Nomocratic Pluralism

Plural Values, Negative Liberty, and the Rule of Law

Kenneth B. McIntyre

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030533892
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030533908
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book is a contribution to the ongoing conversation about value pluralism and its relation to political life. Its uniqueness lies in its insistence that the acceptance of value pluralism involves placing certain limitations on what is an acceptable form of government and what functions governments ought to be legitimately performing. In a new approach coined "nomocratic pluralism," this volume argues that liberty under the rule of law, which is not merely liberty where the law is silent, is a key concept of liberty and cannot be subsumed by the other primary implications of the acceptance of value pluralism: that political communities must reject positive liberty as a political value, and place a high, but not absolute, priority on negative liberty as a political value. The concept of liberty under the rule of law is particularly suited to accommodate a great variety of individual and group conceptions of value and the moral good, and thus, along with negative liberty, should be a primary value for those who accept value pluralism.

© The Author(s) 2021

K. B. McIntyreNomocratic Pluralism Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53390-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Kenneth B. McIntyre¹

(1)

Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA

Kenneth B. McIntyre

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This chapter offers a brief introduction and overview of the various arguments that will be made in the body of the work. It begins with a critique of moral monism, an elaboration of the character of value pluralism, and an examination of the implications of value pluralism for political life, suggesting that a self-conscious value pluralist approach to politics is one way of dealing with plural monisms. This chapter suggests that the acceptance of pluralism involves placing certain limitations on what is an acceptable form of government and what functions governments ought to be legitimately performing.

Keywords

Nomocratic pluralismValue pluralismNegative libertyThe rule of lawMoral monismMoral pluralismIsaiah BerlinMichael OakeshottFriedrich HayekDavid WigginsAristotleIncompatibility of valuesIncommensurability of valuesDeontologyConsequentialismUtilitarianismMoral philosophy

End Abstract

While Western liberal democracies have always been characterized by their political and moral pluralism, this pluralism has been primarily an empirical fact that many have seen as unfortunate. Despite the obvious existence of individuals and groups who hold a variety of moral, social, and political values or ideals in these societies, most theorists, and just as importantly, most political partisans and activists have rejected value pluralism, which is the claim that such values or ideals are multiple, various, incommensurable, and often incompatible with each other. Indeed, value pluralism, as a way of understanding the character of moral life, is still foreign to most participants in Western political life. Further, though the mass immigration of non- or anti-liberal non-Western peoples into Western countries has accentuated and amplified the empirical pluralism of Western states, it has done so by introducing new forms of religious and moral monism (i.e., the claim that “authentic” values and ideals are completely consistent, compatible, and commensurable, and that a single decision procedure can be discovered which will solve moral questions or problems) so that the problem that Western political communities now face is not the problem of self-conscious pluralism and its implications for political life but the problem of proliferating plural monisms and their implications for political life. In this book, I offer a brief critique of moral monism, an elaboration of the character of value pluralism, and an examination of the implications of value pluralism for political life, suggesting that a self-conscious value pluralist approach to politics is one way of dealing with plural monisms.¹ The book will be a contribution to the ongoing philosophical conversation about value pluralism and its relation to political life. Its uniqueness lies in its insistence that the acceptance of pluralism does involve placing certain limitations both on what is an acceptable form of government, and on what functions governments ought to be legitimately performing.

The practice of moral philosophy has been marked as much by attempts to solve moral problems as philosophical ones. These attempts have consisted of the promulgation of various decision procedures or hierarchies of value which offer an answer to the question, what should I or we do? Moral monism can be understood as the notion that some singular, unique, universal, and timeless standard can be found that would answer all moral questions. In recent years, a few moral philosophers have begun to question the viability of moral monism as a philosophical project.² These writers have claimed that the goals of moral monism are unreachable for a variety of reasons, including the following: moral/practical problems cannot be resolved by philosophical means; the scope of morality is limited, and moral considerations do not always trump other considerations; and even if the scope of morality is unlimited or if it is understood to trump other considerations, it is unlikely that any systematic decision procedure will cover any and every situation. Value pluralism, which is the term that has come to describe the position of these writers, is characterized by the claim that values (including moral ones) are both incompatible (i.e., there are multiple things that humans value and that are objectively valuable, and these things do not form a coherent whole but conflict with each other) and incommensurable (i.e., that values are not completely comparable according to a single metric, such as pleasure or preference satisfaction). If, as I shall maintain, value pluralism is an adequate way of understanding the nature of the practical lives of human beings, what implications does an acceptance of it carry for political institutions?

