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Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Charles Larmore
Charles Larmore
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Columbia University
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Extract

Liberalism is a distinctively modern political conception. Only in modern times do we find, as the object of both systematic reflection and widespread allegiance and institutionalization, the idea that the principles of political association, being coercive, should be justifiable to all whom they are to bind. And so only here do we find the idea that these principles should rest, so far as possible, on a core, minimal morality which reasonable people can share, given their expectably divergent religious convictions and conceptions of the meaning of life. No longer does it seem evident—as it did, let us say, before the seventeenth century—that the aim of political association must be to bring man into harmony with God's purposes or to serve some comprehensive vision of the good life. The causes of this transformation are various, and not all of them lie at the level of moral principle. But a change in moral consciousness has certainly been one of the factors involved. As Hegel observed, modern culture is inherently a reflective one: notions of principle are essential to our self-understanding and thus to the stability of the social forms in which we participate. Modern culture has no room for a dichotomy between “in principle” and “in practice.” It is worth determining, then, what new moral conceptions have been responsible for the emergence of modern liberalism. Not only will we thereby better understand how we have become who we are, we will also have a surer grasp of the principles that sustain our political life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 61 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1994

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References

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(Translation by Frame, Donald, The Complete Essays of Montaigne [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957], pp. 816–17.)Google Scholar Cf. also Paine, Thomas, The Rights of Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), II.5, p. 271Google Scholar: “I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.”

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