ABSTRACT
This chapter explains liberalism, understands as the politics of disenchanted world, must rest upon either value pluralism or scepticism. The disenchanted world, may be characterised as a world without God, but its more general nature is that it is a world in which moral judgements lack the authority provided by an unquestionable framework. The description of disenchantment provided by Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre is in large part a description of the existential condition in which 'people' modern's are likely to find themselves in a world bereft of God and thus devoid of external authority. Some commentators have indeed concluded that scepticism is the price liberalism must pay for metaphysical abstinence. Brian Barry argues that lack of certainty should lead us to embrace moderate scepticism as the means of moving from the agreement motive to liberal neutrality between competing conceptions of the good, Taylor argues that liberal neutrality is deeply unsatisfactory if construed as the guiding principle of political life.
