ABSTRACT
Modern liberal-democratic societies are characterized by an irreversible pluralism, that is, by conflicting and incommensurable conceptions of the human good. The grounds of social unity are not hard to specify in homogeneous communities. John Rawls must concede no less; liberal theory needs no more; and the communitarian critics of liberalism cannot in the last analysis deny its possibility. Rawls believes, lies in the lessons liberal-democratic societies have slowly learned in the modern era. The bias of liberalism poses no special difficulty because the sorts of lives it tends to screen out are in themselves questionable from the standpoint of justice. To have the capacity to become aware of the inner contradictions of one's own society is precisely the kind of reflective distance required by the liberal conception of individuality. Liberalism in its classic form saw itself as the product of a decisive break with opinion, tradition, and myth.
