"The basic belief that unites pluralists," writes John Kekes at the beginning of this stimulating and densely argued book, "is that good lives require the realization of radically different types of values, both moral and non-moral, and that many of these values are conflicting and cannot be realized together" (p. 11). (..) Kekesian pluralism is characterised by six central theses, outlined in Chapter 2: (1) values are plural and are conditional in the sense that there is no one value which should override all others when conflicts arise; (2) conflicts among "reasonable conceptions of a good life and reasonable values" (p. 21) are inevitable; (3) these conflicts can, however, be solved in a rational manner by reference to "the values of our tradition or our conception of a good life" (p. 25); (4) there are many possible ways of living good lives, and we need to make some selection from among those possibilities; (5) nevertheless there are some limits on what human beings can reasonably choose as components of a good life, and there are both primary and some secondary values with objective status (the latter varying among traditions); (6) moral progress both for traditions and for individuals involves the pursuit of an ideal form of life "in which the widest possible range of specific values may be pursued" (p. 36). (..) Central to Kekes' account is the idea of pluralism as a position between the rigidities of "monist" theories of value on the one hand and the anything-goes attitudes of "relativist" ones on the other. "Monism is the view that there is one and only one reasonable system of human values. The system is the same for all human beings, always, everywhere." Relativism, in contrast, is "the view that ultimately all values are conventional": the view, that is, that while human existence needs values to sustain it, "what values people accept depends on the context in which they were born, on their genetic inheritance and subsequent experiences, on the political, cultural, economic, and religious influences on them" (p. 8). (..) The rejection of relativism rests on the plausible observation that "there are some things that all reasonable human beings would have to regard as evil, independently of their moral views on other matters" (p. 119). (..) "context-independent" primary values not open to reasonable objection, within particular historico-cultural settings certain secondary values (e.g. honour, comfort, privacy, creativity) may be so as well (p. 43). (..) Kekes sees pluralism as a conceptually distinctive position, not merely the combination of monism about some values and relativism about others. But the picture is complicated by the author's identification of stronger and weaker versions both of monism (pp. 63-75) and of relativism (pp. 48-52), and his claim that pluralism is compatible with attenuated versions of each. (..) Pluralists never posit, as monists do, some overriding value to serve in settling value conflicts; and they avoid the radical relativist view that "all moral judgements are relative to the particular conception of morality that has emerged in a specific historically, collectively, and socially conditioned setting" (p. 48). (..) K vs inclusive-end utilitarianism; certain actions, character traits and conventions have intrisic worth and are instrumentally valuable in the production of good consequences; problem of choosing which lives should be taken into account in moral evaluation (my life? family's? everybody's?); plurality of criteria: moral, aesthetic, political, religious, etc) (..) At the political level, Kekes contends, pluralists favour a role for the state as the protector of the plurality of values, values, no specific value or set of values (not even those favourite liberal values of liberty, equality or Rawlsian justice) being permitted to assume an overriding influence; but the state should also positively advocate all primary values and some secondary ones too (pp. 215-6). (..) Ironically, in ascribing to the state the protection of the plurality of values, Kekes invites some suspicion that he is positing a political meta-value with overriding force - though this may be a price the pluralist should be prepared to pay in the interest of sustaining a pluralistic society. (..) Kekes: 'Reason allows that the non-moral value should override the moral one, but reason does not require it' (p. 170) GS: Could we speak of a morality of pluralism? (..) Clearly, to suppose that moral values have overriding force would be to retreat to a form of monism, which a committed pluralist will reject. |