultimately must adopt a particularist and contextualist approach to choice among incommensurable goods, pluralism not a species of relativism. As the foregoing indicates, pluralists understand goods or values to be objective and universal. Indeed, although Berlin never directly addressed the metaethical issues occasioned by his view, it is clear that that his pluralism is committed to a kind of moral realism. In Berlin’s writing, values are taken to be like Platonic objects, only without The Form of The Good to unify them. We might say, then, that, for the pluralist, values are like different genres within an artistic medium. For example: let us stipulate that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall are objectively great films. But that is not to say that they manifest some common greatness-making property. Hence it seems odd to ask, which is the better film, simpliciter? The greatness of each is unique, incommensurate with that of the other. Examples like the foregoing manifest most forcefully the intuitive pull of pluralism. There does seem to be something implausible about the idea that all good things are good in virtue of sharing a common good-making property. Were this the case then it would be in principle possible to discover the answer to questions like, Is Beethoven’s Ninth better than Hamlet? And, What is more valuable, a friendship or a poem? The oddness of such questions, the pluralist contends, derives from the fact that goods are heterogeneous and hence incommensurate. Hence pluralism seems correct. Yet we must be careful not to be carried away by the intuitive appeal of pluralism. As is often the case, intuitions pull in different directions. For example, in response to the kind of consideration offered above, pluralism’s critics contend that whereas we may have a difficult time of ranking Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony against Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we would have little difficulty with the judgment that Hamlet is better than the compositions of a middling writer of commercial jingles; similarly, we would without hesitation declare a true friendship to be infinitely more valuable than poems composed by adolescent boys.4 Hence it seems that intuitions could be summoned on behalf of the view that rational value judgments across different genres are possible. The question of the merits of pluralism as an account of value is one that cannot be settled on the strength of our intuitions alone. 3

See the papers in Chang 1997 for full treatment of the issue. Chang calls such cases “nominal-notable comparisons” (1997: 14). The possibility of such comparisons— e.g., between the notable literary achievement of Hamlet and the nominal virtuosity of the jingle-writer— undermines the intuition that the oddness of questions comparing two notable exemplars of different artistic genres is due to the heterogeneity of the values notable works in those genres bear.

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Value pluralism and liberal politics

I will not explore further the issue of rational judgments across seemingly heterogeneous kinds of good. My aim thus far has been only to specify and make plausible the view I aim to criticize. I mainly have been concerned to forestall the impression that to be against pluralism is to be in favor of conformism or some policy of intolerance. It should be clear by now that opposing pluralism in the Berlinian sense that I have identified is consistent with adopting pluralism in the “live and let live” sense; that is, one could reject Berlinian pluralism and yet assert that the monk and the artist both are leading good lives and should be left to their respective pursuits. To wit: Utilitarians and deontologists could concede this point, and in fact often do. Yet utilitarianism and deontology are paradigmatically monist moral theories; both claim that there is but one thing that is intrinsically good. The point is that one could be a monist about goodness without being single-minded about which things are good. Moreover, opposing pluralism does not commit one to the idea that there are no morally hard cases or that the moral life is necessarily harmonious and peaceful. Again, one could be a monist about the nature of goodness without holding that it is easy to be good. With these qualifications in place, let us turn to an evaluation of pluralism as a theory of value.

