Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BY CHARLES LARMORE
I. POLITICAL LIBERALISM
Liberalism is a distinctively modern political conception. Only in modern times do we find, as the object of both systematic reflection and widespread allegiance and institutionalization, the idea that the principles of
political association, being coercive, should be justifiable to all whom they
are to bind. And so only here do we find the idea that these principles
should rest, so far as possible, on a core, minimal morality which reasonable people can share, given their expectably divergent religious convictions and conceptions of the meaning of life. No longer does it seem
evidentas it did, let us say, before the seventeenth centurythat the
aim of political association must be to bring man into harmony with
God's purposes or to serve some comprehensive vision of the good life.1
The causes of this transformation are various, and not all of them lie at
the level of moral principle. But a change in moral consciousness has certainly been one of the factors involved. As Hegel observed,2 modern culture is inherently a reflective one: notions of principle are essential to our
self-understanding and thus to the stability of the social forms in which
we participate. Modern culture has no room for a dichotomy between "in
principle" and "in practice." It is worth determining, then, what new
moral conceptions have been responsible for the emergence of modern
liberalism. Not only will we thereby better understand how we have
become who we are, we will also have a surer grasp of the principles that
sustain our political life.
A prevalent view about the moral sources of liberalism is that it arose
out of the acceptance of value pluralism. Liberalism and pluralism are
indeed often thought to be intimately connected ideas. Pluralism is often
considered an essential part of the basis of liberal principles of political
association. And a liberal political order is in turn often perceived as one
that guarantees and fosters a pluralistic society.
* This essay was written while I was a mail re de recherche at the Centre de recherche en
e*piste*mologie appliqude (Ecole polytechnique) in Paris, to which I am indebted for its hospitality and philosophical vitality.
!
For this characterization of liberalism, see my "Political Liberalism," Political Tlicory,
vol. 18, no. 13 (August 1990), pp. 339-60.
2
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John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. xvii.
Ibid., p. 36. See also Rawls, "Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 72, no. 9 (September 1980), p. 542.
5
Isaiah Berlin, Tfie Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 79-80.
6
Despite his misleading use of the term "pluralism," Rawls himself does not do so. At
one point, indeed, he seems close to acknowledging the difference between the two notions.
See his "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus," New York Unhvrsity Laiv
Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (May 1989), p. 237 n. 7.
4
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See, for example, Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vemunft {Critique of Practical Reason), Akademieausgabe (Berlin: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900-1942), vol.
5, p. 25.
8
For more details, see my Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 131-53.
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compatible with one another.9 The correct view, he claims, is that the
genuine question of how we should live has more than one true answer.
There is a plurality of objective, ultimate ends which reasonable people
may pursue, and which indeed are in many cases not mutually realizable,
but conflicting.10 To the old Platonic problem of the one and the many,
pluralism urges the opposite answer to the one which Plato and so many
after him have given.
Pluralism is often linked, by Berlin and others, to an appreciation of the
conflicts among our values and to the regretful recognition that not all
good things can exist together in an individual life and in society as a
whole. This is not wrong, but it can be a misleading view of pluralism.
Monism, too, leaves room for value conflict and regret, as sophisticated
utilitarians like R. M. Hare are eager to point out.11 Once we consider
pluralism as fundamentally a doctrine about the multiple sources of
value, we can see that value conflict can have a special significance for the
pluralist, not because of its prevalence, but because of its frequent difficulty, and this because of its ultimate explanation. Monism offers, in principle, an easy way with conflicts: the purportedly single source of value
should be able to provide a common basis for determining the respective
weights of the conflicting commitments. Pluralism harbors no such guarantee of solvability. In its lights, conflicting values can stem from different ultimate sources, and when this is so, there can be no assurance of
a resolution. By that I do not mean that a reasonable settlement is impossible. On the contrary, sometimes we can find a solution to such a conflict, not by appealing to a common denominator of value, but simply by
recognizing that one consideration carries more weight than the other.
Value commitments may be, in other words, comparable without being
commensurable, rankable without appeal to a common standard providing
the reasons for the ranking. About this last distinction, which is evidently
controversial, I shall have more to say shortly. For now we may agree
that, if the distinction proves acceptable, pluralists will still have to admit
that such resolutions of value conflict are likely to spark disagreement.
They will also have to recognize that many conflicts among values of different sources cannot be reasonably settled by any means. In these two
ways, value conflicts can display for the pluralist a difficulty they will not
have for the monist.
