When Leo Strauss took aim at liberalism for what he saw as its untenable abandonment of moral absolutes, he pointed to Isaiah Berlin's famous “Two Concepts of Liberty” essay as emblematic of the problem. The “crisis of liberalism,” according to Strauss, is a result of liberalism's claim to have given up the project of grounding itself in absolutes. This position cannot succeed, he argues, because a conclusive case for liberalism would require the identification of some eternally valid principles as its “basis,” something liberals decline to provide, citing the nonhierarchical multiplicity and incompatibility of human ends. This attempt to inhabit “an impossible middle ground between relativism and absolutism” is nowhere on clearer display, Strauss declares, than in Berlin's essay.

On Strauss's reading, the text is symptomatic of the crisis in liberalism because Berlin simultaneously defends the plurality of incommensurable values over and against the notion of any moral metastandards, yet he also flirts with absolutism. For example, as part of his account of negative liberty, Berlin insists that “there must be some frontiers which nobody should ever be permitted to cross” and refers to these frontiers as “sacred.” The world of plural values seen from a liberal perspective, Strauss ventures, “seems to require some kind of ‘absolutism.’”Footnote ¹ Yet, as Strauss shows, Berlin also hesitates to supply to liberalism any absolute foundation. Although Berlin wants to claim that the private sphere is sacred, this declaration “has no basis” in the end, since Berlin says the claim might be defended with reference to God, natural law, the demands of utility, or even “my own subjective ends, or the ends of my society or culture.” As Strauss quips, “any old basis … will do.”Footnote ² Indeed, Berlin indicates repeatedly that liberal commitments do not reflect transhistorical truths but are historically specific and contingent beliefs. It is Berlin's oscillation between what Strauss calls relativism and absolutism that makes his essay “a characteristic document of the crisis in liberalism.”Footnote ³

The crisis Strauss names, which concerns the feasibility of liberalism absent moral absolutes, continues to dominate liberal political thought in general and scholarship on Berlin in particular. Berlin's interpreters tend to be obsessed with the question of the relationship between value pluralism and liberalism. In particular, many worry that his commitment to value pluralism may actually undermine his other commitment, to liberalism, since the latter, like any political philosophy or system, inevitably privileges certain values above others. What could warrant liberalism's claims to universality or even superiority if value pluralism denies any special status to the constellation of values that liberalism celebrates? Doesn't a defense of liberalism depend upon the existence of some moral absolutes? If liberals wish to embrace the ethical doctrine of value pluralism, must they recognize liberal political orders as simply one possibility among many?Footnote ⁴

Many of Berlin's readers contend that a universal case for liberalism is nonetheless compatible with pluralism. It is possible to justify the liberal ranking of values generally and across all cases, they claim, but this position requires much more careful elaboration than Berlin provides. This article critically examines liberal universalist approaches to Berlin's thought, the signature of which is an attempt to reformulate value pluralism as “limited” rather than “radical.” The significance of this strategy, I argue, is that it posits a reconstructed pluralism that incorporates certain moral absolutes and is meant to serve as the ground sanctioning liberalism. I demonstrate that this interpretive approach is driven not only by the desire to reconcile two competing strains of Berlin's work but also by the broader conviction that an argument on behalf of liberalism requires an absolute foundation in order to be justified. This belief, however, is not Berlin's own. In particular, his compelling, though overlooked, account of human judgment challenges the notion that meaningful judgment—including a judgment on behalf of liberalism itself—depends upon the identification of transhistorical absolutes, as these readers suppose. Berlin's work, I suggest, resists the uses to which it is put by those seeking to transform pluralism into a foundation mandating liberalism. Indeed, Berlin's own advocacy of key liberal values such as negative liberty ought to be understood as an expression of his political judgment, neither ruled out, nor mandated by pluralism.

Berlin's Puzzle

Berlin's eclectic body of work evinces a singular preoccupation, by now well known—debunking monism and arguing for the truth of pluralism. By monism Berlin means first and foremost the assumption that all questions are “questions of fact,” admitting of one correct answer, including moral and political questions.Footnote ⁵ It is belief in an ultimate ordering of values which would resolve all apparent conflicts that Berlin rails against throughout his work by arguing that “some values may conflict intrinsically.” The universe human beings inhabit, Berlin argues, is one in which values can and do clash, giving the lie to the monistic view: “These collisions of values are the essence of what they are and what we are.”Footnote ⁶ Value pluralism attempts to describe “the human predicament” in which conflicts between values cannot be resolved through recourse to a moral yardstick that would translate them into more or less of a single good.Footnote ⁷

Our moral experience, for Berlin, is marked by sacrifice and loss. “We cannot have everything” and whatever we do have may be incomparable to what we forgo, such that we cannot always be assured of having gained more than we have lost. As Berlin explains it, we face situations in which the choice is not one between superior and inferior values.Footnote ⁸ Significantly, Berlin illustrates this claim using the example of freedom, arguing that we should not misconstrue freedom as the highest of all values. If that were so, in cases of conflict between, say, the principle of freedom and the principle of equality, freedom should always win out. Instead, the situation is “more complex and more painful,” since freedom may clash with “other, no less ultimate, values.”Footnote ⁹ Liberty is “not the only value” and may need to be sacrificed to others. But the sacrifice is real: “We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.”Footnote ¹⁰

But what is the connection between Berlin's evocation of a bountiful, varied, and sometimes tragic ethical universe and his liberal political outlook? This question has occupied Berlin's readers in part because he does little to answer it, offering only minimal and inconsistent remarks on the subject.Footnote ¹¹ Moreover, his thought as a whole seems to deepen rather than resolve the question. Pluralism is often depicted as thoroughgoing and subversive of any claim to an authoritative ranking of values, but Berlin also seems to grant special weight to negative liberty. I offer a brief sketch of this difficulty before turning to the way it has been treated by some of Berlin's most influential interpreters.

Value pluralism in the context of Berlin's work often describes a condition of profound open-endedness, in which multiple values coexist and sometimes conflict in the absence of any authoritative guide that could instruct us how to live best amidst such plurality. The values that characterize human existence, past and present, may be ultimate, they may be ends in themselves, and nonetheless incompatible and incomparable to one another. Berlin declares:

Here Berlin refuses to position negative liberty as a metavalue, whether in relation to alternative conceptions of liberty or to other “ultimate values” such as justice or love. Liberalism's cherished notion of negative liberty is left to vie with other, no less significant values. Here and elsewhere, Berlin's insistence on the multiplicity and even incommensurability of values would seem to rob liberalism of any basis on which to assert its preferred set of values as uniquely authoritative.

Yet at other points in his writing, Berlin seems to treat negative liberty as a universal, perhaps the highest, value, apparently tempering the “radical” pluralism described above. For example, Berlin writes of “the moral validity—irrespective of the laws—of some absolute barriers to the imposition of one man's will on another.”Footnote ¹³ This sort of statement suggests that negative liberty is a universal human good that transcends any existing regime. Might it be, then, that negative liberty enjoys a special standing relative to other values? When Berlin remarks, “There are frontiers, not artificially drawn, within which men should be inviolable,” the protection of negative liberty by positive law appears as the reflection of “frontiers” that exist independently of it.Footnote ¹⁴ Does this mean that negative liberty is an absolute requirement for any regime, and if so, what becomes of the other “no less ultimate values” which may be incompatible with it?

Even when Berlin speaks of certain “frontiers” as “sacred,” however, he specifies that “for the great majority of men, at most times, in most places, these frontiers are sacred.”Footnote ¹⁵ This description, surely contestable, is notable for its quasi-empirical character. Berlin does not posit negative liberty as a transhistorical or specially ordained value, but as one that, in practice, has been recognized by many cultures and societies.Footnote ¹⁶ Additionally, Berlin repeatedly claims that negative liberty is a distinctively modern ideal, “scarcely older than the Renaissance or the Reformation.”Footnote ¹⁷ It may be “only the late fruit of our declining capitalist civilization.”Footnote ¹⁸ Unlike his critic Strauss, Berlin is genuinely reluctant to posit any value, including negative liberty, as an “eternal principle.” He harshly questions the very aspiration: “Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.”Footnote ¹⁹

Even Berlin's references to negative liberty as an element of human nature are hardly unambiguous. Although Berlin commends a tradition of liberal political thought for recognizing that “we must preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature,’” that “nature” is revealed to be less of a foundation than a question. Berlin continues:

Berlin's invocation of human nature does not seem to settle the question of the status of negative liberty, then, but instead draws attention to the disagreement that attends any effort to define a human essence or delineate standards in relation to it. Similarly, while Berlin states that there are “some common values” which are widely shared, he does not delineate them nor does he suggest that such commonality mitigates the fact of plurality.Footnote ²¹ (That is, values that are “common” between people or groups may still conflict and be incommensurable with one another.)

Berlin, then, depicts a varied and conflictual value-pluralist universe that seems to deny liberalism a moral foundation, yet he also comes close to positing negative liberty as a universal, even the highest, good. How are we to understand these contrary lines of thought? One prevalent way of making sense of this puzzle in Berlin's work involves developing what Berlin did not—an argument for the compatibility, even unity, of pluralism and liberalism.Footnote ²² As we will see, this conciliatory approach follows a certain form, supplying to liberalism a moral foundation—in the form of reworked pluralism—by which to validate itself.

