Abstract
An interpretation of Isaiah Berlin’s liberal pluralism is presented in which his tragic value pluralism is embedded within, and constrained by the other ingredients of, a common moral horizon that gives priority to the value of human survival, to social rules (which may be called natural laws) of decency or justice that are deemed essential to survival, to a minimum core of human rights distributed and sanctioned by such rules, and to a minimum sphere of negative liberty carved out by such basic moral rights. A serious objection is that this interpretation assumes that human survival and human rights are far more important than (and thus rationally comparable with) any conflicting incommensurable values, contrary to the view associated with Berlin’s pluralism that incommensurable values are necessarily incomparable so that any conflict between them cannot be rationally resolved. But the objection is unpersuasive because, whatever Berlin’s idea of incommensurable values is (and his idea remains ambiguous), incommensurability cannot properly be reduced to incomparability: reasonable comparisons of incommensurable values are possible under plausible forms of incommensurability whereas incomparability is arguably an extreme form that tends to disappear with increasing information about competing values. It needs emphasis, however, that Berlin’s writings are marked by various ambiguities and inconsistencies, which require further critical discussion on another occasion.
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Notes
- 1.
Ignatieff agrees with Gray that “the real difficulty” for Berlin “is that a pluralist logically cannot put liberty first” (Isaiah Berlin: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 286). For Gray’s reading of Berlin as a muddled liberal pluralist, see John Gray, Berlin (London: Fontana, 1995), especially 141–68; and Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 6 (1998), 17–36.
- 2.
Two basic values might be commensurable with one another and yet both are incommensurable with a third ultimate end.
- 3.
A distinct non-tragic form of value pluralism holds that conflicts need not arise among plural basic values because they can in principle be arranged into a rational pattern of mutual harmony. Berlin’s form of pluralism is designated as tragic in so far as conflicts of values are held to destroy the possibility of any such rational pattern. As Berlin says, when basic values are irreconcilable, “tragedy enters into life as part of its essence, not as something which can be resolved by rational adjustment” (The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Knopf, 1991), 191–92).
- 4.
Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 35. Berlin initially defined negative liberty as the Hobbesian idea of “not to be prevented by other persons from doing whatever one wishes” (31). But he revised his idea so that it no longer depends on wishing to act at all. He makes the change, he explains, to exclude the possibility that an individual can become free by extinguishing her wishes to act in the face of coercive interference from others. According to his revised idea, the individual is negatively free only if she is not obstructed by others, even though she may not wish to act.
- 5.
For a tragic pluralist, it cannot be the case that some one basic value is commensurable with every other basic value. In that case, all basic values must be commensurable with one another in terms of the single ultimate value: incommensurability must disappear.
- 6.
See, e.g., Jonathan Riley, “Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Minimum of Common Moral Ground’,” in: Political Theory, vol. 41 (2013), 61–89; Riley, “Isaiah Berlin’s Pelagian Soul: A Reply,” in: Political Theory, vol. 42 (2014), 345–54; and Riley, “Interpreting Berlin’s Liberalism,” in: American Political Science Review, vol. 95 (2001): 283–96.
- 7.
Liberty, 217.
- 8.
Ibid., 54.
- 9.
It should be emphasized that Gray is correct that value pluralism itself does not logically imply any special priority for the value of individual liberty. But it is a mistake to think that pluralism is logically incompatible with virtually absolute priority for a minimum sphere of liberty. Berlin does not ground the priority of liberty in value pluralism. Rather, he grounds it in a conception of decency. But both value pluralism and a threshold of decency are elements of the common moral minimum, or so I argue.
- 10.
Liberty, 25.
- 11.
Bhikhu Parekh, “The Political Thought of Sir Isaiah Berlin,” in: British Journal of Political Science, vol. 12, no. 2 (April 1982), 201–26. This article also appears as chapter 2 of Parekh’s Contemporary Political Thinkers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
- 12.
This view of moral agency is held by Herder, from whom Berlin may have adopted it. Its inadequacy is exposed by F.M. Barnard, Herder’s Social & Political Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965): “Whilst we may readily accept that only actions freely chosen by the agent qualify for moral consideration, we do not thereby imply that all actions that satisfy this formal criterion necessarily are moral actions. We do not, that is, regard the formal test as a sufficient criterion when judging the moral content of an act” (96, original emphasis). The view also has affinities with the views of Kant and Rousseau, for whom a natural human’s choices are freely made in accordance with natural laws that dictate moral duties grasped by a priori reason. Both Rousseau and Kant argue that human nature has been corrupted by modern civilization, however, and they are not optimistic that an uncorrupted natural humanity can be recovered. On this interpretation of Kant and Rousseau, see, e.g., Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe: Two Essays, trans. J. Gutmann, P.O. Kristeller, and J.H. Randall, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 18–60, 90–95.