Before I return to the proposed distinction between commensurability
and comparability, it will be helpful to survey the different kinds of value
consideration that may conflict. Here I follow Steven Lukes's discussion: 12
9
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we can meet with him in time only if we do not keep the promise to the
other individual. I will assume we agree that we should put helping our
friend first and that indeed we ought morally to do so. The duties of
friendship, when urgent and within certain moral bounds, take precedence over the (deontological) duty of promise-keeping, when the latter
is not of great moment. The two values are thus comparable. But is there
a common denominator of value with respect to which they are commensurable? What could it possibly be? It is not from a deontological perspective, focusing on the inviolable rights of others, that we judge that our
friend's need comes first. For the duties of friendship are not deontological in character: they do not purport to be binding on us, whatever our
own interests may happen to be, as deontological duties do, since we
should do for our friends what friendship requires, only if we want to be
friends with them. Nor do we weigh the two values as we do by aiming
to bring about the most good overall. For, however the good is concretely
specified, the consequentialist framework requires that we regard each
individual involved as of equal weight ("each counting for one and only
one"); yet what our friend expects of us, and what we express in putting
our friendship for him first, is that we attach greater importance to him
than to others.
This seems, then, a clear case in which values can prove comparable
without being commensurable. Of course, in believing that we ought
morally to put friendship first, we are supposing that there is a common
perspectivethe point of view of morality, in which the two values are
being weighed against one another. Two things cannot be compared
except from some point of view. But from this it does not follow that the
framework of comparison must itself be a common denominator of value.
It need not be describable in such a way as to show how the values being
compared are more or less valuable depending on whether they promote
or express that common denominator to a greater or lesser extent. It need
not be a source of value that explains the value of what is being compared. It is in this sense that I mean that the two values, though comparable, need not be commensurable. The point may be easier to accept, if we
observe that part of it must be granted by any pluralist, even by one holding that heterogeneous values cannot be compared. If it is to be claimed
that the sources of moral value are not one, but many, these many
sources must share enough to be grouped (though perhaps not compared) within the common perspective of moralitythough they will not
share so much as to be derivative in their value from some superior value.
Many pluralists have denied that heterogeneous values can be compared. (So, too, have many monists, to make their own opposing view
appear all the more attractive.) The guiding assumption of these pluralists is that values can be compared, weighed against one another, only
by determining how they may promote or express some superior value
which is their source. As I have mentioned, Isaiah Berlin is one such pluralist. Pluralism, he has written, asks us
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I suspect that many will regard these remarks about how incommensurable values may still be comparable as just so much assertion. If not
by appeal to a common denominator^ value, then how, they will ask, are
the values weighed against one another? Now I admit that I have no fully
satisfactory answer to this question, though I think recent accounts of
"moral perception" might prove helpful.19 Nonetheless, an inability to
solve this problem is not, I believe, so damaging as it might seem. Sometimes we can legitimately claim to know something, without knowing
how it is that we know it. This can be so, for example, when we make the
claim directly, without having to go through any explicit reasoning. In
this case, any account of the basis of the claim may be somewhat speculative, and less certain than the claim itself.20 It seems to me that the
example of ranking a friend's needs above an unmomentous promise is
just like this: we know directly that the one should count for more than
the other, without having any systematic account of why this is so
though we can exclude its resting on any common denominator of value.
IV. THE MODERN CHARACTER OF PLURALISM
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neo-Aristotelian argument may be seen as claiming that a similar rejection lies already at the core of Aristotle's own critique of Platonic ethics
(as expounded, for example, in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, chapter 6).
I, too, believe that the association of pluralism with liberalism is misconceived, yet not for this reason. On the contrary, not only does the pluralist interpretation fail really to fit Aristotle's thought, but pluralism is
indeed a distinctively modern doctrine. It belongs to a disenchanted
vision of the world, which sees itself as having abandoned the comfort
of finding in the harmony of the cosmos or in God's providential ordering of the world the one ultimate source of value. There is good reason,
then, to show that pluralism has no place in Aristotle's ethics, if only to
understand better how it can be a modern phenomenon without being,
as I also shall argue, a central source of political liberalism.