2 Assessing Pluralist Arguments In order to assess the reasons proposed in favor of pluralism, we will need a less impressionistic statement of the view than what I have provided thus far. Berlin’s own statements of the doctrine are notoriously imprecise, so we must attend to contemporary pluralists. Among these, George Crowder has offered the best summary of pluralism’s commitments. Pluralism is the view according to which there are objective values that are (1) universal; (2) plural; (3) incommensurable; and (4) in conflict with other objective values (2002: 45). William Galston’s recent summary helps to codify the pluralist picture: According to value pluralism, objective goods cannot be fully rank-ordered. There is no common measure of value for all goods, which are qualitatively heterogeneous. There is no summum bonum that is the chief good for all individuals. There are no “lexical orderings” among types of goods. And there is no “first virtue of social institutions,” but, rather, a range of public values the relative importance of which will depend on particular circumstances.5 (2005: 12) One thing should be noted straightaway. As far as philosophical accounts of the nature of value go, pluralism is a bold proposal. Its truth entails not only that nearly every moral theory yet devised is false, but that nearly every moral theory yet devised—every theory which countenances a summum bonum or sees moral conflict as always rationally resolvable in principle—is premised on a fundamental conceptual error (Crowder 2002: 70). Accordingly, pluralism means that our most fundamental moral concepts stand in need of drastic revision. Pluralism also has decisive implications for our conceptions of moral agency and resulting theories of practical rationality. Finally, as Galston’s remarks make explicit, pluralism requires a far-reaching overhaul of the basic commitments of mainstream liberal political theory. Bold proposals call for powerful supporting arguments; however, despite the boldness of the pluralist proposal, the pluralist literature features surprisingly few explicit arguments for

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Cf. Hardy 2007: 283 f.

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pluralism. In fact, one finds in this literature many concessions to the effect that “it would be difficult to know what would constitute a definitive case in favor of [pluralism]” (Galston 2002: 32). Yet surely something must be said. Realizing this, Crowder poses four arguments for pluralism. Unfortunately, however, two of these arguments are hardly worthy of the name. To explain: One of Crowder’s arguments simply asserts that “no monist alternative has yet proved convincing” (2002: 69). This purported argument presents many difficulties, but perhaps the most damaging is that it is obviously a non-sequitur. That all monist views are unconvincing—and I hasten to emphasize that I am assuming this ad arguendo, not asserting it—does not entail the truth of pluralism; nor does it constitute a consideration in favor of pluralism. Another of his arguments draws on the premise that “the good life is composed of incommensurable values” (2002: 71). This simply begs the question, for the incommensurability of values is one of the constituent and distinctive theses of value pluralism as Crowder himself defines it (2002: 45). We may conclude, then, that two of Crowder’s four arguments for pluralism are non-starters.6 I will not dwell on such poor arguments. Again, the most frequent, and I think most compelling, consideration is that pluralism provides “the best account of the moral universe we inhabit.” The evidence offered for this claim is that pluralism best captures our “moral experience” (Crowder 2002: 5), it comports with “ethical life as we find it” (Gray 2000: 35).7 In particular, pluralists contend that pluralism best accommodates the “experience of conflict among values” (Crowder 2002: 69), it is “the best available account of this experience” (Galston 2005: 16). However, as Crowder admits, this consideration is “not conclusive” (2002: 69), since monists surely countenance moral conflict and hard choices. For example, proponents of the most flat-footed version of monism, utilitarianism, recognize that calculations can be highly complex; they allow that frequently it is difficult to know what the Greatest Happiness Principle demands, and so they can admit hard, even horrid, cases. Yet the utilitarian holds that for any two actions available to an agent (or any two states of affairs), either one is morally better than the other, or they are morally equal. And here is where the distinctive argument in favor of pluralism seems to emerge. The pluralist contends that our experience of moral conflict reveals that certain goods, and thus certain obligations, are incommensurable. The kind of experience pluralists have in mind is that of so-called tragic conflicts or “strong dilemmas” (Skorupski 1996: 108), and the moral regret that often follows in their wake. To explain: the pluralist contends that it is possible to do the right thing overall, but still incur serious moral loss, loss that is not compensated by the fact of having done what is right.8 On a monist view, by contrast, doing the right thing overall may, indeed, involve the loss of other goods, but this loss is, by definition, always compensated for by one’s having done what is right. So, for the utilitarian, I may have to choose between keeping a promise and satisfying a duty of friendship. But if, all things considered, keeping the promise is what maximizes happiness, then the bad of

