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The Pluralist Constellation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Erik Parens
Erik Parens
Affiliation:
Associate for Philosophical Studies at The Hastings Center, Briarcliff Manor, New York
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Extract

I work at a research institute where the staff spends its time thinking about ethical issues that arise with progress in medicine, the life sciences, and technology. After such thinking, we make public policy recommendations. We pride ourselves in the diversity of our staff: there is a doctor, a lawyer, a linguistic anthropologist, a political scientist, a theologian, some philosophers, and so on. Both men and women do research and we are religiously diverse: Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and atheists

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Spring 1995 , pp. 197 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

1. Willard Gaylin develops the idea of once-but-no-longer-adaptive instincts in The Male Ego. New York: Viking, 1992.Google Scholar

2. Richard, J. Bernstein gives a brief history of this metaphor in his The New Constellation: The EthicalPolitical Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992:8.Google Scholar

3. See, for example, John, Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993:25;Google Scholar and Charles, Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” In: Gutmann, A, Ed. Multiculturalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992:25–73, at p. 72.Google Scholar

4. Grasso, KL. Pluralism ad absurdum. The Responsive Community 1994;Spring:65–8, at p. 65.Google Scholar “Multiculturalism” too is used as term of opprobrium in this same sense: as the name of a variety of relativism that despairs of there ever being conversation aimed at shared goods among those whose “identities” are different. See, for instance, Elshtain, JB. Democracy and the politics of difference. The Responsive Community 1994;Spring:9–20.Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Nussbaum, M. Human functioning and social justice: in defense of Aristotelian essentialism. Political Theory 1992;20:202–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Non-relative virtues: an Aristotelian approach. In: Nussbaum, M, Sen, A, Eds. The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993:242–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See note 5. Nussbaum, . 1992:222.Google Scholar

7. Bok, S. The search for a shared ethics. Common Knowledge 1992;1:12–25.Google Scholar

8. Gutmann, A. The challenge of multiculturalism in political ethics. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1993;22:171–206.Google Scholar

9. See also, Judith, W. Kay on “liberatory discourse about common humanity” in Politics without human nature? Reconstructing a common humanity. Hypatia 1994;9:21–52;Google Scholar and Stephen, A. James on “minimalist human nature” in Reconciling international human rights and cultural relativism: the case of female circumcision. Bioethics 1994;8:1–26.Google Scholar

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11. See note 10. For Moon's criticism of Nussbaum, see Moon, . 1993:26–8.Google Scholar

12. See note 10. Moon, . 1993:45.Google Scholar

13. See note 10. Moon, . 1993:10.Google Scholar

14. This is what John Rawls is getting at when he insists that “an overlapping consensus is quite different from a modus vivendi. … [T]he object of consensus … is itself a moral conception … [and] it is affirmed on moral grounds, that is, it includes conceptions of society and of citizens as persons, as well as principles of justice, and an account of the political virtues through which those principles are embodied in human character and expressed in public life …” Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993:147.Google Scholar

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20. Rescher, N. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford University Press, 1993. Because Rescher is not optimistic about how far conversation can get us, it does not make sense to speak of him as a pluralist in the sense that I am attempting to lay out. Again, one can be interested in the fact that there is a plurality of ways of being in the world without sharing what I've called the pluralist response to that fact.Google Scholar

21. See note 3. Taylor, . 1992:72.Google Scholar

22. See, for example, Gutmann, A, Thompson, D. Moral conflict and political consensus. Ethics 1990;101:64–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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