Table Of ContentWHAT IS PLURALISM?
Is pluralism inherent to the human condition? Does it have its origins in
the diversity of cultures? Are disagreements among individuals the same as
disagreements among societies?
Focusing on these critical questions essential to the understanding of modern
societies, this book traces the origins of pluralism in contemporary political
thought and presents new, original interpretations of the idea by contemporary
philosophers. The chapters in the volume bring clarity into an ongoing fractious
debate and reveal the underlying roots and fissures in our understanding of
a dynamic and contested idea. Drawing on the works of John Rawls, Jürgen
Habermas, and other major political philosophers, they delve into the different
strands of the concept, their possible real-world political outcomes, and popular
misconceptions.
A key text, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers
of politics, political theory and philosophy, and social theory.
Volker Kaul teaches at the Department of Political Science at LUISS “Guido
Carli” University in Rome and is lecturer at the CEA Rome Center, Italy. He
also coordinates the research area “East-West Dialogues” for the foundation
Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations.
Ingrid Salvatore is an associate professor of political philosophy at the University
of Salerno, Italy.
Ethics, Human Rights, and Global Political Thought
Series Editors: Aakash Singh Rathore and Sebastiano Maffettone
Center for Ethics & Global Politics, Luiss University, Rome
Whereas the interrelation of ethics and political thought has been recognized
since the dawn of political reflection, over the last sixty years – roughly since the
United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – we have witnessed
a particularly turbulent process of globalizing the coverage and application of
that interrelation. At the very instant the decolonized globe consolidated the
universality of the sovereign nation-state, that sovereignty – and the political
thought that grounded it – was eroded and outstripped, not as in eras past, by
imperial conquest and instruments of war, but rather by instruments of peace
(charters, declarations, treaties, conventions), and instruments of commerce and
communication (multinational enterprises, international media, global aviation
and transport, internet technologies).
Has political theory kept apace with global political realities? Can ethical
reflection illuminate the murky challenges of real global politics?
This Routledge book series Ethics, Human Rights, and Global Political Thought
addresses these crucial questions by bringing together outstanding monographs
and anthologies that deal with the intersection of normative theorizing and politi-
cal realities with a global focus. Treating diverse topics by means of interdisciplin-
ary techniques – including philosophy, political theory, international relations
and human rights theories, and global and postcolonial studies – the books in the
Series present up-to-date research that is accessible, practical, yet scholarly.
International Toleration
A Theory
Pietro Maffettone
What is Pluralism?
Edited by Volker Kaul and Ingrid Salvatore
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Ethics-Human-Rights-and-Global-Political-Thought/book-series/EHRGPT
WHAT IS PLURALISM?
Edited by Volker Kaul and Ingrid Salvatore
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Volker Kaul and Ingrid Salvatore;
individual chapters, the contributors
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CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Preface by Sebastiano Maffettone xi
What is pluralism? An introduction 1
Volker Kaul and Ingrid Salvatore
PART I
Epistemic pluralism and democracy 15
1 From pluralism to liberalism: the long way around 17
Robert B. Talisse
2 Pluralism and deliberation 31
Matteo Bianchin
3 Social choice or collective decision-making: what is
politics all about? 48
Thomas Mulligan
4 Liberalism, pluralism, and a third way 62
Giulia Bistagnino
vi Contents
PART II
Political pluralism and reasonable consensus 79
5 Sideways at the entrance of the cave: a pluralist footnote
to Plato 81
Alessandro Ferrara
6 Pluralism and the possibility of a liberal political
consensus 99
Catherine Audard
7 Modus vivendi liberalism, practice dependence and
political legitimacy 122
Valentina Gentile
8 A pluralist model of democracy 139
Maeve Cooke
9 Rawls, religion, and the clash of civilizations 155
David Rasmussen
PART III
Cultures, religions, and politics 171
10 The practice of liberty 173
Erin I. Kelly
11 Sharing a conception of justice, sharing a conception of
the good: liberalism as a pluralist theory vs. pluralism
as a non-liberal theory 188
Ingrid Salvatore
12 Pluralism and solidarity: non-authoritarian reasoning
and non-fundamentalist attitude 205
Karim Sadek
13 Populism, liberalism and nationalism 225
Volker Kaul
Index 238
CONTRIBUTORS
Catherine Audard is a visiting fellow at the Department of Philosophy of the
London School of Economics and is the chair and co-founder of the Forum
for European Philosophy. She has widely published on John Rawls’s concep-
tion of democracy and public reason, on Habermas’s conception of the public
sphere, and on various normative issues in political theory: justice and equal-
ity, ‘property-owning democracy’, citizenship, secularism and multiculturalism,
liberalism, republicanism, and deliberative democracy. She is the author of John
Rawls, London (2007), and has also published translations into French of works
by John Stuart Mill and John Rawls as well as numerous books and articles in
French. Her current project is a critical examination of the normative basis for
social intervention and social justice in a multicultural, multi-faith environment.
Matteo Bianchin is an associate professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
He has been a DAAD research fellow at the University of Cologne and a Marie-
Curie Fellow at KU Leuven. His research focuses on the philosophy of mind, the
philosophy of social sciences, and political philosophy.
Giulia Bistagnino is a postdoctoral research fellow in political theory and an
adjunct professor of political philosophy for the Ph.D. program in political stud-
ies at the Department of Social and Political Science of the University of Milan.