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Crowder’s remaining two arguments are that (1) value pluralism comports with our experience of value conflict, and (2) value pluralism alone can countenance the possibility of rational regret in cases of value conflict (2002: 73). In the discussion that follows, I take these two arguments to be internally connected: the pluralist claims that the experience of value conflict leads us to regret in cases where we are confident that we have done the right thing over all, and only the value pluralist can see this regret as rational. 7 Cf. Galston, “It is concrete experience that provides the most compelling reasons for accepting some form of value pluralism” (2002: 33). 8 For the pluralist, the “right thing overall” is determined by the contextualized and particularized process of “weighing” the values which I mentioned briefly above.

Value pluralism and liberal politics

violating the duty of friendship is compensated for, morally speaking, by the good of keeping the promise. Thus there is no moral remainder, and nothing to regret.9 The pluralist contends that often there is a moral remainder, and often we do experience regret even when we have done what is right, all things considered. The pluralist claim is that such regret can be rational only if the good that is lost in such choices is not compensated for by that which is gained.10 Put otherwise, if I must violate a duty of friendship in order to keep a promise, and if keeping the promise is the right thing to do, my regret for letting down my friend is rational only if the two obligations are morally heterogeneous. Monist theories must deny incommensurability; therefore they must regard such regret as always irrational. Yet we often experience such regret, and when we do, it seems utterly appropriate. Hence pluralists conclude that monism must deny a salient feature of moral experience. The extent to which moral theories must “save the appearances” of moral experience can be debated, but I will not take this up here. Instead, I want to concede the pluralist observation: It is common that we experience moral loss even in cases where, all things considered, we are confident that we have done the right thing. I also concede that this component of moral experience is salient and not to be dismissed. We should, indeed, try to save this appearance. However, many monists have argued—with some success, it seems to me—that recognizing the rationality of such regret does not require a pluralist conception of value. The strongest case along these lines has been posed by Thomas Hurka (1996).11 Hurka argues that in order to accommodate the rationality of regret in such cases, the competing obligations must indeed be distinct, but their distinctness need not be due to their being instantiations of heterogeneous goods (1996: 563f.). Accordingly, the dissatisfaction produced in my friend when I violate a duty of friendship may be distinct from the dissatisfaction I avoided by keeping the promise simply because my friend and the person to whom I made the promise are distinct persons. Jack’s dissatisfaction is not compensated for by the fact that I kept my promise to Jill, even if by keeping the promise I maximized overall happiness and thus did the right thing. A utilitarian could concede that I although may have done the right thing overall, I may still regret Jack’s dissatisfaction. Hurka raises the further consideration that the pluralist cannot accommodate the rationality of regret when one is forced to choose among two competing obligations of the same moral kind, as when one must break one promise in order to keep another or forego giving one person pleasure in order to give another person more pleasure (1996: 563; Cf. Schaber 1999: 74). It is not my intention to pursue this line of argument. I raise the Hurka arguments only in order to point out that although Galston and Crowder are eager to press the claim that only pluralism can account for rational regret, neither engages the arguments of Hurka (or Newey and Schaber, for that matter). Crowder simply footnotes the Hurka essay and offers a two-sentence summary of Hurka’s conclusion, without bothering to indicate why he is not moved by it (2002: 75, n. 11). Galston overlooks Hurka entirely, and offers to Newey the back of his hand.12 Hence Kekes: “If, say, we thought that all values derived from whatever they contributed to happiness, then we would simply choose the value that gave more happiness, and we would not regret having foregone lesser happiness, since what we want is greater happiness” (1993: 57). Cf. Stocker 1990: 272. 10 Galston writes, “If regret is a rational moral emotion, it is because the clash of plural values evokes it. Conversely, if monism is correct, regret is unreasonable” (2005: 18). Cf. Crowder, “If monism were true, then all genuine values would fit together so that to act rightly could never involve any absolute loss which it would make sense to regret . . . . But experience teaches that we are frequently confronted by regrettable loss even when we are acting rightly” (2004: 131). See also Crowder 2002: 72. 11 See also Newey 1998 and Schaber 1999. 12 In response to Newey, Galston simply writes, “I confess that I do not see how [monists can countenance rational regret]” (2005: 18). 9

