Value Pluralism and Freedom in the Thoughts of Isaiah Berlin
Subject Areas : Research in Theoritical Politics
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Abstract :
One major claim of liberalism in the latter half of the twentieth century was that it can be considered as a normative system due to value-based pluralism, a concept of its. The first scholar to introduce this in terms of a systematic thought was the English political philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin. Defining liberalism as a school placing negative freedom on top of value hierarchy, he argues that liberalism is inferable from the principles of value pluralism. He tries to confirm a logical entailment between value pluralism and preference of negative freedom in three ways, including, giving importance to having choice, opposition to utopia, and belief in existence of universal values. We will see how these ways fail to confirm such an entailment. The article discusses the possibility of inferring any value preference from the above mentioned relying on its anti-rationalist feature and decision making patterns.
