Bernard Williams on Pluralism, Liberalism, and History

Colin Koopman University of Oregon

The relation between pluralism and liberalism has been a central concern in recent political philosophy. The work of Bernard Williams provides good reason to think that in addressing itself to such concerns political philosophy cannot be an enterprise relying on purely rational argumentation alone, but rather must also incorporate historical inquiry into its work. Williams’ work on liberal pluralism evinces precisely this historical-philosophical sensibility. This article, accordingly, discusses Williams’ contribution to recent debates in political philosophy not only with respect to substantive issues concerning liberal pluralism but also with respect to methodological issues concerning how political philosophy ought to address itself to such substantive matters.

One of the most important and interesting if political philosophers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, or features of contemporary political philosophy concerns nineteenth century were confident about the possibilities the increasing attention to pluralism we have been witness of a unifying theory of justice in the context of pluralistic to over the past century. Pluralism is now central to conflict, then political philosophers of the last century, reflection on politics across every major philosophical and now of our own, are extraordinarily more cautious. tradition including analytical, phenomenological, Whereas canonical political philosophy in past centuries pragmatist, critical theoretical, and genealogical theory. tended to sublimate conflicts in values to make room for The many forms of pluralism under consideration across a given philosophical conception of order or justice or these traditions all have in common a basic concern with right or good, the problem of value pluralism itself deep conflicts among values or ideals or interests that are became canonical over the course of the twentieth not easily resolved. Prominent questions raised by such century. We all live under the shadow of William James’s pluralism include the following. When we confront the prescient but threatening words: “Some part of the ideal conflict of pluralism, what sorts of things is this a conflict must be butchered” (1891, p. 622). There is, James between (values, ideals, interests, ways of life, etc.)? How observed as the nineteenth century drew to a close, an deep do these conflicts run (all the way down, or only to increasing sense that whatever is ideal is inherently the surface of a minimal standard such as reasonablness)? fragmented and fractured such that some of its parts may What concept most accurately captures the logic of said be subject to irremediable loss. James gave expression to conflicts (incompatibility, incommensurability, exactly that tragic conflict of values which many of us inconsistency)? Where are these conflicts most pressing know through the more prominent discussions of Isaiah (among groups, within groups, within persons)? Berlin: “The world that we encounter in ordinary Today the situation is such that no serious experience is one in which we are faced with choices political philosopher can afford to trivialize pluralism as between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally a merely practical matter. But why? It is not entirely clear absolute, the realization of some of which must inevitably why questions such as these should have emerged with involve the sacrifice of others” (1958, p. 168). such force in recent political and moral philosophy. Why It is not obvious why political and moral was it, for instance, that Rawls’ explicit attention to philosophers began to explicitly and self-consciously pluralism was one of the most attractive features of his concern themselves with pluralism over the course of the work for so many of his readers? Of course, some amount twentieth century. It may just be that philosophy’s of concern over value pluralism had always been a feature increasing attention to pluralism has been, at least in part, of modern political thought, in part because pluralism a function of altered historical conditions involving the itself has always been a feature of modern moral life. But escalation of visible pluralistic conflict over the twentieth

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 11 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 century. If this is so, then it may be that one of our best conception of genealogical philosophy, at least with contemporary guides to the challenge of pluralism is respect to pluralism as it features in specifically liberal Bernard Williams. For it was one of Williams’ signal societies. I here understand liberalism as a political vision contributions to have urged a more historical perspective that, both theoretically and practically, aims to strike a on the way in which we work to understand ourselves. In balance between the often-opposed goals of individual his writings in the final years of his life, Williams makes liberty and public authority. Pluralism may of course also a detailed case for resituating the project of moral and feature in non-liberal contexts. But I shall here be political philosophy as a historical, or more precisely concerned only with pluralism in its relation to liberalism genealogical, effort. It is not widely known, though it is insofar as we today find ourselves under historical no secret, that Williams’ final philosophical project, conditions of pluralism and liberalism. which lay unfinished at his death, was to be precisely a history of liberal pluralism. The posthumous remains of The Philosophical Analysis of Liberal Pluralism that project, published in his In the Beginning Was the The starting point of much recent discussion of Deed (2005), make the case for a more genealogical- pluralism in liberal political philosophy is the idea that historical approach to political philosophy, even if they