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In the absence of a more respectable engagement with these arguments, it is safe to say that the pluralist’s insistence that only pluralism can accommodate rational regret is at best a promissory note. If the main argument offered in favor of pluralism is that it alone can capture the “experience of conflict among values” (Crowder 2002: 69), then what is required is a strong response to the monist accounts of rational regret.13 Let us allow for the sake of argument that pluralists could succeed in showing, pace Hurka, that monists cannot properly countenance rational regret. There is still a task for the pluralist, since to show that pluralism’s main competitor cannot capture a salient feature of moral experience is not sufficient for showing that pluralism can; there is still the question of whether pluralism can regard as rational those who regret the loss of the lesser good in a strong dilemma. As I shall now argue, the pluralist must regard regret in such cases as in some sense irrational. If my argument succeeds then pluralism fails to save the appearances of moral experience and the most frequently deployed consideration in favor of pluralism does not succeed. To begin, let us return to an example mentioned earlier. Let us suppose that I must choose between the life of a monk and that of an artist. Let us further suppose, with the pluralist, that my inability to pursue both is not due to a lack of the requisite resources; that is, it is not due to the fact that life is too short or that there are not enough hours in a day that I cannot fit both sets of distinctive goods into a single life. Again, the pluralist analysis has it that the goods constitutive of each way of life are inherently in conflict. So, if I choose to pursue the life of an artist, I necessarily forego a range of important goods which objectively contribute to human flourishing. In the very act of choosing, something morally important and distinctive is lost. Hence I may rationally regret that loss even if I am confident I made the overall best choice. But note that the pluralist claims that the conflict between the two kinds of life is necessary; it is not contingent on some lack of resources or personal failing. When confronting a choice between the life of a monk and that of an artist something good must be lost. How then could it be rational to regret the loss? After all, according to the pluralist, such loss is an inevitable component of pursuing any kind of good life at all. Put otherwise, if, as the pluralist contends, there could not be a single life that manifests the distinctive goods of monkish discipline and artistic impulsiveness, then to regret the loss of the former good when I choose the latter is to regret that which could not be otherwise. I may, in fact, find myself regretting the loss of the monkish goods when I chose the artist’s life, but, from the pluralist’s perspective, this is to lament a non-contingent, inevitable, irremediable feature of the moral universe. It is to regret something about which nothing could be done. To be sure, there are cases in which one could rationally regret that which could not be otherwise, as when one regrets having done something in the past for which no compensating remedy is available in the present; but, crucially, the pluralist claim is stronger. When I regret the fact that I made a bet yesterday that I lost and now must pay, I am regretting that I elected to make the bet; perhaps I am wishing that I did not make it. However, when I regret the loss of the monkish goods when I choose the life of artistic impulse, I am betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the values in play; I am failing to recognize that the life of monkish discipline and the life of artistic impulsiveness manifest incompossible goods. Consequently, on the pluralist view, to regret

13 Michael Stocker provides a strong—but I think not decisive—response to Hurka in an online symposium devoted to Hurka’s essay. See also Hooker’s contribution in defense of Hurka, and Hurka’s own reply: http:// www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/bears/symp-hurka.html (accessed January 5, 2010).

