The Case for Bounded Pluralism

“Many things go,” rather than “anything goes”

Today’s essay is a guest post from Rebecca Lowe, a political and economic philosopher and Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. You can follow her on Substack.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games (1560)

A common criticism of liberalism is that it is overly permissive: that its followers are reckless libertines, committed to a policy of “anything goes.” Within contemporary discourse, we often hear that the liberals “have gone too far” or are at risk of “eating themselves.”

But this kind of criticism can be found across the history of liberalism. You can see Locke pre-empting it when he distinguishes “liberty” from “license.” You can see it at work in the so-called “paradox of tolerance.” You can see it in those parts of Political Liberalism where Rawls seems to give in to the relativists. What you’re seeing is this grand idea that liberalism is persistently – existentially – under threat from a constitutive requirement to accommodate the illiberals, on the grounds that it must accommodate everyone. That liberalism’s accommodation for all people and all positions leaves it, at best, unstable as a concept, and at worst, incoherent, in the sense that liberalism is not very liberal, at all.

One standard response

One standard response to such criticism is to emphasize that the only thing that liberals are required to do with illiberal views is to tolerate them. This response tells us that liberals aren’t required to endorse, or even to respect illiberal views, but simply to live alongside them — in the sense of putting up with the people who hold them. Indeed, this response reminds us that tolerance is a special kind of accommodation, which includes some kind of opposition. You don’t tolerate the things you like, do you?¹ One implication, therefore, is that illiberal views need not become part of liberalism. Or that they become part of it to the extent that the potholed street becomes part of your car because that’s where you parked it.

I’m happy to accept that this “tolerance only” approach can get us some way toward protecting the coherence of liberalism. But it remains open to some obvious objections. First, the objection that if liberalism requires allowing illiberal views to thrive — when the supporters of these views are energetic and persuasive — then at what point can the liberals give up on tolerance, to try to save the liberal society? At any point? Or must they do “the right thing” and give in? Of course, some people see an inbuilt risk of illiberal takeover as an attractive feature of liberalism. They think it represents a commitment to epistemic modesty, perhaps, or to some notion of fairness instantiated by decision-making by means of consensus. I’ll return to this kind of view below.

There’s a second obvious objection to the “tolerance only” solution, however. Is it really just tolerance that’s expected of liberals? Aren’t liberals supposed to “die on the hill” for the right of their detractors to proclaim the things that liberals disagree with? And even if you take “dying on the hill” as the morally admirable extreme, rather than everyday expected behaviour, then doesn’t it signal something more than tolerance? I’ll come back to these questions at the end of this piece. First, I’m going to advance a different kind of response to the “inherent risk of illiberalism” criticisms of liberalism. It’s a simple response, and I won’t pretend it solves this problem entirely. But I think it goes a long way to reducing its bite.

A simple alternative response

My simple response is that these criticisms often depend on a mistaken understanding of the kind of pluralism that’s baked into liberalism. That the mistake here is that liberals shouldn’t be conceived as supporting “anything goes,” but something more like “many things go,” instead. In other words, that the use of “plural” here does not signal “every” or “any,” but “more than one.” And that it’s not any old “more than one,” either. It’s not just that “many” is smaller than “every” or “any,” that is — it’s that the “many” in question is bounded in a particular, principled way. Indeed, that there are many such “manys” for the liberal to consider!

I’m going to argue for this “bounded pluralism” approach mainly by discussing some examples of it at work within liberalism. It’s a descriptive claim that I’m seeking to convince you of, after all — the claim that liberalism is better sloganized as “many things go” than “anything goes.” But, along the way, I’ll also try to convince you of the value of such an approach.

What do I mean by liberalism?

First, I should clarify what I mean when I use terms like “liberalism” and “liberal.” I’ve argued elsewhere that liberalism is a family set of theories aimed at addressing important politico-philosophical moral questions — a set that coheres around a commitment to freedom. In particular, I’ve argued that all liberal theories include:

1. a central commitment to freedom as a foundational objective value, and a theory of freedom’s relation to other values;

2. a philosophical conception of equally-held individual freedom and societal freedom;

3. an adherence to a full moral worldview on which freedom is particularly significant, and on which freedom plays a central part in grounding a conception of legitimate political society.

