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August 28, 2005
Isaiah Berlin, in his "Two Concepts of Liberty" endeavoured to derive a liberal politics from pluralist premises.
From memory, Berlin's argument was that, since values conflict and choice among incommensurable goods is inevitable, so the state must provide and maintain a framework within which individuals can freely choose among competing goods. The state can do this only if it restricts itself to the project of protecting individuals from interference.
So pluralism entails liberalism.
But why why should it follow from the fact that humans confront a plurality of values in a modern secular society that the state ought to allow individuals to choose freely among such goods?
Is there not a hidden premise in there? One that implies the introduction of some value, such as autonomy, which then functions as a good of an order higher than the competing values among which we must choose?
This feels right, as liberals do prize the autonomy of the sovereign, independent individual as an end.
However, to privilege autonomy, or any other value (eg., negative liberty)in this way violates pluralism as it implies a rank-ordering of vlaues that that pluralism claims to find impossible. So Berlin's argument from pluralism to liberalism fails.
Why don't liberals just say that they do privilege liberal values because this is what is entailed by liberalism and a liberal way of life. It is more honest than talking about a world where plurality in the ends of humanity is recognized by liberalism as the most precious good, whilst tacitly imposing a liberal way of life on others.
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"Berlin points out that socialists accept a definition of freedom which he calls positive liberty, while libertarians assert that freedom is really negative liberty"
Too confusing, and unnecessary. Freedom is the the natural state of an individual. Liberty is the freedom an individual has in a social environment; ie the freedom to do anything other than enforce their arbitrary will on another person or their property.
Makes the +/- stuff unnecessary, and more understandable for it.