Value pluralism and liberal politics

the loss is, we might say, to express the wish that impulsiveness and discipline were not the goods that they in fact are. How could this kind of regret be rational? How is this kind of regret different from the immature regret a child feels when she must decide between saving her 10 dollars and buying a toy for herself (Gaus 2003: 40)? Surely value pluralism must involve more than the claims that there are costs involved even in doing good, and that we often must forego some goods in order to attain others. These are commonplaces of any mature person’s view of the moral world. And, moreover, this much can be conceded by the utilitarian. Indeed, the utilitarian can take herself to have done the incontrovertibly right thing from the point of view of the Greatest Happiness Principle, yet still regret the (lesser) dissatisfaction that remains in the world. There’s no contradiction for the utilitarian in the thought that it is regrettable that she had to break a promise in order to satisfy a duty of friendship when the latter action maximizes happiness. The person to whom the promise was made has been dissatisfied, regardless of the fact that overall happiness has been maximized; and this dissatisfaction is morally regrettable. Indeed, a similar analysis could be given of the oft-discussed Sophie’s Choice case, in which a mother must choose to save the life of only one of her two children, lest both children be murdered. The mother could choose the child to her left, and regret the loss of the child on her right, without violating any commitment central to utilitarianism or other forms of monism. So where’s the argument? The pluralist could respond that I’ve mischaracterized the case. When we regret in the wake of a choice between incommensurable goods, we regret not the admittedly inevitable loss of good, but the fact that the moral universe is structured in a way that renders such loss unavoidable. But that is not an apt description of the moral experience of regret in these cases, and it should be recalled that that the pluralist aspires to capture the nature of the moral experience. Regret in the wake of a tragic conflict, as it is commonly experienced, does not involve a cosmic judgment about he moral fabric of the universe. Rather, it involves a local judgment that often takes the form of an “only if” statement. Only if I had known then what I know now! Only if I were not so foolish! Only if I had saved for a rainy day! Only if she were not so rash! Only if I had taken her advice! And so on. Importantly, these “only if” clauses reference a way the world could have been were it not for something we (or someone) did or failed to do. That is, when we experience regret in the wake of a tragic choice, we implicitly acknowledge our own (or somebody’s) role in bringing about the conditions which forced the choice and made it tragic. That is, regret in these cases typically involves a negative assessment, the recognition of a moral failure. When the negative assessment is directed towards oneself, it is also a taking responsibility for the fact of having to choose among competing goods. And these assessments presuppose that the tragedy is contingent, something which could have been (and should have been) avoided. To be clear, I am not proposing a theory of tragedy. Instead, I am proposing a description the regret we experience in the wake of a hard moral choice. On the description I have offered, the phenomenology is implicitly anti-pluralist in that it is premised on the thought that tragic conflicts are in principle avoidable; in fact, it is the fact that they are avoidable that accounts for their tragic feature. I am not committed to saying that this particular aspect of moral phenomenology is worth accommodating in our moral theories. My point is simply that the pluralist claim to be able to capture the moral experience of regret is more problematic than pluralists seem to realize. It is true that pluralists can offer an account of regret in tragic conflict; however, in order to preserve the sense that such regret does not betray a kind of moral immaturity, the pluralist has to commit to a highly revisionist account of the phenomenology. But recall that the main consideration offered in favor of

