What's the Big Idea?

Chandran Kukathas from the November 1996 issue

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The implication of all this for ethics, according to Gray, is that the reality of human existence is of an ultimate diversity of incomparable forms of human flourishing. And this means that no single moral theory will be able to guide our conduct when we are confronted by moral dilemmas which force us to forsake one good for another. There is no metric which would enable us to calculate amounts of goodness to allow us to make tradeoffs. Ultimately, then, we have no reason "to abandon the richness and depth of moral life, with all its undecidable dilemmas, for the empty vistas of moral theory." Yet while incommensurability is possible, it is not clear that it is of much relevance; for it seems only trivially true to say that some goods are incommensurable. All that seems to be happening is that Gray is pointing out that actions or choices have opportunity costs, and that there is no standard "value" by which all opportunity costs can be measured. Economists have known this since 1870. If a comparative judgment is to be made, a common denominator has to be found; that denominator is itself going to be a product of judgment--whether one is comparing different architectural wonders or choosing between apples and bananas. One can choose one or the other in the latter case going on nutrition, or on sweetness, or on colorfulness, or even on price. Similarly, one can choose a metric for measuring dramatic worth--if we have some reason for wanting to do so. (Of course, there may be disputes about the desiderata, but there is no reason in principle why a standard cannot be articulated and established.)

Now, Gray does concede that, in life, tradeoffs are made. What he argues, however, is that incommensurability means that there is no principle or measure showing the unique or universal rationality of particular tradeoffs. What follows from this truth of pluralism, in his argument, is that liberal institutions have no universal authority. For there are no universal human interests or values protected by liberal institutions. If we choose liberal institutions we are simply making a "radical" choice that has no deeper moral or rational basis. Yet it is hard to believe that Gray, or Berlin, really believes this. After all, is there no way of saying that liberalism is morally superior to National Socialism?

And indeed Gray notes that National Socialism is excluded by Berlin's requirement of "minimal universalism." According to Gray, this is a small concession: Recognizing a "common moral horizon" for the human species may disqualify some ideas of the good life (e.g., Nazi ideas), but it does not ground or privilege liberalism. This raises the question of what, exactly, liberalism is. I would argue that "minimal universalism" is precisely what characterizes liberalism. Whether or not his argument was wholly successful, Robert Nozick's idea of utopia as a framework within which different forms of good may be pursued was essentially a kind of minimal universalism. It points to the basic classical liberal or libertarian understanding that ways of flourishing are diverse, that reconciliation of all ways under a single, harmonious, conflictless whole is unlikely, that political institutions should regulate this conflict and facilitate the toleration of different ways by drawing boundaries permitting coexistence. Berlin's thought, if Gray's account is sound, reiterates this view. But it is not clear in what way it offers us a better version of the classical liberal story.

The one point Gray makes that is of some importance is not so much that liberalism cannot be given any secure foundation but rather that what he calls the "liberal form of life" is not to be privileged. Yet this point tells not so much against the libertarian version of liberalism--which accepts that within a libertarian framework illiberal communities may also be sustained. A liberal society, on this view, is not necessarily a society of liberal communities: It may include Amish and Hutterites; Muslims and Christians; separatists as well as cosmopolitans. What this view tells against is that version of modern liberalism, dominant in the academy, which holds that all of society must be brought under the influence of a dominant liberal standard--a standard of social justice--enforced through the agencies of the state. In the end, the central insight of classical liberalism is that human goals, practices, ways of life, are plural and not capable of being brought under control in a single harmonious whole. There are many reasons why this is so; our desire for economic gain, as well as our longing for social acceptance, are among them. The fact that values are sometimes incomparable is only of small importance.

In this regard, what Berlin's thought offers us is not a fundamentally different--let alone a better--version of liberalism. (Indeed, Berlin never set out to provide one.) At best, it offers a reminder of the virtues of moderation, and a warning against the optimism of fanatics. Not all things are possible in the best of all possible worlds. But once it has accepted that perfection is impossible, political theory can surely tell us more. Not because it can provide a blueprint, but because it can at least offer an artist's rendering that better enables us to see our circumstances. All treatises in political theory are flawed; but not all are without insight. Berlin's thought may have avoided the flaws that accompany any grand construction. But the philosophical payoff, as a consequence, is small.

John Gray's study of Berlin claims, ultimately, that Berlin is a hedgehog who knows one big thing. That thing is value pluralism, at whose core is the idea of incommensurability, which Berlin "deploys in his argument against the dominant tradition of Western thought." And this thing makes his position "a distinctive and novel one that subverts the received orthodoxies in moral and political philosophy." But in the end, Berlin is a philosophical historian of ideas who has really told us many different and interesting things--about thinkers and artists and movements of ideas. He is a fox. The big idea which Gray finds at the center of his thought is only one idea. It is not particularly big, or distinctive, or subversive, or new. And, if we take to heart Berlin's and Gray's counsels of philosophical moderation and caution, we should probably also wonder whether it is entirely true.