0415322901.Routledge.Toleration.A.Critical.Introduction.Feb.2006

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toleration opposition is permanent. However, the inference from incom-
mensurability to opposition contained in this premise is invalid. As we saw in
chapter 2, toleration is a response to disliked and/or disapproved-of differences.
But the argument as just laid out does not establish that incommensurable
differences will prompt dislike and/or disapproval between those divided by
them: a person can experience conflict with another on significant questions
58 TOLERATION
without experiencing dislike and/or disapproval of the other, as is often the case
when colleagues, friends, or family members come into conflict. The theses of
incommensurability which inform premise 1 of the argument just laid out assert
the existence of ineradicable and evaluatively incomparable differences: they
address the nature of pluralism. What they do not establish is the character of
the disagreements between people separated by incommensurable differences,
and this is what is needed if arguments for toleration are to be mounted on the
back of theses of incommensurability. In the work of Raz we find an argument
to show that it is inevitable and appropriate that people in conditions of
pluralism dislike and disapprove of one another; this argument will be addressed
in the penultimate section. However, let me first present Isaiah Berlin s famous
version of the argument, which pivots on the value of negative liberty.
Berlin: negative liberty
Berlin is famous for his anti-utopianism; that is, for his opposition to the view
that the perfect human society, in which all values are realised in a harmonious
whole, without conflict or sacrifice, is achievable.17 In Berlin s work this opposi-
tion is generated by his commitment to a characterisation of the human
condition in terms of a pluralism of incommensurably valuable ends, practices,
and forms of association, and consequently of human life as punctuated by
unavoidable tragic choices between such ends etc. If there are many goods of
incommensurate value then the choice of one permanently excludes the choice
of others: the human condition is unavoidably characterised by the experience
of loss. It is because he believed that not all values are realisable together that
Berlin conceived of utopias as dangerous illusions.
The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good
things coexist, seems to me to be not merely unattainable that is a
truism but conceptually incoherent; I do not know what is meant by a
harmony of this kind. Some among the Great Goods cannot live together.
That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice
may entail an irreparable loss.18
Berlin s commitment to the truth of the incommensurability theses is at the
root of his claims that the harmonious realisation of all values is not possible
across cultures, within cultures, and within the life of a single person. This
much is familiar from the discussion of incommensurability in the second
section of this chapter: the theses of evaluative incomparability have conse-
quences for human life expressed in the theses of practical incompatibility.
However, it is important to note, pace some crude interpretations of Berlin on
pluralism,19 that Berlin s incommensurabilism is not a form of relativism.
Berlin s view is not that there are some sets of values which count as such only
from the perspective of a particular individual or culture. If this was his view
then his comments about the unavoidable collision of values would make no
TOLERATION FROM VALUE PLURALISM 59
sense. If P is a value only for me, and Q is a value only for you (in which case P
does not entail ~Q, and Q does not entail ~P), then we can, at most, acknowl-
edge that we have different values given our different perspectives, but we
cannot disagree about them, for we share no value-commitments over which we
could disagree. Rather, Berlin s view is that incommensurable values are objec-
tive values. That is, their status as values does not depend on whether any
person or group takes them to be values; kindness is valuable whether or not
anyone believes that it is good to be kind.20 One of the things that makes
Berlin s account of pluralism so interesting is precisely this feature: because the
account is not relativistic it cannot be dismissed out of hand on these grounds.21
If, as Berlin has it, human life is often a matter of the realisation of great values
preceded by tragic choices between these values, then how are human beings to
live together? If the great goods are incommensurable then surely the choice of any
set of political values cannot be guided by an over-arching value according to
which all political values can be ranked. Does this mean that the choice of liberal
political principles including principles of toleration is groundless, irrational, or
unjustifiable? Is this choice just a leap of faith? Is it just an affirmation of existing
political commitments for persons already imbued with the spirit of liberalism?
This is how John Gray interprets Berlin s commitment to liberalism: in his view,
Berlin s liberalism fares best when construed as akin to Rorty s pragmatism.22
However and as Gray admits Berlin himself forswears this agonistic liberalism
and, as we have seen, eschews the relativism of a Rortyian pragmatism.
Furthermore, Berlin makes it clear that the incommensurabilities that pepper his
pluralism do not foreclose on the possibility of the justification of liberal principles
in terms of reasons.23 To reconstruct Berlinian liberalism as abandoning the justifi-
cation of principles of liberal toleration in terms of reasons and argument will not
do (regardless of whether it is claimed that this was Berlin s actual view, or that it is
an implication of his value pluralism that he failed to fully acknowledge). Instead,
to make the justificatory connection between the truth of the incommensurability
theses and a commitment to liberal toleration we must examine Berlin s concep-
tion of the nature of the creatures who inhabit his pluralism.
The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are
faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally abso-
lute, the realization of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice
of others. Indeed, it is because of their situation that men place such
immense value upon the freedom to choose; for if they had assurance that
in some perfect state, realizable by men on earth, no ends pursued by them
would ever be in conflict, the necessity and agony of choice would disap-
pear, and with it the central importance of the freedom to choose.24
For Berlin, human beings in conditions of pluralism have no choice but to make
choices between incommensurable goods. In order to make such choices,
persons must have freedom and, for Berlin, the form of freedom best suited to
protecting persons in the making of such choices is negative liberty.
60 TOLERATION
Berlin s famous distinction between negative and positive liberty can be
summed up as follows: negative liberty ensures freedom from interference,
restriction, impediment etc., whereas positive liberty ensures freedom to pursue
ends, achieve goals, engage in practices etc.25 A person who is incarcerated,
trapped, shackled, or bound in any way (including being bound by rules or
laws), either through the deliberate actions of others, the unintended conse-
quences of their actions, or through the workings of nature, has her negative
liberty depleted. In contrast, a person lacking the capabilities, power, self-
mastery, or knowledge necessary for the achievement of her goals and
purposes again, either through the deliberate actions of others, the unin- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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