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pluralism is that it best captures our “concrete moral experience” (Galston 2002: 33). This is not true. Accordingly, we do not have much reason to accept the claim that pluralism is the “best account of the moral universe we inhabit” (Galston 2002: 30). Hence pluralists have overstated their case with respect to the positive considerations in favor of their view. Additionally, the pluralist literature is replete with exaggerated pronouncements concerning the non-viability of monism. To cite two examples, Berlin claims that monism is “not reconcilable with the principles accepted by those who respect the facts” (2002: 216) and Crowder argues that monism “leaves open a door” to authoritarian politics (2002: 97). This is all entirely overblown. Yet I think it should be conceded that there is something to the pluralist thought that there are heterogeneous goods which sometimes conflict non-contingently. Again, the analogy with artistic genres seems to have something going for it. The difficulty lies in discerning what, precisely, the analogy suggests. In any case, the pluralist has drawn some drastic and far-reaching ethical and metaphysical conclusions from what turns out to be a relatively meager data set of persistent conflict among goods, hard choices, and regret. Anti-pluralists, like Ronald Dworkin (2006a; 2006b), accept the same data, but draw the conclusion that our moral concepts stand in need of still further philosophical refinement. Indeed, Dworkin holds that the fact that the pluralists conceive of liberty and equality in such a way as to generate inevitable opposition between them suggests only that pluralists have misconceived these values (2006b: 112); according to Dworkin, on a proper understanding of core values, they all “hang together in the right way” (2006b: 116). To be sure, Dworkin’s “integrity” view is no less controversial than the pluralist theory. But we need not accept Dworkin’s positive view to appreciate the point that, as things stand, we have not been given sufficient reason to adopt the pluralist conclusion (2006b: 116). Indeed, we have not been given by the pluralist any criteria at all by which we may discern the difference between moral conflicts involving incommensurable values and conflicts which seem irresolvable simply due to contingent features, such as the limited moral resources and the limitations of our conceptualizations of the values at stake. Is it really built into the fabric of the values that one cannot be both a disciplined monk and an impulsive artist? Or is this simply due to the fact that there are not enough hours in the day? Or, as Dworkin asks, is it really a fact about liberty and equality that they are incompatible in Nagel’s (2001: 106) sense? What could settle the dispute between Dworkin and the pluralist? Surely what is needed is more and stronger argumentation; specifically, the pluralist needs to specify some criteria by which we could distinguish between moral conflicts that are exceedingly difficult to resolve by rational means and moral conflicts that are non-contingently irresolvable. Without an indication of how this distinction is to be drawn, Dworkin gets to call a dialectical draw (2006b: 85). The pluralist might be tempted to claim that this result constitutes a vindication of his view.14 After all, it is the pluralist who thinks that moral argument often results in an irremediable clash between goods; that Dworkin cannot marshal a decisive argument in favor of his anti-pluralism is in itself a consideration in favor of pluralism. Philosophical ties go to the pluralist. But let us not be so hasty. That there is a plurality of moral theories, all of which have their distinctive strengths and weaknesses in the ongoing philosophical dialectic, cannot be claimed as a distinguishing component of the pluralist’s view. Moral theory is one thing, 14

I owe this paragraph and the one that follows to a suggestion made to me by Douglas Lackey. See Plaw 2004 for a similar kind of argument.

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and the philosophy of moral theorizing is quite another. Accordingly, monists about value could adopt a wide range of positions about the plurality of viable options in moral theory. They could, for example, attribute the non-convergence of moral theory to epistemic sources, such as the Rawlsian “burdens of judgment” (Rawls 2005: 54ff.); a variety of alternate sociological, anthropological, and psychological explanations are available as well. Consequently, there is nothing inconsistent in a value monist adopting the view that there is a plurality of viable moral theories. Thus ties do not necessarily go to the pluralist, and we are left, again, with the need for more argumentation.15

3 Should Liberals be Pluralists? Pluralists often contend that their view grounds an especially attractive form of liberalism. Were this correct, there might be sufficient reason to adopt pluralism even in the absence of decisive philosophical arguments for its truth. After all, every non-trivial account of value is at present lacking a decisive proof of its correctness. Since pluralism has not been defeated, its supposed ability to provide the basis for an attractive form of liberalism might be a sufficiently strong consideration to elicit assent among many philosophers. The alleged entailment from pluralism to liberalism is frequently proposed as pluralism’s principal selling-point.16 In this final section, however, I will argue that endorsing pluralism can frustrate the aim of engaging in argument across serious moral divides. This implication of pluralism is particularly troubling from the point of view of liberal politics, especially if we think of liberal politics as at least in part committed to a view about public discourse in light of moral disagreement. It is by now common to think of liberalism as committed to a conception of democracy which prizes certain modes of public discourse. Of course, the deliberative democrats build into their account of democratic legitimacy the need for a lively public square of moral argumentation (Gutmann and Thompson 2004), and contractualists place a kind of dialogue at the heart of all morality (Scanlon 1998; Darwall 2006). But even more straightforward liberals with no special connection to deliberativism or contractualism, including Dworkin (2006a), Brian Barry (2005: 183f.), and Gerald Gaus (2003), now recognize that the pursuit of liberal ideals of equality, liberty, and justice requires a “culture of argument” (Dworkin 2006a: 6) which allows for public engagement in the face of moral conflict. And, among the pluralists, Galston and Crowder agree: Galston offers as a critique of monism that it leads “to a procrustean distortion of moral argument” (2002: 6); Crowder holds that pluralism fosters a commitment to “reasonable disagreement” (2002: 172).17 The concern is that pluralists understand moral conflict in a way that precludes the kind of public engagement that is necessary for a healthy liberal democracy. Recall my earlier mention of how pluralists maintain that rational choice is possible among incommensurable values. The move is to distinguish between commensuration and comparison, and then 15