What makes the pluralist interpretation of Aristotle's ethics attractive
is the apparently broad, "indusivist" (as it is called) claim of Book 1 of the
Nicomachean Ethics that our end is to unify our various strivings in a coherent conception of the good life (1097bl4-20). This seems to acknowledge
the heterogeneous character of the different activities reasonable people
hold to be good. Yet the obvious obstacle to the interpretation is the clear
assertion of Book 10, chapters 7 and 8, that the contemplative life of theoria is superior to the practical life of moral excellence. Perfect happiness,
Aristotle wrote there, consists in contemplation (1177al7-19), and the life
of moral excellence achieves happiness only in a secondary sense
(1178a9). This perfect happiness is reserved for the gods (1177b26-27,
1178b21-22). But from this admission Aristotle did not draw the conclusion which the neo-Aristotelian pluralist would want him to draw,
namely that the best human life consists in a reasonable mix of contemplation and action, a mix determined by phronesis (judgment).22 Instead,
Aristotle urged that our aim should be, as far as possible, to become like
gods, leaving behind the human sphere and putting on immortality
(athanatizein: 1177b33, 1178b23). Such views seem impossible to house
within a pluralist conception of the good.
The pluralist interpretation of Aristotle's ethics has typically chosen to
ignore these passages of Book 10, or else to banish them from the true
core of Aristotle's thought. Martha Nussbaum, for example, has suggested that they may be either an interpolation or a residue of a Platonic
ethics that elsewhere Aristotle had outgrown.23 J. O. Urmson remarks
that Aristotle's "enthusiasm" for his own scholarly life has momentarily
gotten the better of him.24 The fact, however, is that the aspiration to
divinity is not confined to Book 10. It also stands in the background of
22
N u s s b a u m , Tlic Fragility of Goodness, p . 374; Beiner, " T h e Moral Vocabulary of Liberalism," p p . 161-62.
23
N u s s b a u m , The Fragility of Goodness, p p . 373-77.
24
Urmson, Aristotle's Ethics, p . 125.
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Book 1, where Aristotle states that "the good for man is an activity of soul
in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one,
in accordance with the best and mosf^complete kind" (1098al6-18). Nussbaum tries to yoke this passage to her pluralist interpretation of Aristotelian eudaimonia by arguing that "completeness" requires "the inclusion
of everything with intrinsic value." 25 But since excellences or virtues are
all of intrinsic value, this passage unmistakably rules out such an interpretation: it holds that the good will consist in one excellence or virtue
among others, if one is the best.
The superiority of intellectual to moral virtue is, in fact, a theme that
runs throughout Aristotle's ethical writings. It follows from his overarching metaphysics, in which it is obvious that there are many things of
greater value than the human affairs with which morality is concerned.
The idea that Aristotle assigned to phronesis the task of discerning the best
life by devising a mix of contemplation and action is refuted by the clear
reductio ad absurdum of Book 6, chapter 7 (1141a20-22): "It is extraordinary
that anyone should regard political science or phronesis as most important
unless man is the highest being in the world." Nor will it do to suggest,
as Nussbaum does, that while proclaiming the superiority of contemplation to action, Aristotle still thought our true happiness should contain
both.26 It is true that, though X is better than Y, a life given fully to X
may be less good than one devoted to some mix of X and Y (there can be
too much of a good thing); but Nussbaum's main evidence that this is
what Aristotle meant here is inadequate: at 1144a3f., Aristotle does say
that sophia (wisdom) is, like phronesis, part of virtue, but this does not
imply that each is part of complete happiness. "What is so hard for a
modern reader to take seriously," observes Jonathan Learand this
seems especially true of certain neo-Aristotelians"is Aristotle's claim
that man has a divine element in him. . . . Man is a composite, and yet
he is most truly the highest element in his form. It is man's natural desire
to understand . . . that propels him to transcend his nature." 27
Now an important consequence of my earlier discussion of pluralism
is that heterogeneous values may nonetheless be weighed against one
another. So the fact that Aristotle did rank contemplation above action,
and understood the best life as one devoted solely to contemplation, does
not suffice to show that he did not have a pluralist conception of these
values. We need to consider the sort of basis on whidi he made this ranking. Aristotle's fundamental thesis is that happiness consists in rational
25
Nussbaum, Vie Fragility of Goodness, p . 376. Cf. also Ackrill, "Aristotle on Eudaimonia," p . 28.
26
Nussbaum, Vie Fragility of Goodness, p p . 374f.
