Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T23:18:08.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Value Pluralism and Monotheism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2014

George Crowder
George Crowder*
Affiliation:
Flinders University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: George Crowder, School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How far can monotheism be reconciled with the pluralism characteristic of modern societies? In this article, I focus on the “value pluralism” of Isaiah Berlin, which I suggest captures a deeper level of plurality than Rawls's more familiar version of pluralism. However, some critics have objected that Berlinian pluralism is too controversial an idea in which to ground liberalism because it is profoundly at odds with the monotheism professed by so many citizens of a modern society. I argue that monotheists can be value pluralists as long as they do not insist that their faith is superior to all others. This pluralist position is exemplified by elements of the interfaith movement, according to which many religions are recognized as having roughly equal value. I also argue that a value-pluralist approach to religious accommodation, if it can be achieved, may be more stable than the uneasy combination of disapproval and restraint involved in the more orthodox solution to conflict among religions, toleration.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 818 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berlin, I. 1990. “The Pursuit of the Ideal.” In The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Hardy, H. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Berlin, I. 2000. “My Intellectual Path.” In The Power of Ideas, ed. Hardy, H. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Berlin, I. 2002. “Two Concepts of Liberty. In Liberty, ed. Hardy, H. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, D. ed. 2012. Interfaith Dialogue in Practice: Christian, Muslim and Jew. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Cannadine, D. 2013. The Undivided Past: History Beyond our Differences. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Chang, R. ed. 1997. Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cohn-Sherbok, D. ed. 1992. Many Mansions: Interfaith and Religious Intolerance. London: Bellew Publishing.Google Scholar
Cohn-Sherbok, D. ed. 2001. Interfaith Theology: A Reader. Oxford: Oneworld.Google Scholar
Coward, H. 2000. Pluralism in the World Religions: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oneworld.Google Scholar
Crowder, G. 2002. Liberalism and Value Pluralism. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Crowder, G. 2004. Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Crowder, G. 2007. “Gray and the Politics of Pluralism.” In The Political Theory of John Gray, ed. Horton, J., and Newey, G.. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crowder, G. 2013. Theories of Multiculturalism: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Erlewine, R. 2010. Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Fletcher, G.P. 1996. “The Instability of Tolerance.” In Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. Heyd, D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Galston, W. 2002. Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galston, W. 2005. The Practice of Liberal Pluralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Galston, W. 2007. “Must Value Pluralism and Religious Belief Collide?” In The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin, ed. Crowder, G., and Hardy, H. Amherst, MA: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Gray, J. 1995. Isaiah Berlin. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Gray, J. 2000. Two Faces of Liberalism. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Hardy, H. 2007. “Taking Pluralism Seriously.” In The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin, ed. Crowder, G., and Hardy, H. Amherst: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Hick, J. ed. 1974. Truth and Dialogue: The Relations between World Religions. London, Sheldon Press.Google Scholar
Huxley, A. 1946. The Perennial Philosophy. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Jaffee, M. 2001. “One God, One Revelation, One People: On the Symbolic Structure of Elective Monotheism.” Journal of American Academy of Religion 69:753–775.Google Scholar
Kekes, J. 1993. The Morality of Pluralism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kekes, J. 1997. Against Liberalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kekes, J. 1998. A Case for Conservatism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Küng, H., et al. 1986. Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Larmore, C. 1996. “Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement.” In The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margalit, A. 1996. “The Ring: On Religious Pluralism.” In Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. Heyd, D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Prothero, S. 2010. God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter. Melbourne: Black Inc. Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York, NY: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Raz, J. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Raz, J. 1995. “Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective.” In Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. 2008. All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, H. 1991. The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco.Google Scholar
Smith, J. 2007. Muslims, Christians, and the Challenge of Interfaith Dialogue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smock, D. ed. 2002. Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.Google Scholar
Stocker, M. 1990. Plural and Conflicting Values. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.Google Scholar
Williams, B. 1996. “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?” In Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. Heyd, D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar