ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 examines approaches to the problem of pluralism that focus on political and historical context respectively. These two lines of argument are both developed in the work of Bernard Williams. Williams’s ‘realism’ emphasizes the value of social order within the context of ‘the political’. I question why such an emphasis should be maintained in preference to that of Rawls, who sees the paramount political value as justice. I argue that the most plausible defense of Williams’s view is that order is a ‘precondition’ for justice, and so sequentially rather than normatively prior to other values. In that case Williams’s position is compatible with pluralism but no longer distinctively realist. The second theme of Chapter 4 is Williams’s historical contextualism: ethical and political positions are always framed by historical circumstances. Liberalism, for example, is defensible only within the bounds of ‘modernity’. I argue, however, that liberalism is not uniquely justified by modernity. Authoritarian political models, including most recently that of China, also flourish under modern conditions. A more complete justification of liberalism remains to be pursued in Chapters 5, 6, and 8.