When I use the term “liberal” in this piece, I’ll be referring to an adherent of one of these liberal theories, rather than the follower of any political party. And when, above, I used the term “liberal society,” I broadly meant a society in which liberal principles guide laws and institutional arrangements, and illiberal principles do not. But I won’t go into much further detail about all this, because you could agree with most of what I’m going to argue even if you had some problems with my conception of liberalism.

I would note, however, that it is a pluralist take, itself! My conception of liberalism, that is, allows for a vast variety of liberal variants — variants with differing value commitments, differing conceptions of freedom, and so on. Yet this doesn’t mean that anything goes! My three conditions set some boundaries: they rule some options in, and rule some options out. As indeed does the fact that my account is a realist account. You’ll have noticed, that is, that I stipulate that freedom, at least, must be taken to have some objective moral value, on every liberal variant.

1) Two types of value pluralism

I’m now going to turn to some examples of “bounded pluralism” within liberal theorising. I’ll begin by emphasizing that it’s standard within philosophical discussion of liberalism to make a distinction between two types of “value pluralism.”² And that it’s easy to find a commitment to both of these within different liberal variants.

The first kind of value pluralism hinges on the idea that there is more than one foundational moral value. In other words: liberal theories are not value monist. Yes, they all share a commitment to freedom as a foundational value, but they also make space for other values. Minimally, some notion of equality — at least in the thin sense that “all humans have some basic equal moral worth.” This is not a controversial claim I’m making! An interesting question does arise, however, about whether it’s possible to construct a theory of the kind that liberalism is — a theoretical framework aimed at addressing moral questions of a politico-philosophical kind — which is committed only to freedom, or only to some other single value. My view, as it happens, is that such a theory would be incoherent. But an easier point to argue is that if liberals were to commit to freedom, in this sense, without also committing to equality, then the question would persistently arise: “But why does your freedom matter?”

I mean, imagine a world in which you couldn’t rely, even in part, on responses such as, “My freedom matters because I am a human, just like you!” or, “Certain mutual obligations arise from our shared capacity for free action!” In such a world, you’d have to find some alternative route into arguing that your freedom mattered, which didn’t afford the same value to everyone else’s freedom. And this would quickly take you toward some pretty illiberal places. Of course, I’m oversimplifying here, and I can think of some good objections you might raise. You might say that I’m confusing the value of equality with the natural distribution of freedom, for instance. And I’d have a good response to that. But I don’t need to argue about this, here! I also don’t need to take a position on related matters like the commensurability of values, or value conflict. I have views on those matters, but I can be ecumenical in this piece.

This is partly because I’m focusing on the descriptive level — and I can’t think of a single example of a coherent liberal theory that doesn’t include some basic commitment to the thin notion of equality. Rights-based liberal theories don’t get off the ground without it, for a start. And consequentialist liberals tell us they care about it, too. But the main reason I brought equality into the mix was to make the simple claim that believing in multiple foundational moral values doesn’t amount to believing either that there are infinite such values, or that everything is such a value.

I mean, you could believe in a million foundational values, and still rule some things out. What’s more, as a liberal, you have some freedom-related principles to help you with this: “Okay, I guess oppression can’t be a foundational value, after all!” Indeed, on most liberal accounts, you have some relevant freedom-related requirements to do so. Once again, therefore, it seems clear that believing in “many” does not amount to believing in “every” or in “any.” And you can agree with me on this even if you do think that freedom is the only foundational value.

The second kind of “value pluralism” found within liberal theories hinges on the idea that the individual should be free to determine and pursue their own conception of the good life, without overbearing interference from the state. This kind of pluralism involves, among other things, the idea that there are multiple ways to lead a good life. But, in the same way that committing to the idea that there are multiple foundational values does not mean committing to the idea of infinite foundational values, it’s also the case that committing to the idea that there are multiple ways to lead a good life does not mean committing to the idea that every way of leading your life is good.

