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2. What is value?

2.2. Systems of value

The previous section brought up a series of questions on the nature of clashes of value. Many critics and readers of Berlin33 see in his writings the depiction of two kinds of values: first, certain values which we should call ‘objective’, identical for all of us, and which enable cross- cultural communication; and second, other values that are referred to as ‘subjective’, which, being upheld only by certain individuals, create the plurality of outlooks in life central to value pluralism. This highlights a seeming contradiction between the claim that values are universal and objective, and the differing one that described them as the product of individual, autonomous choices. Also, it seems difficult to argue that they clash and are at times incompatible, while at the same time portraying them as facilitating intercommunication and mutual understanding between different societies and individuals. This lack of clarity about the two levels of value pluralism has understandably earned Berlin much criticism. For instance, this apparent ambivalence constitutes one of Gray’s main points of criticism of Berlin’s theory of liberalism. Curiously enough, Gray is at the same time perfectly happy to defend the notion

32 I. Berlin, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (London: Chatto

& Windus, 2006).

33 G. Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (Political Theory and Contemporary Politics; London:

Continuum, 2002); G. Crowder, Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism (Cambridge: Polity, 2004); J. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (London: Harper Collins, 1995c); J. Gray, Liberalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995b).

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of culturally exclusive values.34 These challenges are answered by arguing that Berlin’s value theory portrays systems of values as plural and subject to endless configurations, but the values that compose them as finite. It is not that we pick values from a catalogue of independent entities and follow them through life, nor that, when faced with situations that require us to choose, we decide to act respecting one value we pick among all the available ones. Instead, ethical conviction is the result of observing different systems of value in which a set of values are combined following some internal logic, and responding to certain hierarchical orderings. Systems of value are largely inherited from and influenced by the cultures to which individuals belong, however this does not mean that they are assimilated uncritically. This is a particular sign of modernity, a characteristic that Berlin signals as having shaped the development of Europe from the Enlightenment onwards.35 The need for individual validation of value systems will be examined in the following chapter, and it also constitutes the subject matter of chapter four. Furthermore, this characterisation of modernity as carrying the mark of autonomous and critical reflection on values is depicted as key in the constitution both of Joseph Rawls’ and Bernard Williams’ theories of liberalism in chapters five and six respectively.36 It is precisely this configuration and observance of different systems of values what gives individuals a sense of individuality, and the clearer mark of their autonomous character. With this re-interpretation of human values as systems of value composed by universally objective values, this dissertation is able to shield Berlin’s theory of value pluralism against accusations of ambiguity or incoherence.37

34 J. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (London: Harper Collins, 1995c).

35 I. Berlin, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (London: Chatto

& Windus, 2006).

36 What Rawls refers to as ‘constitutional democractic cultures’ (J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1993): 44,126), and Williams as the ‘self-consciousness’ (B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985): 163) he associates with ‘modernity’.

37 J. Gray, Liberalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995b); J. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (London: Harper

Collins, 1995c); J. Gray, 'Agonistic Liberalism', Social Philosophy and Policy, 12.01 (1995a); J. Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).

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For example, we say that there is pluralism of values not because subject A believes in value X and subject B believes in value Y, and subject A is blind to the meaning of Y while subject B is blind to that value X. Instead we say A values X over Y, and B values Y over X. When I say that abortion is immoral and you disagree, our disagreement ultimately springs out of the fact that our ethical outlooks are shaped by different systems of value – maybe so complex that breaking them down completely into ‘simple’ values might not even be possible – within which we can definitely identify certain values as being more relevant than others, and this is how we allow certain values to steer our actions in particular ways. For me it is a fundamental respect of human life that informs my argument, whereas for you nothing can be more important than the right of women to choose what to do with their own bodies. Equality versus liberty, but you might still hold equality as valuable in some way, and so do I with liberty. Thus, values can be both universally understood but singularly interpreted, and we can disagree with other outlooks but still understand and judge them. This is due to the fact that when Berlin is talking about values as ends of life he is referring to systems of value as that which determines our ends, and not isolated values. Systems of values are, in short, those ‘beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and women should be and do…’38 Even when certain values are entirely disregarded, their meaning is not lost. The kind of values which Berlin is looking at in his work – ‘love and honour, public and private loyalties, liberty and equality, individual genius and society’39 – point at the ‘generic character’ that human nature, ‘however various and subject to change… must possess if it is to be called human at all’.40

38 I. Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,

1998b): 1.

39 I. Berlin, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (London: Chatto

& Windus, 2006).

40 I. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 2003): 80.

This idea is also closely related to the Berlinean humanist project, with its rootedness in a fundamental respect of that which makes men human, differentiating them from other creatures and objects of the universe. The key difference is, for Berlin, precisely the autonomous observance of values that give direction and meaning to human lives, unlike what happens with other creatures and elements of our universe. This idea is explored further below.

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Different individuals across different societies and in different historical times have led different lives as a result of giving more or less importance to some of these values, of favouring some of them over others. What makes moral outlooks differ is not that they observe values that are completely alien to each other, as if they were words of a foreign language, describing a never-seen object, but simply the fact that they rank these universally recognisable values differently. The need to favour some values over others is the result of their inherent incompatibility and incommensurability, which will be looked at in the next chapter, and of the internal demand of these systems to be coherent in order to work as action guiding systems.41 Values, as objective and universal, make communication between human beings, groups, societies and whole cultures possible, but their constitution into different systems is also responsible for the creation of insolvable divisions between individuals and whole cultures. That is to say, their weight within different systems is mutable and subjective. Systems of value change over time: some ideas develop and grow, others lose their lustre until being forgotten and discarded. The systems of value that determine human lives are not the perfect, abstract, eternal and immutable values of Platonic Idealism. Their meaning is local and contingent, however this does not make value pluralism a relativistic theory. To this extent, it could be said that systems of value are in Berlin’s definition concrete universals: they are far from eternal and universal, yet while being observed within specific contexts their validity is by all means final.

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