Thursday, December 06, 2012

Isaiah Berlin's pluralism

Philosophy Bites has a podcast of an interview with Henry Hardy about Isaiah Berlin and his theory of pluralism.

Berlin argued that the tragedy of the modern Liberal is that there is no guarantee that the values we cherish - notably freedom and equality - are mutually compatible. More than that, when those values conflict there is no formula that will tell us which value should trump the other,

I think Berlin is right, and no amount being told to read T.H. Green or L.T.Hobhouse by people who have not read those thinkers themselves, will convince me he is wrong.

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