^ J o n a t h a n Lear, Aristotle: Vie Desire to Understand (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), p . 320.1 also find very convincing the critique of the "inclusivist" interpretation of Aristotelian eudaimonia in Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
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activity and that things are good to the extent they contribute to or have
a role in such activity (Book 1, chapter 7). The arguments of Book 10,
chapter 7, in favor of the superiority of contemplation proceed by showing how contemplation is a more continuous, self-sufficient, self-directing form of rational activity. It thus expresses more purely the ideal of
happiness, which is the exercise of our rational nature. Aristotle was,
therefore, no pluralist. For him there was a single kind of value which the
different forms of the good life exemplify to different degrees.
It is in these terms that we should understand the apparently pluralist-minded critique of Plato in Book 1, chapter 6. Plato was wrong, Aristotle there argued, to assert that all good things, or even just all intrinsic
goods, share a single Form of the good. On the contrary, the different
kinds of life devoted to honor, intelligence, and pleasure "have different
and dissimilar accounts, precisely in so far as they are goods" (1096b2325). This may sound like pluralism, but it is not. Aristotle assumed that
a number of things can share a single Form (separable or not) only if they
exemplify it equallyas a man and a monkey are equally animals. There
can be, he believed, no Form for things related as "prior and posterior,"
which instead must be comprehended in terms of "focal meaning"
(aph'enos, pros hen) or analogy.28 Now as we have seen, Aristotle's argument for the superiority of contemplation consists in showing that it
exemplifies rational activity more perfectly than does action. That is why
he refused to consider the two forms of life as sharing a common Form
of the good. But his argument is no less monistic for that, appealing as
it does to a single supreme value, more or less fully realizable.
"Aristotle the pluralist" is too much like us to be much like Aristotle
himself. Pluralism is a characteristically modern outlook. It is likely to
appear attractive only against the background of metaphysical and religious disappointment. It recommends itself to those who continue to
believe that value can be objective, something more than just the expression of our preferences, but who refuse to believe that it has its home in
a harmonious cosmos (as Aristotle thought) or in God's plan. For example, the moral pluralism that accepts the mutual independence of deontological and consequentialist forms of deliberation appears only once it
is recognized that theodicy, which generally sought to prove among other
things that strict deontological rules are God's wise way pf bringing about
the most good overall, cannot succeed.29 Now liberalism has distinguished itself from earlier political philosophies by its refusal, ever more
pronounced, to base the principles of political association upon a vision
of God's plan or of an ordered cosmos. It is perhaps natural, therefore,
28
See the commentary in W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotle's Ethical Vicory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p p . 55-56, 63-65.
29
See m y Patterns of Moral Complexity, p p . 134ff., a n d also "Theodicee et rationalitd
morale chez Malebranche, Leibniz, et Bayle," in my Modernile'et morale (Paris: Presses Universitaires d e France, 1993).
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tion has recently been proposed by John Rawls. He traces "the fact of pluralism," as he misleadingly calls the phenomenon of reasonable
disagreement, back to "the burdens orreason":
(1) The empirical evidence may be conflicting and complex.
(2) Agreement about the kinds of considerations involved does not
guarantee agreement about their weight.
(3) Key concepts may be vague and subject to hard cases.
(4) Our total experience, which shapes how we assess the evidence
and weigh values, is likely in complex modern societies to be
rather disparate from person to person.
(5) Different kinds of normative considerations may be involved on
both sides of a question.
(6) Being forced to select among cherished values, we face great difficulties in setting priorities.32
Certainly, these factors play a role. Yet as Rawls himself observes, most
of them are not peculiar to reasoning about values, and so fall short of the
sort of explanation we seek. For my part, I believe that (4), the great variety of life-experiences created by modern society, with all its complex
divisions of labor and its rich heritage of many different cultural traditions, provides the key to explaining the phenomenon.
But I also believe we will miss an important truth if we suppose, as we
have done so far, that the peculiar fact requiring explanation is the likelihood of reasonable disagreement about complex questions of how we
should live. It is perhaps a more peculiar fact, and the real departure from
the ordinary course of things, that reasonable agreement should be so
expectable in the sciences. This is not at all the way it has always been.
Before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reasonable disagreement
was the norm in the study of the natural world. No two premodern physicists thought the same who thought at all. One of the distinctive features
of modern science, which sets it off from the rest of the history of scientific thought, has been its remarkable ability to generate consensus. Reasonable disagreement in the handling of complex questions is perhaps
just what we should expect (though our philosophical tradition has
always preached that reason is what brings us together), and the extraordinary fact is that this has largely ceased to be so in the natural sciences.