Remaking Value Pluralism

Berlin's thought poses a puzzle, one which his readers are eager to solve. How, they ask, can we best make sense of Berlin's simultaneous advocacy of pluralism—the claim that there are multiple, incompatible “ultimate ends” which cannot be reconciled or rank ordered—and his commitment to liberalism, which necessarily privileges certain values, among them negative liberty, at the expense of others?

Although some of Berlin's readers argue that pluralism and liberalism cannot be reconciled and are in fact incompatible with one another,Footnote ²³ a more prevalent approach contends that pluralism, properly understood, serves as the very ground of universal liberalism. Prominent liberal interpreters of Berlin, including George Crowder, William Galston, Amy Gutmann, and Jonathan Riley argue that pluralism and liberalism are not merely compatible with one another, but that liberalism actually follows from pluralism, properly understood. Thinkers who argue that pluralism legitimates liberalism acknowledge that Berlin's work must be reconstructed if this relationship is to be recognized. That is, his own writings do not present or explain such a relationship. Yet, they argue, there is a version of pluralism implicit in his work which, if developed, reveals itself to be the basis of liberalism. The signature of these readings is a modified pluralism which is understood as “limited,” “constrained,” “restricted,” “informed,” or “qualified,” rather than “radical.”Footnote ²⁴ The point of this move is that it incorporates key liberal commitments into pluralism, and thereby allows pluralism to serve as a foundation that justifies liberalism, rather than as a potential challenge to its supremacy.Footnote ²⁵

I provide several examples of this approach here. The claim is not that these authors forward identical treatments of Berlinian pluralism and liberalism, but that their interpretations, despite their differences, bring a similar foundationalist perspective to bear on Berlin's work. First, they posit a structural relationship between pluralism and liberalism, according to which pluralism, a true description of human experience, serves as the basis that warrants liberalism. Second, this depiction of the pluralism/liberalism dynamic reflects the shared conviction that a defense of liberalism requires recourse to an absolute foundation in order to be valid. In what follows I draw out these elements in the work of some of Berlin's most influential readers, before arguing that Berlin's thinking resists this interpretive approach.

Crowder declares that value pluralism is the very “ground” of liberalism, yet he is critical of Berlin for failing to effectively demonstrate this connection. He thinks that Berlin's most explicit attempt to “argue from value pluralism to liberalism” fails, but that it is nonetheless possible to get “from” value pluralism “to” liberalism while remaining faithful to Berlin's general perspective.Footnote ²⁶ More specifically, Crowder claims that there are “conceptual elements of pluralism itself” which, if clarified, carry “normative implications” that generate “liberal conclusions.”Footnote ²⁷

Crowder offers three separate accounts of how value pluralism, properly conceived, can lead to liberalism, but one example will suffice to illustrate his interpretive approach, which has considerable similarities with other efforts to show that pluralism authorizes liberalism. Crowder argues that “the value of diversity” connects pluralism to liberalism. The pluralist conception of multiple, incommensurable goods, which Berlin develops, “implies” a commitment to promoting as many goods as possible and this is best achieved under liberalism. Thus, getting “from” pluralism “to” liberalism involves two “moves”: “from value pluralism to the promotion of diversity and second from diversity to liberalism.”Footnote ²⁸ Matthew Moore has argued persuasively that this maneuver is flawed insofar as it rests on a duty of moral diversity—the pursuit of more genuine moral values rather than fewer—which is not intrinsic to, or even supported by, the pluralist thesis. The “more is better” principle that Crowder advances ultimately functions as a metavalue, the existence of which pluralism denies.Footnote ²⁹ For the purposes of the present discussion, I want to focus less on the contradiction Moore identifies and instead highlight the structure of Crowder's argument and the central assumption on which it rests. First, Crowder's strategy is to attempt to demonstrate that pluralism already contains certain normative principles that lead in a liberal direction. Second, this effort is driven by the conviction that liberalism must be justified by an absolute that precedes it.

William Galston, with whom Crowder has long debated rival forms of liberalism, also rejects the view that pluralism and liberalism are simply at odds with one another. Unlike Crowder, however, Galston acknowledges that pluralism, in and of itself, cannot lead to liberal conclusions. An “additional premise” is required, and Galston proposes “expressive liberty” to fill that position. In other words, Galston suggests that although there is no direct line to be drawn from pluralism to liberalism, if the pluralist “premise” is coupled with the premise of expressive liberty, then liberalism follows. Galston claims that expressive liberty is not a “particular value” but a “structural fact about human agency.”Footnote ³⁰ “Expressive liberty,” however, is defined in terms very similar to the Berlinian value of negative liberty:Footnote ³¹ “the absence of constraints, imposed by some individuals on others, that make it impossible (or significantly more difficult) for the affected individuals to live their lives in ways that express their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning or value to life.”Footnote ³² If, on Galston's view, Berlin “refuses to radicalize value pluralism so as to put negative liberty on all fours with other human goods,” Galston surely does something similar when he posits pluralism and expressive liberty as two coequal premises.Footnote ³³ That is, Galston's “expressive liberty” serves to “de-radicalize” pluralism. Even without issuing a verdict on whether “expressive liberty” is actually a nonvalue, as Galston wants it to be, its function seems clear—to add to pluralism a normative directive that can generate liberal conclusions.Footnote ³⁴

