Moral Pluralism and Political Disagreement

This thesis addresses two crucial questions of contemporary political theory: why do we disagree about value and how should we respond politically to that disagreement? I make three major arguments that correspond to each of the three sections. I outline and analyse two theories of moral pluralism in Section I, value pluralism and epistemic pluralism, which offer explanations of disagreement about value. Value pluralism is a widely held metaphysical doctrine that makes a claim about the plural nature of value. Epistemic pluralism is a less widely known theory that makes a claim about the difficulty of reasoning about value. I argue that epistemic pluralism is the appropriate form of moral pluralism for political theory because, unlike value pluralism, it does not rely on controversial metaphysical ideas. In Section II I analyse two theories of public reason liberalism, John Rawls’s political liberalism and Gerald Gaus’s justificatory liberalism, both of which develop an account of political legitimacy in light of epistemic pluralism. I reject both theories on the basis that they are incompatible with a commitment to epistemic pluralism. In Section III I develop a political theory of modus vivendi which accords with my account of epistemic pluralism. Building on the work of other modus vivendi theorists I outline a theory of legitimacy that depends on two political conditions, peace and acceptance. In the final chapter I defend my conception of modus vivendi from various criticisms in order to show that a theory of modus vivendi is not a counsel of despair.