How should we explain this fact? The conventional answer, perhaps correct, is that in this domain of inquiry we have managed to get on the track
of the truth. But we should also wonder whether such an explanation
32
Rawls, "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus," pp. 236-37, and
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does not reverse cause and effect, and whether "scientific truth" (as we
now understand it) is not simply what a community of investigators will
accept when they agree to subject their observation of nature to forms of
reasoning designed to secure agreement.33
VI. REASONABLE DISAGREEMENT AND SKEPTICISM
See, o n these lines, the fascinating study by Steven Shapin and Simon Shaffer, Leviathan and the Airfnimp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
34
T h o m a s Nagel, "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy," Philosophy and Public Affairs,
vol. 16, n o . 3 ( S u m m e r 1987), p . 232.
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able disagreement can persist, even when we comply with the two conditions Nagel assigns to his "higher standard of objectivity": we may be
able to present others with the reasons fc>r our view and even explain in
a detailed way what errors prevent them from agreeing with us. The
point is that when we do so, we are appealing to what we believe, to
what we have so far no reason to call into doubt, and these beliefs
amount to more than what reasonableness alone can guarantee. Different conceptions of the good life, and different conceptions of the weight
deontological and consequentialist considerations should have, generally
involve rather complex but different structures of purposes, significances,
and activities. It is on the basis of such structures that we can explain how
opposed views go wrong.
Thus, it is far from accurate to say, as Joshua Cohen has done, that in
affirming our own controversial view we are taking the "sectarian route"
of believing it "as a matter of faith," there being no further reason to take
our own view to be not only reasonable (about which there is no disagreement) but also true (about which there is).35 On the contrary, we
may very well have reasons to hold our controversial view to be true. Our
allegiance to it may very well be more than a matter of faith. The point
is simply that our reasons lie outside what is the object of reasonable
agreement. Good faith and common reason are capacities we exercise
against the background of existing belief. It is, I believe, incorrect epistemology to suppose that they must suffice to decide between backgrounds
that conflict or that otherwise we must consider allegiance to such backgrounds as but a matter of faith. We examine the worth of any of our
beliefs (and so perhaps conclude it is but an article of faith) always in the
light of other things we already believe, if only because we could not otherwise establish the positive grounds for doubt that alone make it necessary to seek the justification of that belief.36 We thus may have good
reason to believe more than what reasonable agreement with others can
determine. The expectation of reasonable disagreement should not lead
us to suspend allegiance to our controversial views or to regard them as
mere faith.
Thus, the idea that about matters of ultimate significance reasonable
people tend naturally to disagree, is distinct from both pluralism and
skepticism. It lies, moreover, unlike them, at the heart of a liberal political philosophy, which seeks to base the principles of political association
upon a core morality that reasonable people can accept despite the divergent conceptions of the good (and also of the right) that draw them apart.
If pluralism were an essential component of liberalism's self-understand35
Joshua Cohen, "Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus," manuscript, pp. 18, 21,
forthcoming in David Copp and Jean Hampton, eds.. Vie Idea of Democracy (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
36
For more detail on the epistemology here, see my "Au-dela de la religion et des
Lumieres," in Modernity el morale.
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ing, then liberalism would fall significantly short of its ambition to build,
as much as possible, upon common moral ground. For pluralism is itself
an eminently controversial doctrine that many reasonable people,
whether on religious or metaphysical grounds, do not accept; and even
among themselves pluralists can achieve little agreement about what ultimate goods there are or what weight they should carry. A liberalism
founded on pluralism would be too doctrinaire.
And if skepticism were an essential component of liberalism, it would
be incomprehensible why the liberal project should be to look beyond the
deep disagreements which divide reasonable people to the minimal principles on which they ought to unite. For if people were reasonable and
skeptics about what they cannot agree upon, there would be nothing left
to divide them, save at most personal acts of faith, but certainly not systematic visions of the good. A liberalism based on skepticism would be
too irenic.
The natural tendency toward reasonable disagreement, duly distinguished from other notions with which it has been confused, belongs
therefore at the center of liberal thought. Yet its significance, as I have
observed, extends well beyond the political domain. Our intellectual tradition has been to a large and important extent rationalist, committed to
the idea that reason leads naturally to agreement, that reason is what brings
us together. The aspect of modern thought I have been examining
challenges this preconception. We have yet, I believe, to take the measure
of all that this challenge of modernity implies.
Philosophy, Columbia University