This book is a contribution to the ongoing conversation about value pluralism and its relation to political life. Its uniqueness lies in its insistence that the acceptance of value pluralism involves placing certain limitations on what is an acceptable form of government and what functions governments ought to be legitimately performing. In a new approach coined nomocratic pluralism, this volume argues that liberty under the rule of law, which is not merely liberty where the law is silent, is a key concept of liberty and cannot be subsumed by the other primary implications of the acceptance of value pluralism: that political communities must reject positive liberty as a political value, and place a high, but not absolute, priority on negative liberty as a political value. The concept of liberty under the rule of law is particularly suited to accommodate a great variety of individual and group conceptions of value and the moral good, and thus, along with negative liberty, should be a primary value for those who accept value pluralism.

Autorentext

Kenneth B. McIntyre is Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University, USA. His other books include The Limits of Political Theory (2004), Herbert Butterfield (2011), and Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism (2020).

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2.The Critique of Moral Monism.- Chapter 3.Practical Reason, the Importance of Personal Commitments, Plans, and Projects, and the Minimum Content of Morality.- Chapter 4. Varieties of Pluralist Political Theories: Modus Vivendi Pluralism and Egalitarian Pluralism.- Chapter 5. Liberal Pluralism, Negative Liberty, and Toleration.- Chapter 6. Negative Liberty, the Rule of Law, and Nomocratic Pluralism.