While most political theorists focus on the role of reflective judgment in Kant's Critique of Judgment, the political dimensions of art itself have been overlooked. Kant's treatment of art suggests a consistent political message: art, as an analogy, can teach basic values for citizenship. I examine his hierarchy of the arts, as well as his treatment of genius and taste, arguing that each is informed by Kant's belief in the heuristic capacity of art.

In his work Politics as Religion, Emilio Gentile credits Eric Voegelin with having invented, if not the expression itself, then at least the concept of “political religion” which the latter would use consistently throughout the 1960s to describe totalitarian regimes. In his Autobiographical Reflections, drawn from an interview recorded in 1973, Voegelin revisits the use of this expression and gives an indication of the sources that inspired him to adopt it:

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Oakeshott are often labeled conservative thinkers, and taken to theorize rigid limits to individual agency and criticism. Tracing several modes of affinity between the work of Wittgenstein and Oakeshott, one can recognize the conventionality and rule-governed character of linguistic practices and yet affirm a deeply individualistic account of agency and action. Each thinker respectively characterizes the individual as located within a context of action that is richly structured by intersubjective rules and practices. Yet each also recognizes an ineluctable dimension of individuality and contingency to action that surpasses mere rule following or the reprise of conventional practice. The very situatedness of the individual agent within a framework of linguistic practices shared with others provides the friction that enables individual criticism and transgressive political action. Wittgenstein and Oakeshott thus present a perspective on political agency and criticism that is a salient alternative to both conservative and radical views.

The essay explores the relationship between value pluralism, as Isaiah Berlin understood it, and liberalism. It consists of two main parts. In the first part, I argue that value pluralism does not entail liberalism, and I criticize two philosophers—William Galston and George Crowder—who believe that it does. In the second, I reconstruct and defend Isaiah Berlin's own understanding of this relationship, drawing on an essay that is often neglected by Berlin's interpreters: “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life.” Berlin thought that the relationship between value pluralism and liberalism was largely psychological. He believed that those who embraced value pluralism would be more likely to affirm liberal institutions, because they would be more likely to exhibit certain virtues—notably empathy, imagination, and openness to other ways of life—that typically motivate tolerance.

Although I welcome the opportunity to discuss Alex Zakaras's fine essay, I fear that my response will disappoint him (and perhaps others as well). I find his arguments cogent and plausible, if not altogether persuasive, but many of them are directed against claims that I do not think I made. Two examples will suffice.

It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to Alex Zakaras's thoughtful and stimulating article. Although Zakaras takes my work (together with that of William Galston) as a critical target, much of what he says is common ground between us. That includes his basic understanding of value pluralism, his evident support for that idea, and his broadly liberal approach to politics. Moreover, I think that he makes a significant contribution by drawing attention to the relation between pluralism and fallibility, and by focusing on Isaiah Berlin's treatment of Mill in that connection. Zakaras is right that Berlin's essay on Mill has not until now been carefully examined as a resource for the debate about the way pluralism relates to liberalism, and his suggestions about what the essay may tell us in that regard are valuable.

I am grateful to both William Galston and George Crowder for their thoughtful responses. In writing the original essay, I had two goals in mind. First, I wanted to give an accurate reading of Isaiah Berlin's philosophy and to challenge certain misconceptions about it. Second, I hoped to use some of Berlin's insights to contribute to the contemporary discussion of value pluralism and its relationship to liberalism. Neither Galston nor Crowder disputes my reading of Berlin. Galston writes that he “never set out to write as an interpreter of Berlin”; Crowder, too, simply brackets the question of interpretation (see his footnote 1). So I will focus these comments strictly on the problem of value pluralism's relationship to political liberalism.