Thursday, August 18, 2011
Is Isaiah Berlin right? Are there truly desirable values that can't be realized simultaneously?
"The rejection of value judgment is based on the umption that the conflicts between different values or value-systems are essentially insoluble for human reason. But this umption, while generally taken to be sufficiently established, has never been proven... What we find in fact are sketchy observations which pretend to prove that this or that specific value conflict is insoluble. It is prudent to grant that there are value conflicts which cannot in fact be settled by human reason. But if we cannot decide which of two mountains whose peaks are hidden by clouds is higher than the other, cannot we decide that a mountain is higher than a molehill?... The belief that value judgments are not subject, in the last ysis, to rational control, encourages the inclination to make irresponsible ertions regarding right and wrong or good and bad. One evades serious discussion of serious issues by the simple device of ping them off as value problems. One even creates the impression that all important human conflicts are value conflicts, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arise out of men's very agreement regarding values."
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