But not all pluralists agree with this happy marriage, and Gray is perhaps
the harshest critic. As much as he admires the attempts of Berlin and Raz to
bridge liberalism and pluralism, Gray ( 1996 , 142 , 146 ) argues the connection
does not hold, and he criticizes both Berlin and Raz for believing that a value
pluralism based in incommensurability can live compatibly with liberalism.
‘‘The central Xaw in this common reasoning is in the assumption that
principles of liberty or justice can be insulated from the force of value-
incommensurability’’ ( 1996 , 147 ). In practice in liberal societies, liberty
trumps diversity, and if you are a value pluralist, there can be no justiWcation
for that norm ( 1996 , 152 ).
Gray is an unrelenting pluralist critic of modern liberalism, and his com-
plaints go further than this diVerence with Berlin and Raz; they generally fall
within two categories: the individualist nature of contemporary liberalism and
the attempt to universalize its applicability. On theWrst, Gray follows com-
munitarian critics in noting the lack of the social in liberal understandings, but
his focus is on lack of attention to the meaning of speciWc group memberships.
In essence, Gray’s critique is that liberalism in contemporary practice is too
individualist toWt in the group-centered world of pluralism; American liber-
alism in particular trivializes value pluralism as ‘‘alternative lifestyles.’’
Here Gray resurrects one of the long-standing pluralist critiques of liber-
alism—the lack of a middle ground between individuals and the state, which
is in essence a lack of recognition of the diVerence and autonomy of group
life. MouVe( 1992 , 231 ) also explains the pluralist challenge in exactly these
terms: ‘‘Our only choice is not one between an aggregate of individuals
without common public concern and a pre-modern community organized
around a single substantive idea of the common good. Envisaging the mod-
ern democratic political community outside of this dichotomy is the crucial
challenge.’’ Key to pluralism through its generations is the understanding that
our identity comes through cultural groups and our social interactions within
and among them. While some pluralists believe that liberalism oVers recog-
nition and autonomy to groups, the more thorough pluralist critique is that
liberalism is simply not accommodating to that group focus. Deveaux ( 2000 ),
for example, disparages Raz’s and Berlin’s attempts to bridge the liberal/
pluralist divide by explaining group life as the context for personal autonomy.
The approach is both too individualist in its focus—groups as the context for
personal autonomy—and is in conXict with groups that simply may not value
individual autonomy as much as liberals. Illiberal groups, especially, make
pluralist/liberal compatibility tenuous, at best.
the pluralist imagination 155