Galston's technique for deriving liberalism from pluralism is not identical to Crowder's. Galston is explicit that he is “adding” something—expressive liberty—to pluralism, whereas Crowder claims to be identifying what is already “implicit” in pluralism in order to make the connection to liberalism. Yet both authors modify Berlin's pluralism so as to include (or to be coequal with) normative aims—the maximization of diversity and the protection of expressive liberty, respectively—that are figured as prior to liberalism. Although Crowder and Galston also defend quite different forms of liberalism as the outcome of revised pluralism, both theories are driven by the underlying conviction that liberalism requires an absolute basis by which to validate itself. And pluralism, modified appropriately, is thought to perform this role.

Amy Gutmann tackles the question of the relationship between pluralism and liberalism by arguing that Berlin's work advances a specific “kind” of value pluralism that, “unlike many others,” is “at least minimally liberal.”Footnote ³⁵ Although Gutmann acknowledges that Berlin does not formulate his own position this way, she contends that he “adds or incorporates substantive moral judgments into pluralism.”Footnote ³⁶ “Pluralism per se,” or “pluralism by definition,” does not involve any metastandards, Gutmann states, but “Berlin's understanding of pluralism, at its best, is morally informed and constrained” by the values of individual liberty and the avoidance of human suffering.Footnote ³⁷ The modified pluralism that Gutmann develops out of her reading of Berlin therefore includes a “moral minimum” requiring the protection of individual liberty and the avoidance of cruelty. The significance of this development is clear. Gutmann defends a version of “constrained” pluralism which, if accepted, seems to lead to liberal outcomes. Indeed, once liberal values are built into pluralism, as they are by Gutmann, it is but a short step to liberalism.

Riley's treatment of Berlin also centers on developing a version of pluralism that is “limited” rather than “radical.”Footnote ³⁸ Focusing on “cultural pluralism” (with “culture” defined as a “system of values”), he seeks to show that rather than being “committed to pluralism as such,” Berlin's work contains a defense of cultural pluralism “within at least minimal liberal limits.” According to Riley, Berlin identifies a “common moral horizon” which includes “values which are at least minimally liberal insofar as they prescribe the protection of some set of basic human rights.”Footnote ³⁹ Importantly, this horizon can serve as a line of demarcation, on Riley's account, such that cultures which “fall below a common moral horizon” are to be “vetoed.”Footnote ⁴⁰ (I return to the topic of the Berlinian “horizon” in the next section.) Incorporating normative directives, which Riley argues are dictated by the “common moral horizon,” into pluralism means that pluralism not only does not contradict liberalism but serves as its very basis. Again, the movement is somewhat circular: Berlin's value pluralism, modified so as to include certain liberal absolutes, leads to liberalism.

All of these authors, then, aim to improve upon Berlin's work by better articulating what he did not: a special relationship between pluralism and liberalism in which the former grounds the latter. More specifically, they argue that pluralism already contains normative directives (or in Galston's case, that pluralism is tempered by its coequality with the “premise” of expressive liberty) and consequently, pluralism is not only compatible with, but actually authorizes, liberalism. This response to Berlin's work, though driven by the desire to “solve” an apparent puzzle therein, is also animated more generally by the belief that liberalism stands in need of a fixed and universal basis if it is to be justified.

Pluralism is an especially appealing candidate to fill this foundational role, because pluralism, as presented by Berlin, is a true description of the moral universe. It is not merely the observation of existing disagreement over values, but an account of the deep structure of our existence.Footnote ⁴¹ Pluralism has a special status. It names a condition of human experience, held to be true, regardless of our understanding of it. (Some of us remain monists, after all.) So when the thinkers cited above present modified versions of pluralism, which incorporate certain normative (liberal) absolutes, they are positing a truth about the moral universe. And this truth is what authorizes the judgment on behalf of liberalism.