pluralism is a condition of modern political thought and do not fully deliver such an approach themselves. That action. Anyone who begins here encounters a crucial Williams conceived this new kind of effort in political question which nearly every political philosopher must philosophy against his own inherited background of face at some point and in some form, namely the question analytical philosophy, a tradition that has been and still of relativism and its claim that any value or view is as largely remains resolutely ahistorical, is in part what good as any other. If pluralism is a condition of modern makes his work interesting. I shall here explore Williams’ politics, then how can we avert the relativism that attempt in that book, and in some of his other late pluralism seems to make possible? Williams’ answer to writings, to undertake a more historicist analysis of liberal the relativism threat, following Berlin, involves pluralism as follows from his more general point in favor liberalism. In a relatively early discussion, Williams of forms of political philosophy that combine the work of writes that Berlin, “deploys the pluralism of values in historical inquiry with conceptual analysis. defense of liberalism” (1978, p. xvii). Williams also In the course of my discussion, I shall develop a proffered this view as his own, for instance in a much defense of two aspects of Williams’ views on liberal later essay where he claims that liberal tolerance is pluralism and on how political philosophers might valuable precisely where conflicts of values run most address themselves to liberal pluralism. The first has to deep: “Toleration, we may say, is required only for, the do with his skeptical view concerning the inability of intolerable. That is its basic problem” (2000, p. 126). The purely analytical philosophy to address itself to pluralism argument in both cited passages (authored some twenty and the threat of relativism it engenders. This view was years apart) seems to be the following: to the extent that not proposed as a critique of the practice of conceptual pluralistic conflict is our condition, then, liberalism will analysis. What self-respecting philosopher could possibly be of use to us, because it will help us block the worst take issue with that? Rather, Williams’ view concerns a forms of relativism.[1] In assessing this argument, we critique of the idea that conceptual analysis should be all would do well to consider exactly how liberalism forms that there is to philosophy. For if that were so, then a useful way of responding to conditions of pluralism. pluralism (among many other things) would no longer fall Liberalism in the context of pluralism is best within the purview of philosophy. The loss of pluralism seen not as a normative vision so much as a political as a topic which philosophers might have something conception that creates enabling conditions for normative useful to say about would be a loss not only for critique in the context of pluralism. Thus, liberal philosophy itself, but more importantly also for pluralism. pluralism is not itself right and not itself capable of The second point on which I shall defend Williams' generating norms of its own accord. Liberalism concerns the potential of a more historical analytical understood as enabling may of course entail certain philosophy to engage pluralism as a deep problem that normative ideas (and almost undoubtedly it does) but may yet admit of reconstructive improvement. I shall these ideas are not the main part of why pluralists may discuss some advantages of Williams’ rather capacious want to take liberalism seriously.

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 12 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 This view of liberalism suggests that liberal exactly how liberalism, according to Williams, ought to pluralism does not by itself prevent the unwanted slide be understood. Liberalism is best understood not as a from pluralism into relativism, but rather creates first-order objective value that can itself decidedly conditions such that those of us who find ourselves midst adjudicate amongst otherwise incommensurable values, pluralism can develop forms of social and political but rather as a second-order historical condition of normativity that will avoid the slide into fractious possibility that enables normative critique in the context relativism. Liberalism creates conditions for political of pluralism. I shall return to Williams’ argument for this normativity just insofar as it enables political agents to view below. engage in practices that admit of assessments of better Before doing so, further analytical clarification and worse, correctness and incorrectness, right and of liberal pluralism itself will be useful. There are many wrong. Liberalism accepts pluralism, blocks relativism, ways of construing the relationship between liberalism and makes normativity possible (perhaps even probable) and pluralism. One view is to suggest that pluralism but not necessary. straightforwardly entails liberalism. I shall call this the To explain this view in a little more detail, entailment view. This view holds that something like consider the threat of relativism raised by pluralism as liberal tolerance follows directly from the existence of a possibly occurring on two levels. On the first level, conflict of values that cannot be adjudicated fairly. pluralism might engender relativism if we construe it in An argument against the entailment view can be terms of a plurality of, say, subjective values. Williams, summarized as follows.