One could plausibly argue that ties go to the moral skeptic, but I cannot pursue this issue here. Of course, Berlin originally proposed pluralism as a way to defend liberal society against totalitarianism (2002: 216 f.). See also Galston, “no illiberal regime can justify its practices in a manner consistent with value pluralism” (2005: 191). Compare Crowder, “From the point of view of value pluralism, which by definition involves a genuine appreciation of the fact that a wide range of values contributes to the good life for human beings, a society or way of life that focuses on only one or a few of those values to the exclusion of others cannot be a satisfactory society or way of life” (2002: 140). 17 It is worth noting that Gray holds that pluralism entails a “modus vivendi,” Hobbesian liberalism (2000: 105 ff.). In this respect Gray is a Berlinian pluralist who disagrees sharply with both Galston and Crowder. I criticize Gray’s liberalism in my 2002. 16

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explain value comparison as a process of particularization and contextualization. As an example, Crowder presents a choice between going to the library and going to the beach (2002: 59ff.). There are, Crowder contends, distinctive goods to be realized in each option, and the good of one is realizable only at the expense of the other. Drawing on some terminology introduced by Ruth Chang (1997: 5), Crowder claims that rational choice is possible among incommensurables by invoking a “covering value” (2002: 60) with respect to which the two options can be compared. So Crowder imagines himself judging that going to the library is better than going to the beach because by going to the library, he can “complete a piece of writing the deadline of which is fast approaching” (2002: 60). In this way, the covering value which enables comparison between the library and the beach is the obligation to meet the deadline. Thus, the rational choice, for Crowder, is the library. But what determines what the relevant covering value will be? Crowder says that agent “identifies” the covering value by specifying “what matters most” in “the particular context” (2002: 60). And this is determined by appeal to “the chooser’s background conception of the good life” (2002: 61). Rational choice among incommensurable goods requires not only particularization and contextualization, but also what could be called internalization. The chooser compares options by appealing to “what matters most” to him “in the circumstances” (2002: 62). This account preserves the possibility of rational choice in the hard cases, at least in one sense of rational: it shows how one can have grounds for choosing the library over the beach, given one’s overall aims. One need not toss a coin. But the account is not able to preserve rationality of another kind: choosers cannot offer justifications for their actions to others who might question or challenge them. That Crowder selects the mundane case of going to the library rather than the beach conveniently conceals this aspect of the account. Consider how well this account holds up when we raise the kind of conflict that pluralists are on nearly every other occasion concerned with: conflicts that matter because, whatever we do, something of great moral importance will be lost. According to the pluralist, whenever we individually must choose between, say, promise-keeping and being a dutiful friend—or whenever we collectively must choose between equality and liberty—something morally precious and distinctive will be lost. When great goods are lost due to choices we make, those who are made to endure the loss typically are entitled to ask us to justify our choice, and to criticize us if our justifications are found to be weak. We should hope to be able to say to a critic of our choice something more than “my (our) choice reflects what I (we) find most important.” Put otherwise, the pluralist’s internalized account of hard moral choice runs the risk of being a moral conversation stopper. For any reasonable moral agent, it seems proper to suppose that her action in a hard case will reflect her judgment concerning what is most important. But to question any such choice is, on the pluralist view, ultimately to challenge the agent’s overall conception of the good. Given the plurality of incommensurable conceptions of the good that pluralism recognizes, arguments of this kind are likely to bottom-out relatively quickly. The result is, I fear, a kind of moral stand-off in which opposing parties are unable to offer to each other justifications for their choices in the most difficult cases. This leads to an isolationism in which an agent’s choices in the hard cases reflect not only a judgment or an assessment, but also an expression the agent’s moral standpoint, a standpoint which is, on the pluralist view, not susceptible to moral criticism from the outside. It is helpful at this point to return for a moment to Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin has recently devoted an entire book to the state of popular politics in America (2006a). He attributes the “appalling state” (2006a: 1) of American politics to the inability of citizens to engage in respectful debate with those with whom they disagree deeply; he laments the degree to which