These efforts to adapt pluralism are governed by the relativism paradigm. “Relativism paradigm” here refers to a framework for thinking about the practice of human judgment. (Thus, to claim that a particular theory evinces this paradigm is not the same as saying that it is itself relativistic.) More specifically, the relativism paradigm portrays valid judgment as the product of fixed, absolute, transcontextual criteria.Footnote ⁴² If such criteria cannot be found, then judgment is the product of differing parochial standards at best and mere subjective preference at worst.Footnote ⁴³ The options are stark: either judgment is authorized by standards which are constant and universal or our judgments are only reflections of local norms (perhaps so “local” as to be individualistic), which vary greatly and do not necessarily carry any force beyond a particular context.

This model of judgment underlies the approach to Berlin's work considered here. The attempt to show that liberalism follows from pluralism expresses the belief that a judgment in favor of, and a defense of, liberalism depend on the existence of universal, transcontextual standards. This effort, common to the four perspectives discussed above, is meant to counter the claim that support for liberalism or for key liberal values can be justified only in relation to the conventions of a particular society. John Kekes and John Gray have made arguments in this vein. Both contend that because pluralism denies the existence of any “overriding values,” it is incompatible with universal liberalism. Any case for liberalism can only be local in character; a liberal ranking of values takes place within a particular context and with recourse to a specific tradition.Footnote ⁴⁴ Gray explains that resolutions between pluralism's competing and irreconcilable values will be “internal to particular ways of life” and will conform to liberal principles only if that way of life is itself liberal.Footnote ⁴⁵ In other words, for both Kekes and Gray, the case for liberalism is possible—and will have resonance—only when and where the relevant cultural context is liberal. Not surprisingly, this argument is unacceptable to the thinkers considered above. Crowder contends that this view means the defense of liberalism is nothing more than “preaching to the converted.”Footnote ⁴⁶ For this reason, Crowder and other liberal universalist readers of Berlin seek a justification for liberalism that goes “beyond context.”Footnote ⁴⁷ And as we have seen, pluralism itself is presented as a transcontextual ground.

Despite the claims of these authors that the foundationalist rendering of the pluralism-liberalism relationship is supported by Berlin's work, I want to suggest that his thinking in fact poses a challenge to it. This challenge consists first in Berlin's treatment of pluralism as a description of our moral universe rather than a prescription for a particular ranking of values or form of life. Second, and even more importantly, Berlin's work contains an account of judgment that contests the assumptions driving these foundationalist arguments. Although Berlin's pluralism is more “radical” than many readers want to admit, this is not cause for alarm in Berlin's eyes, precisely because he understands the practice of judgment in terms that defy the relativism paradigm. I argue in the next section that Berlin rightfully understands judgment—including judgment in favor of liberalism itself—as a practice that occurs in the absence of transcontextual absolutes yet is also more than the simple reiteration of local norms.

Radical Pluralism and Berlinian Judgment

Berlin's pluralism is “radical,” in the sense that it describes a feature of the human condition—multiple, genuine ends, which are not fully compatible or rank orderable, and are even incommensurable with one another—without adjudicating between those values or endorsing any particular form of life.Footnote ⁴⁸ When Berlin speaks of pluralism he does so in an existential sense; he uses the term to describe a timeless truth about human experience (though recognition of this condition, Berlin says, may be more recent). The plurality of values, definitive of our life on earth, is reflected in the tremendous variety of laws, customs, and entire civilizations that have existed in the past, exist today, and presumably will exist in the future. In other words, value pluralism is itself indeterminate; it does not prescribe or proscribe any particular form of existence. It tells us only that we can expect “different nations, different roots, different laws, different peoples, different communities, different ideals.”Footnote ⁴⁹ More pointedly, value pluralism is open ended such that liberal arrangements are only one among many possibilities. Berlin regularly cites nonliberal societies when elaborating upon the meaning of value pluralism; the presence of diverse and incompatible ways of life across time and space is for him supporting evidence for pluralism as a true description of our condition.Footnote ⁵⁰

Pluralism's openness, however, does not rule out a defense of liberalism; such a defense is neither prohibited by, nor follows necessarily from, pluralism. Instead, the support Berlin shows for liberalism generally and for specific liberal values such as negative liberty expresses a political judgment, one which conforms to the conception of judgment articulated throughout his work. According to this view, judgment is exercised without recourse to universal, absolute standards, yet it is also not merely the echo of narrowly local conventions.

Berlin's insightful and pragmatic conception of judgment challenges the terms of the relativism paradigm. Many of Berlin's readers, as we saw, take a strongly philosophical and specifically epistemological approach to the question of liberalism's justification, seeking an absolute from which liberalism can be derived and its validity established. They worry that the only alternative to such justification is the admission that liberalism can be defended only among liberals, that is, only “within” specific traditions and cultures and not across them. I suggest that Berlin, unlike his readers, is not exercised by the problem of relativism precisely because he believes it to be a “pseudo problem” that rests on an inaccurate understanding of what we do when we judge.Footnote ⁵¹

Although Berlin does not provide a well-developed theory of judgment, his work consistently presents judgment as a situated human practice that is neither absolutist nor parochial in character. In this section, I first clarify this general model of judgment, before suggesting that the case for liberalism and its core values ought to be regarded as expressions of just this sort of judgment.