[4] Pluralism is either a norm or following Berlin, rejects this approach. Berlin is a fact. If pluralism is endorsed as a norm, then it cannot unequivocal: “There is a world of objective values” possibly entail liberalism, unless it also entails a (1988, p. 11). For Berlin, values are rooted in human contradiction. This is because liberalism itself is one forms of life as ultimate ends which are objectively norm amongst many, and endorsing this norm involves necessitated by those forms of life. Williams endorsed rejecting others, and hence contradicts pluralism. But, on this view, too, though he was famously more cautious the other horn, if pluralism is accepted as a fact, then we than Berlin regarding the idea of “objectivity” with cannot generate any normative ought, such as those respect to values.[2] Relativism here on the first order is required for liberalism, on the basis of that. A mere incoherent just insofar as every value that is objectively description of the conflict of values does nothing to rooted in a human form of life of itself capable of suggest that such plurality, or such conflict, is a good generating norms.[3] But the very fact that relativism is thing. Indeed many parties to the conflict would easily averred in this way makes themselves disagree. possible a deeper and more intractable In response to this and similar critiques of the second-order problem of relativism. entailment view, some have attempted to develop more While values are objective because sophisticated versions of that view. A good example is rooted in forms of life, forms of life found in the political philosophy of John Rawls.[5] Rawls may differ from one another and as a presents pluralism as a bare fact, namely what he consequence generate incompatible frequently referred as “the fact of reasonable pluralism.” objective values. So, although it is the But this is misleading. For Rawls actually endorses a case that values are objective, they norm, and not just a fact, of pluralism. The fact of need not for that reason alone all be reasonable pluralism may indeed be a fact, but it is a fact compatible with one another. In this way the threat of that picks out a normative construction, namely a plurality relativism arises rather forcefully as a second-order of doctrines all of which are “reasonable” in a sense that anxiety. It suggests that there may be no way of cannot but be normative. In restricting pluralism to the generating critique in and among objective values since reasonable, Rawls builds a norm into his conception of there is no meta-value in terms of which all values are the fact of pluralism. Indeed it would be odd, after all, for commensurable. Rawls to have made political liberalism respond to Nonetheless, second-order critique may still be pluralism as a mere fact. This would have amounted to possible under these conditions if we can generate merely pragmatic accommodation, which is a strategy that historical constructions that make it possible. This is Rawls consistently criticizes as falling short of the

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 13 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 normative ideal of justice, for example in his frequent interpretations of the former’s view of these matters. The dismissal of “modus vivendi” solutions to problems of interpretation of Berlin which Williams describes as the conflict. Joshua Cohen points out that the right reason for “obvious” one is the following: “[I]f there are many and the Rawlsian to accommodate reasonable pluralism is not competing genuine values, then the greater the extent to in response to merely pragmatic considerations, but rather which a society tends to be single-valued, the more because reasonable doctrines are those that express the genuine values it neglects or suppresses. More, to this diversity of the exercise of free practical reason itself.[6] extent, must mean better” (1978, p. xvii). Williams does In any event, Rawls clearly construes the relationship not reject this as an interpretation, but he does not seem between pluralism and liberalism on the entailment particularly excited about it either. For this interpretation model. His idea of reasonable pluralism functions in such suggests that pluralism entails liberalism. And how do we a way as to entail his political liberalism as a normative come to recognize this entailment? It appears that we ideal. glean it by conceptual analysis alone: in other words, The problem with the entailment view, even in reason reveals the right relation. This sort of approach the more sophisticated form it assumes in Rawls, is suits Rawls, for whom it seems the relation between simply that it makes things too easy. In addressing pluralism and liberalism must admit of some rational ourselves to the nonideal condition of pluralism, it does explanation. The devices of the original position and little good to operate on the level of ideal theory. Rawls overlapping consensus by virtue of which we reach a manages to evade the real conflicts of values that so liberal compromise in the face of reasonable pluralism perturbed Berlin and Williams. One can close one’s eyes amount to rational answers to the question of liberalism’s to conflicts of values that cannot be brought into relation to pluralism. Rawls develops his view by reasonable relation to one another, and one can further reasoning and not, for instance, by way of inquiring into claim that this is not a proper topic of justice or political the historical, psychological, or anthropological philosophy, but that just amounts to giving up in the face conditions of pluralism and liberalism. Rawls of course of a severe problem that just will not go away. makes reference on occasion actual historical events. But Pragmatically, this amounts to handing the problem over these are never used to develop his argument. They are to the politicians, bureaucrats, and ‘realists’ who are all always mere examples which demonstrate the force of his too happy to have authority over such matters. If Rawls is rational argument or which illustrate certain details of that right that addressing ourselves to a plurality of argument.