There are several ways that value pluralists have approached politics, and I will examine a few of them before offering my own account of what I will call the nomocratic pluralist state. Some pluralists, like John Gray, claim that the acceptance of the validity of value pluralism offers little or no direction concerning specific political values or institutions. These modus vivendi pluralists reject the traditional connection of value pluralism with liberalism, in the most capacious sense of that term, and, thus, reject the primacy of liberty altogether, considering political life to be a way to manage empirical pluralism or plural monisms. A second approach, manifest in the work of Thomas Nagel, claims that equality ought to be the primary political value for pluralists, and such egalitarians conceive of the state as a managerial enterprise for achieving material equality. A third approach, exemplified in the work of Isaiah Berlin, argues that liberty, especially negative liberty, is one of the most important political values associated with value pluralism, but it is merely one value among others. This generic liberal pluralism can also be divided into, on the one hand welfare liberal pluralism, which can be seen in the work of Joseph Raz, and which emphasizes the achievement of a strong version of individual autonomy as the goal of the pluralist state, thus justifying significant redistributionist welfare policies. And, on the other hand, classical liberal pluralism, which can be seen in the work of thinkers like Gerald Gaus, which claims that self-conscious value pluralists would place a rebuttable priority on negative liberty, because such liberty allows individuals to fulfill their commitments and obligations, and pursue their own particular conceptions of a good human life.

I will argue that classical liberal pluralists are substantially correct, and that value pluralists would reasonably place a high priority on negative liberty. Further, I will claim that a species of liberal pluralism which I will call nomocratic pluralism offers the best institutional instantiation of the defense of negative liberty. The nomocratic pluralist state would reject positive liberty as a political value, and place a high, but not absolute, priority on negative liberty as a political value. Finally, the nomocratic state under the rule of law, with law understood as noninstrumental, impersonal, and general rules which condition but do not prescribe the choices of citizens with their own commitments, plans, and projects, posits a third concept of liberty. Liberty under the rule of law consists of the fact that the rule of law as understood here does not require individuals to take specific substantive actions, but only obligates them to act according to a formal condition or conditions while making substantive decisions and/or taking substantive actions.³

I will conclude this first introductory chapter by offering an overview of the arguments in each subsequent chapter. In Chapter 2, I offer a critique of moral monism, suggesting that the aspirations of moral monism are unreachable for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, moral monists fail to offer an adequate single decision procedure which would resolve all moral conflicts, and, since the production of such a decision procedure is the purpose of monistic moral philosophies, the failure to produce a convincing version of one is fatal to the monistic project. In the first section of the chapter, I provide a brief outline of the typical characteristics of moral monism. These include the generation of a single decision procedure (SDP) which is supposed to provide a universal, rational, general, and impersonal solution to all moral problems or conflicts; a hierarchy of values which complements the SDP; a rejection of the distinction between theoretical and practical reason; and the claim that moral considerations always override any other considerations. In the remaining sections of Chapter 2, I examine the work of Alan Gewirth and R. M. Hare, representatives respectively of the two most prominent and influential contemporary versions of moral monism, deontology, and utilitarianism. While offering an exposition of Gewirth’s and Hare’s theories as examples of moral monism, I will also suggest why moral monism is an inadequate schema within which to understand the moral lives of human beings.

In Chapter 3, I consider the sources of moral complexity and conflict, and offer the first part of my account of value pluralism. Like other versions of value pluralism, mine includes a discussion of the nature and variety of human values and valuation, and also a series of claims about the relationship between or among values. I argue that values are plural, that there are nonmoral values as well as moral ones, that these values often conflict, and that they are often incommensurable. For example, there are different moral or value systems in the world and in world history (e.g., Homeric honor, the Victorian gentleman, Medieval chivalry, contemporary liberalism), and every one of them is necessarily incomplete in that none have realized, nor possibly can realize perfect human goodness, and each offers a set of values not reducible to any other; second, that within value systems, there is inevitable conflict between values (e.g., liberty v equality, love v independence, justice v mercy), and that such conflict occurs because these values are incompatible and incommensurable (i.e., they are not reducible to a single metric); and, third, that such conflicts are inevitable even within the moral life of individuals, who have to make choices among multiple forms of the good life. Thus, there is no one single hierarchical value or principle that rules them all, but a variety of valuable choices, both moral and nonmoral, and a variety of morally acceptable forms of life.

In Chapter 4, I examine the nature of practical reason, the centrality of personal or subjective commitments and purposes to choices about good human lives, and the minimum moral content of good human lives. The conclusion that human values are often incompatible and incommensurable suggests that a convincing account of value pluralism requires a different conception of practical reason than the conceptions offered by monistic moralities. Proponents of monistic conceptions of practical reason tend to model these conceptions of reason on the kind of reasoning associated with the natural sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Critique of Moral Monism
• 3. Morality and the Incompatibility and Incommensurability of Values
• 4. Practical Reason, the Importance of Personal Commitments, Plans, and Projects, and the Minimum Content of Morality
• 5. Varieties of Pluralist Political Theories: Modus Vivendi Pluralism and Egalitarian Pluralism
• 6. Liberal Pluralism, Negative Liberty, and Toleration
• 7. Negative Liberty, the Rule of Law, and Nomocratic Pluralism
• 8. Conclusion
• Back Matter