In other words, I can hold true to my liberal principles and rule out the idea that you spending your life enslaving other people counts as a good life. Phew! What’s more, I don’t need to take a position here on the comparative value of good lives — whatever such a thing is taken to mean — or anything downstream of that. This is because, once again, all I want to point out is that believing in “many” does not mean believing in “every” or “any.” And that basic liberal commitments, including a commitment to the objective value of freedom — however you construe this — will help you to determine what counts as part of the “many.”

2) The “grounding of rights” example

I now want to offer a slightly more technical example of “bounded pluralism” at work. It’s an example that I discussed in a recent podcast episode about rights:

REBECCA: But let’s just talk a little about grounding. This has come up a few times. You made a nice distinction between the idea of identifying a right with an interest, and the idea of rights being grounded in interests. I think I’m certainly open to quite a pluralistic approach to grounding rights. I don’t think, necessarily, the same thing has to ground all rights, partly because I do have this belief in these general and particular rights. I think there are other distinctions that are important between rights: the kinds of rights that hold in all places and time just because you’re a human; the kinds of rights that you acquire along the way; distinctions between moral and legal rights. […] We talked about interests. I think I’m happy to say that need probably pretty much sufficiently grounds some rights. I think there’s a question about the human good, more broadly. About reason. I think it’s fair to say some people think that reason can do a lot of work in justifying some rights. Again, when I think about these matters, I’m broadly pluralistic, in a bounded sense. I don’t mean that anything can ground a right.

Now, I’m not suggesting that a pluralistic approach to rights-grounding is a necessary feature of liberalism. Indeed, some of the great liberals have failed to recognize the value of making a commitment to moral rights. So, I’m including this example simply to emphasize, once again, that admitting of “more than one” does not necessitate admitting of “every” or “any” — and that a commitment to liberal principles can help you to discriminate, here.

3) The “many good options” example

My next example is a little more exploratory. It pertains to something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, but which I haven’t fully worked out yet. It goes something like this. One reason I value the pluralistic nature of liberalism is that it resonates with my belief that, in most situations, there is more than one permissible option you can take. Indeed, that in many situations, there are infinite permissible options. That often, when we are attempting to determine “the right thing to do,” pluralistic liberalism can help us to understand that there is no such thing. Of course, this is not to argue that there is never a “right thing to do!” And I definitely don’t want to imply that liberalism counts as a moral theory. Rather, I’m suggesting that the basic principles of liberalism can help us to evaluate the particular answers that different moral theories might offer to certain kinds of questions.

This kind of thinking makes me doubt that there is a “correct” moral theory that could guide me in my pursuit to lead a good life. As it happens, my view is that most classic moral theories are, rather, aimed at providing a post-hoc evaluation mechanism. But I worry, nonetheless, that the search for the “correct” moral theory over-prioritizes a tight kind of moralism that tells us we can only act correctly when we have much more information than, typically, we have access to, and that also biases us toward thinking that ‘moral correctness’ is always the goal.

This worry betrays my optimism about the human capacity to navigate the infinite options of the everyday without committing wrong. It speaks to a desire to be left free to trust one’s own instincts, and to innovate behaviorally in pursuit of the good — or at least in pursuit of avoiding the bad — in the belief that, as humans, we generally have reliable awareness about whether the choices we face are morally serious or not. If I am deciding whether to go to the swimming pool or the bookstore, and all other things are equal, then there is no morally right answer, per se. And if you are deciding how to spend the day with your toddler, then just because there are some bad and wrong options — playing with matches! — that doesn’t mean there aren’t infinite reasonable, or even good, options. This seems straightforward to me. But more relevantly, I think it’s a useful example of the pervasive potential of bounded pluralism.

4) The conceptual-level example

I’m now going to turn to one final — looser — example of bounded pluralism, which will bring us back to the “inherent risk of illiberalism” criticism of liberalism. Here, I’m going to make a quick analogy with democracy. Often, you see people questioning the coherence of democracy by saying things like, “But in a democracy you can vote away democracy!” Or, in an attempt to destabilize its substantive commitments, “But in a democracy you can vote away minority rights!”

In terms of concerns about coherence, it’s easy to respond to the first criticism. You can simply say, “But if a country votes away democracy, then it’s no longer a democracy!” In other words: only democracies are democracies. This is the case regardless of the conditions required for something to count as a democracy. And you can respond to the second criticism in a similar fashion, although an additional step is required. That is, if respect for minority rights is a necessary condition of a country counting as a democracy, then you can respond by saying that if minority rights are voted away, then the country no longer counts as a democracy.

There are, nonetheless, important substantive questions to be addressed about what counts as a democracy. Whether, for instance, respect for minority rights is indeed required for a country to count as a democracy, and if so, what kind of respect is required. But the point I want to make here is simply that criticisms like “But in a democracy you can vote away democracy!” are criticisms not of the coherence of democracy, but rather of downstream matters like the stability of democratic nations, and the ways in which democracy should be instantiated, institutionally. Similarly, if your criticism of liberalism is that it is illiberal, then you are not criticizing liberalism. To put this in something like bounded-pluralist terms, liberalism can be many things, but it cannot be illiberal!

But how should you respond?

The question remains, however, about how liberals should respond to illiberal behavior. About where the red line should lie for individual reaction, in the kind of society in which laws and institutions must leave people free to support, and even to do, illiberal things. After all, a society in which nobody ever acted on their decisions to do illiberal things would likely be a deeply illiberal place. Perhaps it would involve “predictive” policing. Perhaps it would depend on mass drugging, preventing people from doing much at all. Or perhaps it would come down to systematic surveillance, threats, and punishments. Regardless, we come back to the classic question of when it is that liberals should give up on tolerance.

The more I think about it, however, the more I think this question is badly formulated. I’d prefer to rephrase it in terms of remaining attentive to when it is, and when it isn’t, permissible or obligatory to intervene in the illiberal behavior of one’s fellow societal members. When is it my business? What can I do? Is there anything I must do? What? When? We each have the capacity for good judgment. We each have many opportunities to push back. We can answer these questions for ourselves, and in discussion with each other, when they arise, within the almost infinite but morally bounded set of options we have in front of us. One option, which is often in front of us, is to argue the liberal case. Many liberals, including me, think that democratic institutions offer — or could offer, if better designed — additional options for this, on top of arguing at the individual level.

An alternative option — which is sadly often presented as pluralist, or democratic — is to pursue the middle ground. For some people, “meeting in the middle” represents a commitment to epistemic modesty, or to the value of decision-making by consensus. Just as, for some people, living in the persistent threat of illiberal takeover represents something similar. But, surely, affording each view equal value — and each view-expressor equal respect and input, qua view-expressor — is an instance of “anything goes!”

After all, “meeting in the middle” entails making equal space for illiberal views, when illiberal views are in the mix. If the matter under discussion were the permissibility of slavery, for instance, then “meeting in the middle” would entail making equal space for the view that “slavery is the rightful condition for some people” — if, but only if, someone happened to express it. And then, perhaps, relative to the numbers of people expressing other views. Aside from anything else, this approach rids the competition of reason. It reminds me of the emptiness that H.L.A. Hart is getting at when he concludes that utilitarianism “in effect treat[s] individual persons as of no worth; since not persons for the utilitarian but the experiences of pleasure or satisfaction or happiness which persons have are the sole items of worth or elements of value.”³

There are many liberal arguments against “meeting in the middle.” But the emptiness of an approach on which a view is afforded value simply for having been expressed brings us back to the mistaken idea that “many” means “any,” and “anything goes.” It is harder, of course, to stand your ground and argue your case. But liberalism gives us good reasons to do so.

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1. For a nice discussion of this, see Tim Crane’s essay, Religion in the Open Society: http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/crane_religion_in_the_open_society.pdf. He includes the following example: “I might tolerate my neighbors’ loud music on New Year’s Eve because I like my neighbors, I want to get on with them, even though I really object to this music, and maybe I think this music should never have been created. But I tolerate it until 5 o’clock in the morning because I want to live in peace with my neighbors.”

2. See, for instance, the SEP entry on this topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-pluralism/

3. Hart, “Between Utility and Rights,” Colum. L. Rev. 79, no. 5 (Jun. 1979): p. 78.