[8] unreasonable doctrines is not a matter of justice, he is Williams, by contrast to Rawls, made a name for wrong to suggest (implicitly, by leaving entirely himself precisely by calling supposed capacities of reason unaddressed) that this is not a matter of concern. into question. Williams thought, especially as concerns To return now to Williams, it needs be noted that matters of value, that philosophy should take reason to be he rejected the entailment view. Some have, however, rather limited such that the mark of wisdom and learning attributed the view to Isaiah Berlin, and this considerably was to acknowledge these limits. In an early essay on complicates matters insofar as Williams’ work on liberal pluralism titled “Conflicts of Values” he offers this pluralism is on most points consistent with Berlin’s.[7] characteristic line: “the enterprise of trying to reduce our But I doubt that Berlin took this to be his considered conflicts, and to legislate to remove moral uncertainty, by view. In an interview he once said: “Pluralism and constructing a philosophical ethical theory (in the sense liberalism are not the same or even overlapping concepts. of systematizing moral belief) is a misguided one” There are liberal theories which are not pluralistic. I (1979a, p. 80). It is misguided in part because the rich believe in both liberalism and pluralism, but they are not textures of moral life, especially in the context of lived logically connected” (1992, p. 42). That seems rather moral conflict, always far exceed the tidy confines of any unequivocal, although critics might object that this is but and every ethical theory. This is a deeply Humean view, a convenient late-life view that retrospectively tidies up concerned as it is with recognizing the limits of human what remain loose ends in Berlin’s published views on reason in the face of the empirical complexity of actual the matter. experience. In his introduction to Berlin’s Concepts and The second interpretation of Berlin that Williams Categories, Williams delineates two possible offers is rather different in tone. It appears decidedly less

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 14 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 rationalistic. This interpretation involves the idea that the purposes of an inquiry into liberal pluralism along “consciousness of the plurality of competing values is those lines proposed in his second, and favored, itself a good” and involves “knowledge of an absolute interpretation of Berlin. and fundamental truth.” Liberalism is valuable just For Williams, the path from pluralism to insofar as it truthfully affirms the pluralism that we face. liberalism is a function of contingent practical effort, and He continues, “[T]he correctness of the liberal so should be construed on a historical view that models consciousness is better expressed, not so much in terms explanation in terms of historical understanding, rather of truth… but in terms of truthfulness…. What we than rational entailment. In urging that we must engage understand is a truth about human nature as it has been pluralism historically, Williams did not intend to suggest revealed – revealed in the only way in which it could be that historical engagement is opposed to philosophical revealed, historically. The truthfulness that is required is engagement. Rather, for Williams, the two work together. a truthfulness to that historical experience of human He writes in one late essay: “[H]istory helps nature.” Williams is clearly intrigued by a reflective philosophical understanding, or is part of it. Philosophy strategy he describes as Berlin’s “implicit appeal, once has to learn the lesson that conceptual description (or more, to historical understanding” (1978, p. xviii). more specifically, analysis) is not self-sufficient” (2000a, This more historical view, which does not do p. 192). Or again in another: “I very much prefer that we away with conceptual analysis so much as it aims to should retain the category of philosophy and situate enrich it, was the one that Williams himself would ourselves within it, rather than pretend that an enquiry increasingly take up as the best hope for philosophy when which addresses these issues with a richer and more we truthfully face up to its limitations as a purely rational imaginative range of resources represents ‘the end of enterprise. If earlier works such as Ethics and the Limits philosophy’” (2000b, p. 211). of Philosophy (1985) end on a skeptical note concerning What can history, construed as collaboration the abilities of rational philosophy, then later works such with philosophy, help us with? Williams’ answer is that as Truth and Truthfulness (2002) manifest a greater history helps us understand our present by way of our confidence about the abilities of a form of philosophy that past. History helps us, employing one of Williams’ invokes both rational explanation and historical technical phrases, “make sense” of ourselves, and also of understanding, and understands the proper place of each. others quite unlike us, though making sense of ourselves To elaborate on this, I turn in the next section to a and making sense of others involve two different kinds of consideration of the place of history alongside reason in making sense.[11] History, at least when it is used to philosophy.[9] make sense of ourselves, helps us judge ourselves better, because it helps us to better understand who we are. From Philosophy to Historical Philosophy Not a project in pure rationality, history for What does a more historical analysis of liberal Williams is rather a project in historical rationality. pluralism involve? How can history help us understand History helps us understand the rationality internal to who liberal pluralism, and in such a way that we will not feel we are, which is to say that it helps us understand our the invitation to relativism, or at least if we begin to internal reasons, which are the only reasons whose tug we understand that invitation can nevertheless resist it, as we feel.