Segmented Foundations and Pluralism 211ethical pluralism, which is concerned with a diversity of ethical norms, rules, and ends.
It embodies the general thesis that there are many different (often incommensurable)
goods required for human flourishing. Moral values are therefore both plural and
internally complex. Nineteenth and twentieth-century variants of ethical pluralism
have usually drawn upon anthropological and sociological evidence of moral diversity
to bolster their perspectives. The majority of contemporary liberal theorists now tend
to acknowledge some form of ethical pluralism as a basis for reflection. Yet, again, this
does not imply any necessary relativism. Universal reason and a minimal universal
ethical code can be maintained with ethical pluralism. The more radical relativist,
opposed to this latter view, would have to show—for liberal thinkers at least—that
reason is not universal. Logically, this is a very tricky thing to do, partly because the
relativist critic has to assume the universality of reason in order to convince us that it
is not universal.
Finally, political pluralism focuses on the institutional recognition, accommoda-
tion, or representation of social or cultural differences. There have been many forms
of political pluralism in the twentieth century. Liberalism is but one of a list. The
more obvious representatives of this perspective would be the English, French, and
German political and juridical pluralist writers, for example, Figgis, Cole, Herbert
Laski, Leon Duguit, and Otto von Gierke, further, guild socialists and the amaz-
ingly diverse forms of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism (see Vincent 1987: ch. 6
or Vincent 1989). In terms of mid-twentieth century political pluralism, empirical
political science dominated much debate. This latter idea moved away from norm-
ative argument for groups towards the empirical study of interest groups; although
in writers such as Dahl it still retained a normative dimension. This conception of
empirical political pluralism still figures in the specialist political science literature.
From the 1980s another normatively orientated language of political pluralism began
to develop, which became closely associated with contemporary liberalism.
Liberal Pluralism
The majority of post-1980s liberal theorists, when speaking about diversity, usually
feel more comfortable with the concept of pluralism. Further, liberal exponents think
that liberalism has always addressed itself to something like pluralism. Finally, most
contemporary liberals, nonetheless, set their faces against the idea of relativism.^2 They
are adamant that liberal pluralism does not entail relativism. The fear or anxiety about
relativism has, though, been part of the more general grammar of political theory,
as a discipline, certainly since the 1950s. Liberal pluralists are therefore not alone
in this repudiation of relativism. Anxiety about relativism stretches across a broad
range of quite different theorists, including Leo Strauss, Jürgen Habermas, Theodore
Adorno, Max Horkheimer, or Roger Scruton. Ironically, whereas conservative and
certain socialist theorists blame relativism on liberalism, liberals frequently associate
it with conservative historicism and multiculturalism.