Perfectionist Liberalisms and the Challenge of Pluralism

Authors

  • Mats Volberg Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu

Keywords:

perfectionism, value pluralism, Wall, liberalism

Abstract

Based on Steven Wall's work I take perfectionism in political philosophy to include two components: the objective good and the non-neutral state. Some perfectionist theories aim to be liberal. But given the objective good component perfectionism seems to be unable to accommodate the commitment to value pluralism found in liberalism, this is what I call the challenge of pluralism. The perfectionist reply is to claim that their objective good can also be plural and thus there is no conflict. My aim in this paper is to show that this reply does not work. I do this by looking at three different ways we could conceive of perfectionist theories as plural and show how each is unsatisfactory.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Arneson, R. (2000). Perfectionism and politics, Ethics 11 pp. 37-63.

Foot, P. (2003). Natural Goodness, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Freeden, M. (1998). Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach, Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Geuss, R. (2001). History and Illusion in Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, New York, Pantheon Books.

Hurka, T. (1993). Perfectionism, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Larmore, C. (2008). The Autonomy of Morality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Macedo, S. (1990). Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism, New York, Oxford University Press.

Nagel, T. (2002). Rawls and liberalism, in Samuel Freeman (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 62-85.

Parfit, D. (1986). Overpopulation and the quality of life, in P. Singer (ed.) Applied Ethics Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 145-164.

Quong, J. (2011). Liberalism without Perfection, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Rawls, J. (1996). Political Liberalism, New York, Columbia University Press.

Raz, J. (1988). Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Shklar, J. (1989). The liberalism of fear, in N. Rosenblum (ed.) Liberalism and the Moral Life, Cambdrige, Harvard University Press, pp. 21-38.

von Platz, J. (2012). Negative perfectionism, Philosophy and Public Issues, pp. 101-122.

Wall, S. (2009). Perfectionism in politics: A defense, in T. Christiano and J. Christman (eds) Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 99-117.

Wall, S. (2012). Perfectionism in moral and political philosophy, in Edward N. Zalta (ed) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition) URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/perfectionism-moral/

Downloads

Published

2016-06-30

How to Cite

Volberg, M. (2016). Perfectionist Liberalisms and the Challenge of Pluralism. Studia Philosophica Estonica, 8(1), 113–127. Retrieved from https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/spe/article/view/14346

Issue

Section

Articles