Isaiah Berlin and William James: Tragedy, Tragicomedy, Comedy

Abstract

Introduction Given the influential way in which he imported the classic metaphysical theme of “the One and the Many” into moral and political philosophy, Isaiah Berlin has been recognized as the father of contemporary “value pluralism.” But Berlin is not without his precursors – most famously, Max Weber, with his 1919 lecture “Politics as a Vocation.” William James has also been counted among them. As Joshua Cherniss and Henry Hardy write in their encyclopedia entry on Berlin, for example: “Ethical pluralism first emerged under that name . . . in America, inspired by William James’s pluralistic view of the universe.” And indeed, for some time now, many have identified James as a pluralist – not least James himself. But in some respects, his position is much more ambiguous than Berlin’s. For example, a close look at the title of his A Pluralistic Universe should prepare us for the fact that, while the book rejects various monisms (in particular, those from Socrates through to absolute idealism), it also makes clearly non-pluralistic claims such as that “we still have a coherent world . . . Our ‘multiverse’ still makes a ‘universe’.” Indeed, while I wouldn’t go as far as Robert B. Talisse for whom James is “anti-pluralist,” I will argue that James is both pluralist and monist. In fact, it is my contention that neither James nor Berlin is a pluralist tout court.