Pluralism

Definition of Pluralism

Pluralism is the recognition that human beings hold a diversity of values, beliefs, and conceptions of the good life that cannot be reduced to a single common measure. Value pluralism, most famously articulated by Isaiah Berlin, holds that some fundamental values are incommensurable: they cannot be ranked on a single scale, and the pursuit of one may require the sacrifice of another. Political pluralism, by extension, is the recognition that modern democratic societies are characterized by a diversity of comprehensive doctrines — religious, moral, and philosophical — that are irreducibly different.

The question of pluralism is central to contemporary political philosophy. How can a society that is deeply divided by competing values and beliefs maintain social stability and justice? How can citizens who disagree about fundamental questions of morality and religion live together on terms of mutual respect? These questions have driven the development of liberal theories of toleration, public reason, and multicultural citizenship.

Key Thinkers

Isaiah Berlin argued that value pluralism is the most adequate account of the moral universe: the goods that human beings pursue are objectively valuable but mutually incompatible, and there is no single formula for combining them into a perfect whole. John Rawls, in Political Liberalism, argued that the fact of reasonable pluralism — the inevitable diversity of comprehensive doctrines under free institutions — is the fundamental problem of modern democratic theory, and that political justice must be based on an overlapping consensus that citizens can endorse from within their own diverse worldviews. Joseph Raz developed a perfectionist liberal theory that argues for the value of autonomy and the importance of a pluralistic environment for the exercise of autonomy. Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka have argued that liberal pluralism must accommodate cultural and group differences, not merely individual diversity.