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politically divided citizens “now seem persuaded that it is useless to try to argue with or even to try to understand the other side” (2006a: 8). As a result, Dworkin argues, citizens “treat their politics as a matter of flat allegiance, not reasoned decision, as fans treat baseball teams” (2006a: 162); they subsequently isolate themselves from their critics. According to Dworkin’s positive proposal, beneath even the deepest political divides there resides a common ground in the form of a highly abstract conception of human dignity shared by all (2006a: 9). His aim, then, is to make explicit this common ground and demonstrate that our political divides represent different interpretations and understandings of the same moral commitments. Dworkin contends that this is the only way for responsible and respectful argument to commence (2006a: 4). It is easy to appreciate the force of Dworkin’s concern for state of public political argument. Especially in America, the political terrain is frequently conceptualized in terms of a kind of “two cultures” narrative of Red and Blue, with each side inclined to regard the other as morally and socially alien, irrational, benighted, or worse. The pluralist proposal of internalizing the hard moral choices we all must confront—individually and collectively— invites us to regard such choices as beyond the scope of argument and rational justification; consequently, it invites us to regard such choices as impervious to the objections of others and thus is likely to encourage the kind of moral isolationism which Dworkin rightly laments. If this is correct, pluralism is not an especially promising moral theory from the point of view of liberal democracy. Now, to be sure, this kind of criticism of pluralism need not endorse Dworkin’s view that all moral and political argument, if it is to be respectful and responsible, must proceed from shared moral principles. It seems to me that Dworkin has overstated the case; indeed he has been rightly criticized for simply asserting that all citizens are already committed to a moral conception of dignity which, conveniently, yields all of the policy commitments that Dworkin happens to favor (Berkowitz 2007). Pace Dworkin, the kind of public moral argument required for liberal democracy need not proceed from shared moral commitment, but only from the commitment to the possibility of uncovering or forging such common moral ground. That is, liberal views of the kind mentioned above which place public discourse at the core of proper democratic practice are at least implicitly committed to the idea that sincere debate over deep moral disagreements could yield reasoned agreement, or at least need not necessarily bottom-out in a stand-off between incommensurable standpoints. In short, the discourse-based forms of liberalism to which many contemporary pluralists are committed are premised on the possibility of Dworkinian integrity among out deepest values. But it is this possibility which pluralism denies. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Scott Aikin, James Bednar, W. James Booth, Kimberley Brownlee, Marilyn Friedman, Gerald Gaus, John Goldberg, Lenn Goodman, Michael Harbour, Micah Hester, Gary Jaeger, Betsy Jelinek, Jonathan Neufeld, Alastair Norcross, David Reidy, Peter Simpson, Jeffrey Tlumak, and two anonymous reviewers for this journal for helpful discussion and comments. Research for this paper was supported by a Research Scholar grant from Vanderbilt University.

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