num_pages: 216
description: Nicholas Rescher presents a critical reaction against two currently influential tendencies of thought. On the one hand, he rejects the facile relativism that pervades contemporary social and academic life. On the other hand, he opposes the rationalism inherent in neo-contractariantheory--both in the idealized communicative-contract version promoted in continental European political philosophy by J;urgen Habermas, and in the idealized social contract version of the theory of political justice promoted in the Anglo-American context by John Rawls. Against such tendencies,Rescher's pluralist approach takes a more realistic and pragmatic line, eschewing the convenient recourse of idealization in cognitive and practical matters. Instead of a utopianism that looks to a uniquely perfect order that would prevail under ideal conditions, he advocates incrementalimprovements within the framework of arrangements that none of us will deem perfect but that all of us "can live with." Such an approach replaces the yearning for an unattainable consensus with the institution of pragmatic arrangements in which the community will acquiesce--not through agreeing ontheir optimality, but through a shared recognition among the dissonant parties that the available options are even worse.
language: English
title: Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus
titlecomplete: Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy)
genres: Philosophy
ratings_count: 9
publisher: Oxford University Press