She holds a Ph.D. in political studies from the University of Milan and a M.Litt.
in philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. She was junior visiting scholar
at Nuffield College, Oxford, and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her
main research interests concern the problem of pluralism and disagreement
within democratic societies, with a particular focus on the notions of legitimacy
and compromise and the tension between expertise and democracy. Among her
most recent publications are the article “Disagreement, Peerhood, Compromise”
viii Contributors
in Social Theory and Practice (2018), written with Federico Zuolo, and the book
Compromessi di principio. Il disaccordo nella filosofia politica contemporanea [Principled
compromises. Disagreement in contemporary political philosophy] (2018).
Maeve Cooke is a professor of philosophy at University College Dublin, Ire-
land, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Her current research interests
center on the relation between freedom and authority and on related questions
of protest, resistance, and violence. Her subsequent project is a critical theory of
the Anthropocene. She has published two monographs in critical social theory:
Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas’s Pragmatics (1994) and Re-Presenting
the Good Society (2006) and is the author of many articles in the areas of social
and political philosophy. She is on the editorial board of a number of scholarly
journals and has held visiting appointments at leading universities in the United
States and Europe.
Alessandro Ferrara is a professor of political philosophy at the University of
Rome Tor Vergata. Educated in philosophy and sociology at the University of
California at Berkeley and at the Goethe-Universität of Frankfurt, he is the
author of The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Lib-
eralism (New York, 2014); The Force of the Example. Explorations in the Paradigm
of Judgment (New York, 2008); and Justice and Judgment. The Rise and the Pros-
pect of the Judgment Model in Contemporary Political Philosophy (London,1999). On
authenticity, he has authored Rousseau and Critical Theory, (Boston-Leiden, 2017);
Reflective Authenticity. Rethinking the Project of Modernity (London & New York,
1998); and Modernity and Authenticity. A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Albany, 1993).
Valentina Gentile is an assistant professor in political philosophy at LUISS Uni-
versity. From 2016 she has been a guest professor at Antwerp University, holding
a chair in Interreligious Dialogue and the Ethics of Peace. Her research focuses on
normative political theory, moral stability, pluralism, and the principles of reci-
procity, toleration, equality, and social justice. Her recent publications include
(2018) “From a Culture of Civility to Deliberative Reconciliation in Deeply
Divided Societies” in the Journal of Social Philosophy (2018); “Rawls’s inclusivism
and the case of ‘religious militants for peace’: A reply to Weithman’s restrictive
inclusivism” in Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series) (2017); and “Democratic
Justice: The Priority of Politics and the Ideal of Citizenship” in CRISPP Criti-
cal Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. She is the co-editor of the
collection Rawls and Religion and author of From Identity-Conflicts to Civil Society:
Restoring Human Dignity and Pluralism in Deeply Divided Societies.
Volker Kaul is a teaching fellow at the Department of Political Science at LUISS
“Guido Carli” University in Rome, a research associate at LUISS ETHOS, and a
lecturer at the CEA Rome Center. Moreover, he works as scientific coordinator
Contributors ix
of the Istanbul/Venice Seminars for Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. His work
focuses on collective identities, intercultural ethics, and communication. In 2016,
he published together with Seyla Benhabib a book titled Toward New Democratic
Imaginaries – Istanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics. He is co-editing since
2010 a yearly special issue of Philosophy & Social Criticism on issues related to cul-
ture, religion, and politics. He is currently editing together with Ananya Vajpeyi
a book on Populism and Minorities – Critical Perspectives from South Asia and Europe.
Erin I. Kelly is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. She works at the
intersections of ethics, political philosophy, and legal theory. Her book The Lim-
its of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility (2018) criticizes the role of
blame in popular philosophies of criminal justice. She has published papers on
such themes as the limits of individual responsibility, the nature and sources
of social inequality, how disadvantage bears on assessments of responsibility,
and how to understand the requirements of justice in a society with a historical
legacy of unjust inequalities. Her work has appeared in prominent philosophy
journals, including Ethics and the Journal of Philosophy.
Sebastiano Maffettone is a professor of political philosophy at LUISS “Guido
Carli” University and director of LUISS ETHOS, a newly founded observa-
tory of public ethics at LUISS Business School. His research focuses on John
Rawls, global justice, human rights and comparative political theory. He has a
forthcoming book with the title Politica on contemporary international political
theory and published recently Karl Marx nel XXI secolo. Maffettone is also author
of Rawls: An Introduction published by Polity Press and Il valore della vita.
Thomas Mulligan is a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Institute for the
Study of Markets and Ethics, where he conducts research in, primarily, economic
justice, and collective decision-making. He is the author of a monograph, Justice
and the Meritocratic State (2018, Routledge).
David Rasmussen is an emeritus professor at Boston College, where he con-
tinues as a research professor. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the jour-
nal Philosophy and Social Criticism. He is author and editor of twenty-one books,
including Reading Habermas, Mythic-Symbolic Language and Philosophical Anthropol-
ogy, Universalism vs. Communitarianism, and the Handbook of Critical Theory. He is
currently working on a book on the post-Theory of Justice work of John Rawls.
Karim Sadek is currently an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the
School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and an assistant professor at
Alliance of Civilization Institute, Istanbul. Previously, Sadek was a Mellon Post-
Doctoral Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at the American University of Bei-
rut, a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, and a
Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe Fellow at the Forum