[12] Expressing this view in connection with rightly should? It is worth pointing out that Williams is pluralism, Williams wrote, “it must itself always be a not alone in pressing a historical model of explanation in political and historical question, how far conditions will accounting for the relation between pluralism and allow that form of liberalism, or indeed any other, to exist liberalism. Two other recent instances of this can be or to achieve anything” (1996, p. 138). Understanding the found in the work of John Gray and Richard Rorty, both liberalism whose reasons we are now inside requires, of whom also reference Berlin.[10] This, I think, speaks Williams urged, understanding liberalism historically. well to the advantage of Williams' attempt to bring history Why historically rather than purely rationally? into the business of philosophy. In this section I shall Because a model of purely rational explanation is very briefly discuss this advantage before moving on in insufficient to answer questions as big as this one. That is the next section to considering how Williams leverages a point, of course, which remains to be shown. I cannot his proposed style of historical philosophical critique for show that point here in any kind of general way.[13] But

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 15 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 I can refer to the particular discussion in the last section, conflicts of values, ideals, and interests? The point is not insofar as it was suggested there that a purely rational quite the idea that pluralism as a condition plus historical approach fails to bring the relationship between pluralism understanding yields liberalism as a normative principle and liberalism into view in any kind of useful way. For or set of principles. Rather, Williams’ idea is that the that approach either fails to explain the real problem, or history of pluralism and liberalism suggests that it succeeds in explaining the problem but only on an ideal liberalism is more attractive than any other candidate level. view currently proposed as a way of responding to pluralism. This is because liberalism helps us to accept The Historical-Philosophical Analysis of Liberal the fact of deep pluralism without losing a sense of the Pluralism value of normative critique. This has much to do with Williams’ work in bringing history into liberalism’s project of affirming the two not always philosophy suggests that the understanding that history compatible goals of private liberty and public authority. yields is not helpfully conceptualized in terms of rational To explain, recall the distinction above between truths which we would be plainly irrational to ignore so liberalism as a normative project and liberalism as a much as in terms of historical truths which we would do project enabling normative critique. To now cash out that well to be truthful to. When we apply this historical distinction, liberalism accommodates pluralism not as a understanding in, say, developing a genealogy of liberal first-order norm that obligates us to respect pluralism, but pluralism, what we will find may be surprising. For we rather as a second-order enabling condition that makes will find not so much that liberalism itself is true or that possible normative critique in the context of pluralism. it is a truth that is entailed by pluralism, but rather that Thus liberalism does not obligate us to affirm pluralism liberalism is truthful to something, particularly to nor does it obligate us to affirm anything on the basis of something in pluralism, or something that we meet in pluralism. Liberalism does not endorse pluralism but pluralism, and something that we meet there by way of rather accommodates itself to pluralism in such a way as historical inquiry. This has to do with what Williams must to institute conditions of possibility for normativity mean when he says of Berlin’s liberalism that it is better without foundational unity. And note that although the expressed “not so much in terms of truth… but in terms terminology of ‘condition of possibility’ here might of truthfulness” (1978, p. xviii). suggest a transcendental orientation, my view is that this Purely rational models of understanding, be it conception is indeed consistent with the more empirical that of the philosopher who argues that pluralism skepticism characteristic of Williams. Williams’ project rationally entails liberalism or that of the cynical relativist certainly is critical, in Kant’s sense, yet without being whose standards for rationality are the same but disagrees transcendental. There are, after all, historical conditions about what the facts are, do not in fact take pluralism of possibility which are not themselves seriously. They take pluralism to be either a non-problem transcendental.[14] For Williams, then, liberal pluralism or a relatively easy problem. But for Williams, pluralism forms what we might think of as a historical condition of is a very deep problem indeed. Confronting it requires possibility, or set of conditions of possibility, for confronting ourselves, particularly as we are conditioned nonfoundational normative critique. by our histories. When we thus confront ourselves, we This idea, or something quite like it, is central to can come to see that our liberalism indeed takes our one of Williams’ later essays in which he directly pluralism seriously. This is not the claim that liberalism addresses the divide that separates pluralism from is somehow entailed by pluralism rationally or even that foundationalism in contemporary political theory: it is thus entailed historically (whatever that might mean). Once we regard the ethical life we now have as Rather, the view is the historical one that liberalism takes a genuinely historical and local structure, one pluralism seriously. History helps us see how liberalism that is peculiarly self-conscious about its own origins and potentialities, we shall have less is oriented by pluralism. It thus helps us see why temptation to assume that it is a satisfactorily liberalism is valuable for us insofar as we find ourselves functioning whole; and we shall be more likely amidst pluralism. to recognize that some widely accepted parts of What does it mean to say that liberalism is it may stand condemned in the light of perfectly plausible extrapolations of other parts. (1992, p. oriented by pluralism, understood in terms of deep 36)

