In Defense of Liberal-Pluralism: 2nd Edition

This book takes a critical view of Kantian and Neo-Kantian moral philosophers’ preference of universalism, the unity of morality, moral impartiality, consensus, and common morality. The central claim of the book is if the human condition is treated as complex and infested with irreducible choices and alternatives, then moral rightness and wrongness ought to operate beyond these binaries; giving epistemic status to Pluralism’s multiple rationalities. Redefining liberal-pluralism, the book also argues that moral reasoning is necessarily bound by paradoxes and contradictions, seen in our choices of life-projects, in the conflict between individual morality and common morality, and in justifying what is morally reasonable in the interpersonal framework. Equivocation in moral argumentation cannot be valued without understanding the nature of the ‘interpersonal’ that ought to sufficiently argue for moral disagreement, irreducible pluralism and limits of morality. Liberal-pluralism, thus, signifies the quasi-relational (partially admitting Gilbert Harman) nature of moral reasoning in the multi-agent framework. It also takes account of reciprocity, fairness, reasonableness, tolerance, open-ended morality, and agreeing to disagree. However, this idea of liberal-pluralism no way undermines rationality and reason, nor turns to anti-theory; rather, it only treats morality as guided by ‘reason without unification’ and ‘pluralism without relativism’.