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our response to beliefs and practices that we hold to be legitimate even though contrary to our own views. Such a concept of tolerance is typical of value pluralism: we refrain from persecuting other religions, from hindering the life plans that look to us wasteful and silly, or from trying to convince people that their aesthetic tastes are cheap, since we recognise them as legitimate even if wrong in our eyes or lacking in value. Pluralism has many versions: there is moral pluralism of the kind Isaiah Berlin (probably on the basis of J. S. Mill’s view) has
form of institutionalised subordination – and thus, a serious violation of justice. This approach offers several important advantages. First, by appealing to a deontological standard it permits one to justify claims for recognition as morally binding under modern conditions of value pluralism.8 Under these conditions, there is no single conception of the good life that is universally shared, nor any that can be established as authoritative. Thus any attempt to justify claims for recognition that appeals to an account of the good life must necessarily be sectarian. No
.21 This is a claim about the character, rather than the nature, of pluralism. Conflict is endemic . . . pluralists can step back from their personal commitments and appreciate in the abstract the value of other ways of life and their attendant virtues. But this acknowledgement coexists with, and cannot replace, the feelings of rejection and dismissiveness towards what one knows is in itself MCK3 1/10/2003 10:21 AM Page 65 Catriona McKinnon 65 valuable. Tension is an inevitable concomitant of accepting the truth of value pluralism.22 Raz thinks that in
Heikki Patomäki, ‘Republican Public Sphere and the Governance of Globalising Political Economy’, in Maria Lensu and Jan-Stefan Fritz (eds), Value Pluralism, Normative Theory and International Relations (London, MacMillan, 2000). The unilateralism and aggressive reciprocity of US trade policy is discussed in P. Martin, ‘The Politics of International