Berlin writes:

This statement highlights Berlin's nonabsolutist and practice-centered approach to the question of judgment. When we render judgments, according to Berlin, we do not identify and apply standards that are independent of our forms of life. Instead, we are engaged in a situated activity in which we draw on “our” preferences, beliefs, and commitments—which may themselves conflict—in order to make assessments that are informed, but never simply determined, by those resources. (Our best and most considered judgments also stretch beyond our own culturally specific norms to imagine the meaning of various practices and beliefs for people different from ourselves, as I discuss below.)Footnote ⁵³ Berlin's pragmatic account of the judgment-making we already engage in stresses that we are capable of making meaningful assessments even in the absence of universal, transcontextual criteria: “It is plain that there can exist no ‘super-standard’ for the comparison of entire scales of value, which itself derives from no specific set of beliefs, no one specific culture.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Yet for Berlin the absence of a “super-standard” does not strip us of our capacity to judge.

In a short essay coauthored with Bernard Williams, for example, Berlin argues that although the pluralist perspective they endorse denies the existence of any “determinate and general procedure for solving conflicts,” this does not disable the faculty of judgment. More pointedly, Berlin and Williams defend situated, nonabsolutist judgment as meaningful, and question why one should accept the fallacious notion that “a judgment to the effect that in a particular context a certain consideration is more important or significant than another is specially non-rational or subjective or a matter of taste.” They ask, “Why should we believe this?”Footnote ⁵⁵

Berlin's portrait of judgment is at odds with the foundationalist model Gutmann endorses. Gutmann argues for “morally discriminate pluralism” because she claims that “pluralism by definition” is a threat to judgment itself: “Without a moral minimum, value pluralism would lead to such absurdity as considering Serbia and Sweden as incommensurably decent societies.” According to Gutmann, value pluralism “per se” leaves us incapable of making ethico-political distinctions; we can only affirm whatever exists. If we wish to make critical judgments, we must identify an absolute, a priori—albeit “minimal”—morality that transcends all contexts and provides desperately needed standards for our judgments.Footnote ⁵⁶

Berlin gives us reason to doubt that the crisis Gutmann invokes is genuine. Why, he pushes us to ask, should we assume that absolutes or “eternal, immutable” standards are required in order for judgment to get underway?Footnote ⁵⁷ Rather than accept Gutmann's claim that value pluralism condemns us to a posture of indifference, Berlin believes that we can and do make assessments, give reasons for our views, and attempt to convince others of them, all without applying fixed, transcontextual standards. We draw on norms and ideals, vocabularies and rules of thumb that are immanent to our ways of life, rather than prior to or above them.

Berlin's repeated references to what we do “in practice” brings the question of judgment back down to earth, where distinctions and evaluations are regularly made and regarded as meaningful (even if we do not agree with them), despite the fact that they cannot be shown to be the product of a universal moral ground.Footnote ⁵⁸ Berlin writes that if we “consider the normal thoughts of ordinary men” on the subject we will see that they do things such as “assess the value of Cromwell's statesmanship … describe Pasteur as a benefactor of mankind or condemn Hitler's actions” without supposing themselves to be “saying something particularly hazardous or questionable.”Footnote ⁵⁹ According to Berlin, we routinely make judgments that are not the results of universal criteria that exist beyond any particular cultural formation, yet are not therefore irrelevant or unreliable.

If Berlin's writings challenge the absolutist models of judgment advocated by some readers, he also does not endorse the view that is presented as the only possible alternative within the relativism paradigm: a “particularist,” or “traditionalist,” conception.Footnote ⁶⁰ According to that perspective, exemplified by Gray and Kekes, because value pluralism does not provide or permit transcontextual criteria that sanction liberalism (or any other political system) universally, any defense of liberal designs will take place “internally,” in accordance with the already-established norms, beliefs, and customs of a specific (liberal) culture.Footnote ⁶¹ A case for liberal rankings of values must be local in character, particular rather than universal. For the liberals I discussed in the previous section, this view is unsettling because it suggests that a judgment in favor of liberalism may not carry any critical purchase beyond its origins.

Although Berlin does not believe we can go entirely “beyond context” when we make judgments, he also does not suppose that our judgments are provincial in the way that is assumed by both the proponents and the critics of particularism. This is because Berlin does not adhere to the portrait of culture that informs that view, in two important ways. First, the characterization of judgment and reason-giving as “local” often assumes a strangely narrow and monistic culture, rather determining in its effects. Here, “tradition” provides settled and agreed-upon standards that generate judgments which, in turn, will resonate within that particular community.Footnote ⁶² Yet as Berlin insists, pluralism goes all the way down. Every society is constituted by diverse individuals, groups, subcultures, and traditions, which honor competing and sometimes incommensurable values. Thus, there are always multiple and conflicting sources for judgment making; there is no single, self-evident “culture” to defer to. For better or worse, no society, liberal or illiberal, is the unified and coherent entity it is imagined to be when particularism is juxtaposed with universalism.Footnote ⁶³ (Recent struggles in Iran, for example, remind us of this fact.) Recourse to “context,” if “context” is treated as a tidy, self-identical whole, betrays the pluralist insight at the heart of Berlin's thinking.

The second way Berlin challenges the particularist approach is perhaps even more important. Our forms of life, according to Berlin, are neither internally consistent nor closed systems, discrete and cordoned off from one another. While the particularist view tends to treat cultures as tightly bounded units, each equipped with its own private set of resources, Berlin sees cultures as more porous and open to one another than this view suggests. Values circulate not only within ways of life but also between them, providing points of connection even across difference. Berlin's insight in this regard is even more relevant in the globalized present, where increasing cross-cultural exchange and influence undermine the picture of cultures as closed rooms.

The human horizon is an image Berlin invokes to express the idea that ways of life are not “windowless boxes” to which we are confined.Footnote ⁶⁴ Cultures, by virtue of being situated within the human horizon, are never entirely unto themselves.

The horizon expresses Berlin's belief that ways of life, though distinctive and diverse, are not closed off or opaque to one another. We can comprehend modes of existence unlike our own, even across great distances of time and space. Writing of the plurality of values, Berlin states:

The specification that human values are finite—which is notably not accompanied by any effort to list or count the values within the horizon—is critical because it implies that differences concerning the kinds of lives we pursue are not absolute barriers to understanding. Berlin's vision of the horizon challenges the notion of radical cultural difference that informs the particularist view and supports its model of separatist, local reason-giving. Rather than imagining cultures as insular and wholly foreign to one another, Berlin believes that the horizon, coupled with our capacity for sympathetic insight, facilitates understanding across difference.Footnote ⁶⁷ Crucially, as we will see in a moment, such cross-cultural understanding is not a substitute for critical judgment, but rather its precondition.

If human cultures are not “impenetrable bubbles,” this means that when we make judgments, whether in regard to an element of “our” way of life or that of another, we are not simply hostage to local conventions.Footnote ⁶⁸ Though we cannot leave behind the traditions and norms of our time and place (which are themselves pluralistic) in favor of an Archimedean standpoint, we are also not limited to “homemade dogma.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Our position within the human horizon allows us access to an expansive perspective that reaches beyond what is close and familiar. This enables (without guaranteeing) reflections and determinations that are nonparochial. Similarly, because cultures are not locked cells, we can expect that judgments—our own and others'—will resonate beyond their point of origin. That diverse ways of life coexist within the human horizon means for Berlin that when we make judgments, we are not restricted to what is “local,” either in terms of the criteria we draw upon or in terms of those with whom we wish to communicate.

Importantly, the human horizon reflects Berlin's simultaneous refusal of both absolutism and particularism. His understanding of the horizon defies the absolutist uses to which Riley puts it, at the same time that it disrupts parochial conceptions of insular and tightly bounded cultures. I will show that this is so, as the final part of my sketch of Berlinian judgment, before turning to the question of how this conception of judgment might help us understand the relationship between pluralism and liberalism differently.

When Riley makes his argument for “limited” pluralism, he invokes a “common moral horizon,” which he argues produces a division between a “top” set of cultures, which are “vastly superior” to a second, bottom, set. Footnote ⁷⁰ (Unsurprisingly, the top set consists of “minimally liberal” orders.) This dividing line, which Riley claims to derive from Berlin's notion of the horizon, is presented as an indispensable tool for assessing varying cultures and, more pointedly, justifying the superiority of liberal cultural formations.Footnote ⁷¹ In other words, Riley, like Gutmann, seems to believe that a judgment advocating liberalism is dependent on a preexisting absolute and he enlists the “horizon” itself to perform this role, separating acceptable from unacceptable (or more precisely: liberal from illiberal) forms of life.

