Peter Berger wrote about a remarkable range of subjects in the course of his long career. But there were some key themes to which he returned time and again, with variations and refinements. One of those themes is the inevitability of what he called “plurality,” that is the existence of multiple religions and worldviews in modern, liberal societies, and the challenges they posed not only to religious institutions but to social and political ones as well. He explained why the dynamics of modern, liberal society created an imperative to choose. Plurality and choice generated some characteristic challenges to institutions and characteristic dilemmas for the individual. Berger explored these challenges and dilemmas with great perspicacity during the five decades that separated his early The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (1961) from his late In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic (2009, written with his Dutch colleague, Anton Zijderveld) and The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (2014). Berger’s analyses of these processes and dilemmas remain as insightful as when he first formulated them over half a century ago. They are arguably more relevant than ever for understanding contemporary cultural and political dynamics.

One of the key conceptual coinages with which Berger explored these issues was his notion of “plausibility structures.” The idea, in a nutshell, is this: to the extent that knowledge is socially constructed or conditioned, what counts as plausible “knowledge” depends on social context. A key function of institutions such as religions, political parties, and professional milieus is to render certain ideas into premises, that is, to make them taken for granted, and to render other ideas inadmissible or unthinkable. One of Berger’s favorite examples was the notion of “natural law,” which is taken for granted as true, rational, and universal in Roman Catholic circles, but is often regarded with skepticism outside of such circles. (Berger often repeated this example, and many others, across the decades.