- 13.
Berlin continued to struggle with the issue of cultural relativism despite his aim to distinguish his “objective” value pluralism from it. See, e.g., his letter dated 14 January 1986 to Michael Walzer. Herder also struggled with cultural relativism, although he endorsed a doctrine of natural law according to which humans have a natural instinct to cooperate in societies so as to develop their capacities so that reason and sentiment are in perfect harmony. According to him, humans necessarily progress through various cultural stages in pursuit of this universal perfectionist goal of Humanität but at each stage they are free to choose how they understand, and will go about pursuing, Humanität in their particular social circumstances. Cultures at the same level of development are unique and incommensurable and yet cultures at different stages of development can be compared in light of their relative success at achieving the ultimate universal goal. Herder had faith that the pursuit of this universal goal of perfection was the divine plan. See, e.g., Barnard, Herder’s Social & Political Thought, 88–138; and Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, & Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 207–21. Despite his admiration for Herder, Berlin rejects anything like his theological version of a perfectionist natural law. And yet, as will become clear in due course, Berlin does endorse H.L.A. Hart’s empirical theory of natural law of a certain minimum content.
- 14.
I am grateful to Jan-Werner Müller for pushing me in this direction, although he may not agree with all aspects of my revised approach.
- 15.
Liberty, 45.
- 16.
Crooked Timber, 17–18.
- 17.
Berlin remains ambiguous on this point, just as Herder never made clear how all humans can be said to pursue the same goal of Humanität if different cultures assign different and conflicting contents to the goal. On Herder’s ambiguity, see Barnard, Herder’s Social & Political Thought, 97–98. Indeed, Berlin, in his own work on Herder, suggests that Herder must give up the idea that humans pursue a universal goal of perfection. As Kant maintained, concepts that are empty of content are of no practical significance. Berlin embraces instead the pluralistic idea that different cultures or organic systems of values each contains and pursues its own objective “image”—“unique and sui generis”—of what is important in life. He insists that different cultures are rationally incomparable and he even overrides Herder’s claim that cultures at different stages may still be praised or condemned. In short, he seems to argue against Herder that there is no universal goal in terms of which to measure the progress of any culture since different cultures inject their own peculiar content into the ethical ideal of Humanität and there is no rational way to settle the conflicts. If he means to make an analogous argument for the more modest goal of decency as well, then his value pluralism together with the cultural variety associated with it boils down to cultural relativism. See Isaiah Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” in the second edition of his Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 208–300, at 286–95.
- 18.
The common moral minimum could presumably include special rules and claims for incomprehensible biological humans who are not really humans in the ontological sense since they are not agents with any meaningful purposes. But I do not address this issue.
- 19.
Berlin evidently thinks that any human not suffering from delusions is aware of agonizing conflicts of values in which, though far from indifferent, he cannot find any decisive reason to take one course of action rather than another and yet a choice (including do nothing) is unavoidable. Thus, even if a person is unfamiliar with the terms “value pluralism” and “incommensurables,” the person will endorse the terms, he implies, once their meanings are made clear. It is simply a red herring to object that most people do not know what “value pluralism” or “incommensurability” means.
- 20.
Berlin argues that what he calls “mainstream rationalists” have dominated the Western philosophical tradition. He classifies as mainstream rationalists thinkers as diverse as Plato, French philosophes, German idealists, utilitarians, and Marxists. All of them, he thinks, assume prior to experience that reason is sufficiently powerful to bring about a universal social harmony. Experience itself certainly lends no support to such a utopian possibility. But mainstream rationalism has a fake conception of reason, he claims, and is incoherent. Such rationalists are suffering from delusions since their perfectly harmonious utopias are inconceivable. Also, he believes that these philosophers are inevitably led to use coercion to try in vain to achieve their monistic dreams, trampling over basic rights in the process. But mainstream rationalism should not be taken as the only form of rationalism. After all, Berlin depicts himself as a kind of liberal rationalist, with a conception of reason that admits its inability to resolve all conflicts of values. On this point, see Riley, “Interpreting Berlin’s Liberalism.”
- 21.
See, e.g., Crooked Timber, 70–90.
- 22.
Liberty, 25.
- 23.
H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 192–93, emphasis added.
- 24.
Concept of Law, 193.
- 25.