Yet when Berlin speaks of a horizon, it is most often in reference to a human horizon, and “human” is not simply synonymous with “moral.”Footnote ⁷² Rather than supporting any definitive set of values as absolute, the Berlinian horizon designates a field of judgment. In other words, the horizon does not act as a fixed boundary dividing the moral from the immoral. While Riley points to a “common moral horizon” (not Berlin's term) and depicts it as a line demarcating what is “decent” from what is not,Footnote ⁷³ the horizon Berlin depicts cannot fill this function, including as it does a vast range of practices and beliefs, not all of which we would wish to commend. That the human as Berlin conceives of it cannot easily serve as a shortcut to moral absolutism is most evident in the following passage:

Here Berlin seems to include even Nazi “values” within the human horizon, claiming that Nazis were still “men” and that it is possible to “see” how men could be led to behave so gruesomely, even as he also declares them “detestable.” Berlin's reason for wanting to include even the Nazis and their “values” within the human horizon, I suggest, stems from the belief that our critical assessment of any behavior or belief is predicated upon recognition of it as “human” in some sense. The horizon is best understood as separating that which we can perceive and recognize as human beliefs and activities (even if informed by “widespread illusion” or “false education”)—which are therefore available for our understanding and judgment—and what is literally nonsensical or incomprehensible to us. The horizon demarcates what is intelligible from what is not, rather than dividing the moral from the immoral.Footnote ⁷⁵

Indeed, critical judgment is exercised within the human horizon. Berlin stresses the importance of imaginative sympathy in regard to ways of life different from our own, yet he does not suppose such hard-earned understanding to be a replacement for, or an abdication of, judgment. Rather, Berlin tends to present such understanding as a prerequisite for judgment; some imaginative sympathy is required if we wish to judge at all.Footnote ⁷⁶ We are free to “reject” a particular custom, policy, or belief, but only if we have struggled to apprehend it as a human practice. The human horizon, then, does not cleanly mark off what is moral from what is not, as Riley suggests that it does. Instead, the horizon refers to the immanent and pluralistic field of human experience, within which we attempt to understand and judge in the absence of moral certitudes.

In sum, Berlin's model of judgment defies the relativism paradigm. He challenges the supposition that judgment requires grounding in an absolute to be valid, and he throws into question the strategy of his readers who advocate a reworked pluralism that is meant to serve as such a ground. Yet he also rejects what the relativism framework presents as the only alternative to such absolutism: the recourse to strictly “internal” and local standards. In ordinary practice, Berlin insists, we make judgments that defy this schema.Footnote ⁷⁷

But where does this leave the case for liberalism or for key liberal values? How, committed liberals might wonder, can a liberal good such as gender equality be defended within this framework? According to Berlin's model of practical judgment just outlined, how do we justify the judgments we make, particularly if we hope to reach the “unconverted”?

Justification, like judgment itself, is pragmatic in character. We defend our judgments in accordance with existing practices of argumentation and reason-giving, for “what passes as such” among those whom we address (which will vary depending on circumstances). We make the best cases we can, providing evidence and making appeals that we believe will resonate with others. At some point, however, reasons run out,Footnote ⁷⁸ and there is no first principle that can absolutely validate our claims.

But this does not resign us to “preaching to the converted,” pointless talking among ourselves. Because no culture is a monolith, even “illiberal” contexts will contain multiple and competing values as well as traditions, some of which can serve as resources for those seeking to make liberal arguments.Footnote ⁷⁹ Moreover, communication is possible between, and not only within, cultures. We can, with effort, at least partly comprehend the experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of members of cultures other than our own, and can craft arguments that we believe will have purchase for those whom we seek to persuade.

If one wishes to defend the principle of gender equality, for example, there is no formula according to which this is to be done. There is not a transhistorical, transcontextual absolute that will somehow settle the matter once and for all, if only we point it out.Footnote ⁸⁰ The task is to make appeals that can reach those whom we aim to persuade. A liberal who seeks to make a case for gender equality might proceed by invoking a general principle of human equality (recognized even among some nonliberal societies) and attempting to forge a connection to gender.Footnote ⁸¹ Or one might point to the material suffering experienced by women living under regimes of marked gender inequality. One could compare regimes with and without such equality, arguing that anyone who has experienced the former would choose it over the latter.Footnote ⁸²

If the liberal's objective is to extend and deepen gender equality, then the best case will involve imaginative sympathy and the crafting of arguments that can potentially reach the unpersuaded, whether near or far. Cross-culturally, liberals seeking to promote the good of gender equality will be most convincing if they strive to understand the specific (and multiple) traditions at work in a particular setting and ally themselves with gender equality advocates who draw on those traditions. For example, liberals might productively align themselves with women's rights activists and scholars in Islamic countries who articulate a vision of gender equality compatible with Sharia law.Footnote ⁸³ This pragmatic approach recognizes that the case for gender equality will not be a universally binding philosophical proof, yet this does not mean, on the contrary, that liberals committed to this principle are confined to an echo chamber, issuing needless justifications to those with whom they already agree. Berlin suggests, rightfully, that judgment, reason-giving and persuasion occur between these false alternatives.