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Interpreting Berlin’s Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2005

Jonathan Riley
Affiliation:
Jonathan Riley is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Murphy Institute of Political Economy, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118 (jonriley@tulane.edu). During the academic year 2000–01, he is Visiting Rockefeller Fellow, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544–1006 (jriley@princeton.edu),,
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Abstract

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I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s pluralistic liberalism is best interpreted as a sophisticated form of liberal rationalism, as Berlin himself suggests. His value pluralism, even if it is viewed (as his critics typically view it, with considerable justification) as claiming that any choice between conflicting incommensurable values cannot be a rational choice, does not subvert his liberalism. Rather, this agonistic pluralism emanates from his liberal rationalism, which pictures reason as too weak to resolve conflicts of incommensurables. Yet, reason remains strong enough to discover that certain basic liberal values, including those associated with some minimum core of equal rights, are far more important than any competing values created by mankind. Berlin apparently sees his pluralistic liberal rationalism as a genuine rationalism that, in stark contrast to mainstream utopian rationalisms which wildly exaggerate the power of reason, makes suitable room for the valid insights provided by the romantics.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2001 by the American Political Science Association
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