Crooked Timber, 204. The reference to “some of us” apparently includes Hart, a close friend of Berlin’s. Henry Hardy, in personal communications, has kindly made available to me several of Berlin’s letters in which he explicitly endorses Hart’s empiricist notion of “the minimum content of natural law.”
- 26.
Concept of Law, 193–200.
- 27.
Ibid., 193.
- 28.
Ibid., 199.
- 29.
Liberty, 210, emphasis added.
- 30.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (London: Phoenix, 1993), 114.
- 31.
Jahanbegloo, Conversations, 114.
- 32.
Liberty, 52.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Emphasis added. The reference to Bergson is to Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton with the assistance of Horsfall Carter (New York: Henry Holt, 1935).
- 35.
Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, & Romanticism, 278.
- 36.
Some of Kant’s notable contemporaries, such as Justus Möser and A.W. Rehberg, argued that the categorical imperative and related principles are too abstract to yield concrete rules and rights so that particular societies must rely on local considerations of utility to fill in the details for purposes of application. Others, such as Friedrich Gentz and Christoph Wieland, suggested that Kantian reasoning yields equal rights of sufficient content to justify revolt against any government that refused to recognize and enforce them. See Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, & Romanticism, 288–362.
- 37.
Berlin seems wrong to maintain that ancient Greeks and Romans had no understanding of basic rights or of negative liberty but I cannot argue the point here.
- 38.
See Gray’s notion of “radical choice, ungoverned by reason” (Berlin, 23). According to Gray, it is “the idea of radical choice—choice without criteria, grounds, or principles—that is the heart of Berlin’s liberalism” (61). This idea of arbitrary choice is supposedly what makes Berlin’s pluralistic liberalism so distinctive: “There is in Berlin’s idea of radical choice arising from conflicts among incommensurables a decisionist, voluntarist, or existentialist element that distinguishes it from all, or virtually all, forms of liberal rationalism” (71).
- 39.
Note that in this case we are prepared to say that we are indifferent between a unit of the one value and 3.142 units of the other because we regard a unit of the one as “roughly equal” to, or “on a par” with, the other. Perhaps this captures the notions of “rough equality” and “parity” proposed by some analysts. See, e.g., Ruth Chang, ed., Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); and Chang, “The Possibility of Parity,” in: Ethics, vol. 112 (2002), 659–88.
- 40.
Crooked Timber, 17.
- 41.
Some analysts insist that incomparability is rare or even non-existent. See, e.g., Ruth Chang, “Introduction,” in: Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason, 1–34.
- 42.
Liberty, 53.
- 43.
Ibid., 177.
- 44.
Ibid., 176. But Berlin also admits that concentrations of power are dangerous, and that checks and balances are needed to discourage if not prevent abuses. See, e.g., Liberty, 53–54.
- 45.
See Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, & Romanticism.
- 46.
John Gray, “The Dangers of Democracy,” in: The New York Review of Books, vol. 61, no. 5 (20 March 2014).
- 47.
For Rawls’s distinction between the requirements of human decency and the requirements of liberal democratic justice, compare John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) with Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, expanded edition 2005).
- 48.
See Isaiah Berlin, The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture Under Communism, ed. Henry Hardy (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
- 49.
Soviet Mind, 155.
- 50.
Ibid., 98–118.
- 51.
For further discussion of Berlin’s views of the Nazis, see Riley, “Berlin’s ‘Minimum of Common Moral Ground’,” and references cited therein.
- 52.
For the details of Rawls’s theory of liberal democratic justice, see, e.g., Rawls, Political Liberalism.
- 53.
Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 146–47.
- 54.
Roots, 147, emphasis added.
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This paper was prepared for the ASAN Institute on the basis of a power point presentation given at its conference on Isaiah Berlin and Cold War Liberalism held in Seoul, Korea on August 13–14, 2012. The paper reflects a significant change in my views since the conference. I am especially grateful to Henry Hardy for making available to me, and for allowing me to quote from, some of Berlin’s letters that have subsequently been published in Isaiah Berlin, Affirming Letters, 1975-1997, eds. Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle (London: Chatto & Windus, 2015). For helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper, I thank Hardy and Jan-Werner Müller, the editor of this volume. For the invitation to participate in the ASAN conference, I thank Hahm Chaibong, Director of the ASAN Institute. I also thank the conference participants for discussion of my power point presentation. Responsibility for the views expressed remains mine alone.
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Riley, J. (2019). Liberal Pluralism and Common Decency. In: Müller, JW. (eds) Isaiah Berlin’s Cold War Liberalism. Asan-Palgrave Macmillan Series. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2793-3_4
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