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 16 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 The strength of liberalism is not so much that it tells us meet the objection head on and working to shift the what to do or how to live. Such a first-order injunction territory of philosophical explanation from the rational would obviously fly in the face of the pluralism that is at spaces of a winnowed philosophy to the historical spaces the heart of who we are. Liberalism’s strength is that it of a more humanistic and capacious philosophy. This is leaves us space to work out for ourselves the normative the only terrain on which to effectively compare structures of our political practices in the face of what liberalism against anti-liberal racisms, anti-liberal would otherwise be a debilitating pluralism. Williams patriarchies, anti-liberal socialisms, and anti-liberal continues: capitalisms. Once the resultant picture of ethical thought Here is how Williams puts the point, in another without foundationalism is made historically and context, in his Truth and Truthfulness: socially realistic, in particular by registering it in [We] have to appeal to a historical story about the categories of modernity, it provides a our situation, about the origins, development, possibility of deploying some parts of it against and character of modernity. As with all large- others, and of reinterpreting what is ethically scale historical interpretations, we could not significant, so as to give a critique of existing properly convince anyone of this story, or of the institutions, conceptions, prejudices, and powers. need for this story rather than another, without (1992, p. 37) telling it, and if we told it, we would be claiming Williams amelioratively offers liberalism as enabling that it was truthful. (2002, p. 263-4) normative political critique. Justice thus becomes Once we tell our story, the rational philosopher and their something we achieve down here amongst ourselves as a cynical counterpart can of course still ask for further product of our own initiative.[15] justification beyond that provided by our historical The claim that liberalism is oriented by pluralism explanation. But Williams thinks it is just a mistake to but not entailed by it marks the difference between the give in to their demands. Sometimes history offers the historicist and rationalist perspectives in philosophy best possible, indeed sometimes the only possible, detailed across the previous two sections. This difference justification we might have. Consider what could even might incline us to put an objection to Williams’ central count as satisfactory to a severely skeptical questioner claim that liberalism is a more attractive way of who will not let themselves feel the force of historical responding to pluralism than any other candidate view explanations. Williams realizes that his view will not now on offer. The objection is that Williams seems satisfy some rational philosophers, and some cynical unable to offer a demonstrative refutation of the critic counterparts, because it will feel too circular for their who disagrees with his claim that liberalism is an liking. He responds, continuing from the passage just attractive response to pluralism. In meeting this objection, cited: “Is that a circle? If so, it is the circle of the horizon it would be a mistake to attempt to satisfy a purely within which any such speech must occur: one cannot rational condition of argumentation. Such critics should blast someone into seeing the point” (2002, p. 264). It be challenged not on the terrain of pure rationality but cannot possibly be the case that circularity need always be rather on the richer terrain of empirical historicity. If the vicious. There are plenty of instances where we trace the disagreeable philosopher, or the dyspeptic cynic, means orbit of a circle inside of which we already find to urge the point that pluralism in no way entails ourselves. This strikes me as an important insight. Aside liberalism given that other options are available to the from Williams, it is largely absent in contemporary member of the pluralistic society, then the reply must analytic political philosophy. What it amounts to is the simply be that they have missed the point. Of course there idea that it is a mistake to even so much as raise an are other possible options. Of course liberalism is not the objection to a genealogical argument before you first only possibly rational response to pluralism. Of course we acknowledge where you actually find yourself historically cannot rationally show that liberalism is the most rational situated. Evaluation of the normative content of practices response to pluralism. But all of that has always been depends crucially on whether or not one finds oneself perfectly obvious to most of us. Nobody, neither Williams situation inside or outside of those practices.[16] If we nor us, could have missed that. Not having missed it, the find ourselves inside a constellation of political practices, point is that this is all beside the point. We thus need to such as those characteristic of contemporary liberal change the conversation in order to bring more salient pluralistic societies, then we should not expect of matters back into view. We can do this by refusing to ourselves that we might be able to crawl outside of that

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 17 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 constellation so as to evaluate it from the outside. historical explanations of how liberalism takes pluralism Similarly, if we find ourselves entirely outside of some seriously involves a story that is, at least as initially other constellation, we should not expect that our sketched, very plausible. Williams is right that we cannot negative endorsement of that other constellation from pretend to convince anyone historically without actually within our own can crawl of its own accord inside the telling the history, but one must start that telling thinking of those situated within the other constellation. somewhere, and my claim is just that Williams started This does not entail an endorsement of relativism. Rather with a very plausible hypothesis. The second, and by far what it involves is the idea that historical situation matters more important, claim is that this genealogy is not only to the practice of political evaluation. This is part of why plausible, but also is likely more plausible than any other history matters so much for political philosophy. candidate genealogy concerning the same present The account of philosophical-historical critical problem. The result of Williams’ genealogy would have inquiry offered by Williams remain, in many ways, at the been to the effect that liberalism takes pluralism more formal level. For instance, although Williams emphasizes seriously than any other contemporary political program. the importance of telling a historical story, he does not It is hard to believe that the genealogy of any other himself often tell it (or, rather, not all of it). In the case of contemporary political program would explicate greater liberal pluralism, the history to which Williams appeals in accommodation to pluralism, or that the genealogy of many of his writings is the history of our modern liberal liberal pluralism would show that liberalism failed to take and pluralist culture. What this history suggests is that pluralism very seriously indeed, even if there are of liberalism takes pluralism seriously, indeed more course many moments where liberalism failed to take seriously than any other candidate theory of politics. But, pluralism seriously enough. to be fair, the history does not yet fully show this, for These are genealogical matters, which is to say Williams never wrote it. Histories are products of that they are matters of both reason and history, in inquiries, even if they are about real facts concerning the contrast to being purely rational issues. If Williams’ work past. teaches us anything, then it is that we cannot even so much as raise the latter issues without beginning to An Unwritten Genealogy of Liberal Pluralism explore the former. It also teaches us that exploring the Though Williams never completed the project, former cannot take place on the model of assessing the the success of much of his work depends on his proposed latter issues, for the forms of evaluation and explanation genealogy of liberalism and pluralism in modern society. in each case are different. What we need to further the He was planning something quite like this before he died. argument at this point is a real genealogy, and not just a Some of the material that was to go into that book was hypothetical speculation. Unfortunately, that is beyond collected in the posthumously-assembled In the my scope here, just as it was unfortunately beyond the Beginning was the Deed (2005).[17] In the introduction scope of Williams’ life. Also beyond my scope, though to that volume the editor explains that, certainly of interest, would be a detailed discussion of Williams was working on his next book to the how such a genealogy would enable us to respond to very last moment. It was to have been on recent scholarly contributions concerning pluralism and politics…. [T]he book would not have been on theory alone. He intended to reflect more widely of how such a genealogy would be positioned with on the ways in which his thinking about politics respect to the most recent developments in liberal had been affected by his experiences in the political theory. political, intellectual, and artistic life of post-war There is much of interest that I am unable to Europe and America. (Hawthorn 2005, p. xix ) It is not extraordinary to surmise that this book would address here, largely because I must remain content at have been, as the essays collected therein attest, a present to merely gesture in the direction of Williams’ genealogy of modern politics, focusing especially on unwritten genealogy of liberal pluralism. This gesture, at liberalism and pluralism and their relation. least, will enable me to make a final point concerning the Lacking that genealogy, we can nevertheless capacity of liberalism to accommodate deep pluralism. advance at least two claims on Williams’ behalf. Neither The point is this: there is nothing keeping us now from claim is definitive: both are tentative. The first is that the taking up the task of writing that unwritten genealogy. It proposed genealogy to which Williams appealed in his would be a tribute to Williams’ insights as a thinker who

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 18 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 was both philosophical and historical if future debates genealogy would no doubt include extensive coverage of over these matters took place not on the unsustainable liberal theorists such as Locke and Mill, but also of terrain of ideal conceptual analysis (as if a philosopher liberal practices, institutions, and strategies as embodied has ever solved any real political problem simply by in freedoms of publication and association, ideas of anti- winning an argument with their peers) but rather on the discrimination, and basic ideas of any liberal culture such more enriched terrain where philosophy and history meet as due process and private property. Such a genealogy, midst a variety of projects including: genealogical indeed any genealogy, would be quite a substantial explanation, humanistic inquiry, and, of course and as undertaking. ever, rational conceptual analysis. What such a genealogy would provide, if Such a genealogy of modern liberal pluralism Williams was right in his final metaphilosophical would have to include, at a minimum, a rich sense of the intuitions concerning the twain of reason and history, is history of liberalism and pluralism, and their relation with an enriched terrain for evaluating liberalism, pluralism, one another in modernity. In order to vindicate liberal and their relation in contemporary political forms of pluralism, as was Williams’ wont, this genealogy would liberal pluralism. Williams’ view seems to have been that need to show at least two things, one concerning contemporary discussions of liberal pluralism remain pluralism, the other concerning liberalism. First, it would impoverished, because lacking in historical sensibility. need to show that pluralism is now something of an This does not mean that philosophy itself is or must unavoidable condition of modern political life, as well as remain impoverished. It means rather that we, which is to when pluralism thus became unavoidable. This aspect of say we liberal pluralists, remain impoverished ourselves the genealogy would no doubt include extensive coverage if draw our understandings of who we are only through of the Reformation in the fifteenth century but also of the narrow sieve of an unnecessarily incomplete Romanticism in the nineteenth century and then the conception of philosophy. This is why, for Williams, massively rising tide of the politics of nationality in the “philosophy, in order to do its business, must move into early twentieth century and of identity in the late history” (2002, p. 173). It follows from this that political twentieth century. Second, this genealogy would need to and moral philosophy concerned with liberal pluralism, in show how liberalism, both as a formal political doctrine order to do its business, must move into the genealogical and as an assemblage of political technologies of history of liberal pluralism. This seems to me a fitting and governance, constituted a unique form of response to energetic task for contemporary moral and political these conditions of pluralism. This aspect of the philosophy.[18]

Notes 1. Williams also helps us recognize that there are many forms of relativism; see Williams (1985, chapter 9). 2. See Williams (1985, chapter 8) and Williams (1978, p. xv). 3. See James arguing that claims and obligations are “coextensive” (1891, p. 617) with similar implications for the metaphysics of morals. But whereas James sees obligations as flowing merely from claims, Berlin sees them as flowing from rootedness in human forms of life, and these are obviously two quite different routes to objectivity. 4. I have benefitted from Robert Talisse’s (2004, 2010a, 2010b) critiques of liberal pluralism on these matters, though I disagree with his conclusions that liberal pluralism fails and that liberal perfectionism is the only viable alternative left once it fails. 5. See Rawls (1993, 1997). 6. See Cohen (1993). 7. For example, Robert Talisse recently writes that, “Berlin’s corpus contains repeated attempts to establish the entailment from value pluralism to liberalism” (2010a, p. 303). Talisse is strongly critical of this attempt to derive liberalism from pluralism. I have learned much from his critique. But I strongly dissent from his interpretation of Berlin. Talisse does not mention Williams, though he would have done well to do so. 8. See Rawls (1971, 1993). 9. I discuss Williams’ attempt to bring history into philosophy in much greater detail in Koopman (2010b). 10. Gray writes, drawing on Berlin, that “it is in the historical reality of a human subject which conceives choice-making to be centrally constitutive of its identity, rather than in any supposed universal inference from the truth of value-pluralism to the supreme value of choice itself, that liberalism is best grounded, if a ground for it be sought” (1995, p. 160). And Rorty writes, also referencing Berlin, that “an ideally liberal polity… would regard the justification of liberal society simply as a matter of historical comparison with other attempts at social organization—those of the past and those envisaged by utopians” (1989, p. 53). It is not insignificant that Berlin would be a common reference point for late twentieth-century historicist philosophers addressing themselves to the relation between liberalism and pluralism.

Theoretical & Applied Ethics 19 Vol. 1, Issue 3, Fall 2011 11. On history as helping us to “make sense” of ourselves and of others, see Williams (2002, chapter 10; 2005, p. 11). 12. This suggests a connection, which I here leave unexplored, to Williams’ (1979b) discussion of internal and external reasons. 13. I discuss this more general feature of Williams’ conception of historicist philosophy in Koopman (2010b). 14. For a discussion of this point about critical history and critical transcendentality as they appear in Kant and in Foucault, the general outlines of which I also take to apply to Williams, see Koopman (2010a). 15. For further discussion of this idea of Williams as a meliorist see Koopman (2009a, chapter 6) comparing Williams to the pragmatist philosophers (especially James and Dewey) on this point. 16. As I discuss with respect to both Williams and Foucault in Koopman (2009b), this point has some bearing on the common view that genetic reasoning is fallacious because of its confusion of genesis and justification. 17. On liberalism and pluralism see especially Chapters 3-5 and 7-10. 18. For comments on an earlier version of this article I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for this journal as well as the journal’s editor. I would also like to thank the graduate students in my Fall 2010 seminar on pluralism at the University of Oregon for enriching discussions of these matters.

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