Towards an Ethic of Pluralism

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, Virginia), March 11, 2007, by the Rev. Don Robert Johnson, a former Methodist minister, a former college chaplain, and Leader Emeritus of the Ethical Society of St. Louis. Rev Johnson will be in the pulpit twice a month during Rev. Brownlie’s sabbatical.

Readings

Let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

John Keats

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

Charles Kettering

The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it.

Montaigne

The essence of a pluralistic outlook lies in opinions being held tentatively, and with an awareness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their revision or abandonment. We must not suppose that the nature of reality is exhausted by the kinds of knowledge which we have at any one time. This view recognizes that facts are friendly.

We experience sympathy with a variety of conflicting ideals of life. We are most at home where various views are valued rather than where single intense visions of life are held that drive people to try to make all hold to their truth.

We are grateful to be part of a community that is pluralistic in its philosophy. To be pluralistic means to be free from bigotry, tolerant of ideas and behaviors that are not harmful to others; broad-minded, enlarged in spirit and catholic in the sense of universal. Rather than let uncertainty create paralysis, we will be committed to action based on what we do know at this time.

Don Johnson

Sermon

Jane Austen has Emma say:

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

Procrustes, a figure in Greek mythology forced visitors to fit in his beds by either stretching their legs or cutting off their legs. This is reminiscent of the monist philosophy encouraged by so many today. Monism is the belief that their is a single truth into which all should fit. Monism is at the root of every extremism. Those who know should be obeyed, they alone know how lives should be lived, how societies should or should not be organized.

Stephen Crane wrote a poem about such narrowness:

'Think as I think,' said a man, 'or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad.' And after I had thought about it, I said, 'I will then be a toad.'

On the other hand, at the core of the intellectual thought called pluralism is a process that encourages multiplicity in beliefs and institutions. This is contrary to the monist view that there is or ought to be only one view or one good for all. Pluralists think that reality cannot be explained (nor fully experienced) by one substance, perspective or principle alone.

Pluralism includes flexible consensus and dissensus, and therefore seeks to design institutions which allow for the expression and competition of a plurality of ideals and interests. This idea is certainly central to the formation of Unitarian-Universalism itself, where wide latitude in opinion exists.

Pluralism favors a vigorous civil society marked by extensive group autonomy, activity, and diversity. In practice pluralists emphasize (1) the merits of exposing individuals to varying, competing and even conflicting ideals and interests, (2) the protection of minority rights in law so that the legitimacy of diverse groups is respected, and (3) on reducing large corporately organized influence on political decision making.

As the late philosopher Isaiah Berlin said:  

I came to the conclusion that there is a plurality of ideals, as there is a plurality of cultures and of temperaments. I am not a relativist; I do not say: I like my coffee with milk while you like it without; I like kindness and you prefer concentration camps — each of us with his or her values, which cannot be overcome or integrated. This I believe to be false. But I do believe that there is a plurality of values which we can and do seek, and that these values differ. . . Hence the possibility of human understanding.

I can enter into a value system which is not my own, but which is nevertheless something I can conceive of another person pursuing while remaining a reasoning and caring human.

Or there is the viewpoint of Buddhism on the ineffability of any truth.

Pluralism, then, in its widest sense is concerned with the relation of values to each other. It rejects both a monist perspective of a monolithic, singular answer which results in absolutism, as well as a relativist position which insists on no limits, which consequently favors an “anything goes” perspective. Pluralism raises the question about when to tolerate, when to embrace, and when to fight.

In his excellent book, The Morality of Pluralism, John Kekes identifies some major theses of pluralism:

1. First, pluralism recognizes the variety and conditionality of values. Whether the world is one or many is among the oldest questions of humankind. Is there an underlying unity behind the multiplicity of ways the world appears to us, or is the world as varied as it appears.

Pluralists believe there are many values worth pursuing. There are both primary values and secondary values. Primary values include benefits and harms normally regarded as such by all reasonable human beings (e.g. to be loved, to be respected are regarded as benefits while torture, humiliation, and exploitation are agreed upon as harms). Secondary values vary with persons, societies, traditions, and historical periods, and are recognized as including vast individual differences. We have to eat, so nutrition is a primary value. But generally, what we eat, with whom we eat, where and how we eat vary greatly.

Pluralists are committed then to the view that the conceptions of a good life and the values on whose realization good lives depend are plural and conditional.

As Aristotle put it: good is not a general term corresponding to a single idea.

So a major thesis of pluralism is that the possibilities of life are exceedingly varied and rich. So we each have to select from some of the myriad options, and therefore must reasonably compare, rank and balance the possibilities, so as to choose those that seem to us choice-worthy.

Different lives may be made good by the realization of different possibilities.

We make our lives the way artists make works of art:from some context, some tradition, some influences, and limited by our talents, imagination, and skill as well as by the available possibilities and the demands and expectation of others.

2. Pluralists hold that there can be no avoidance of conflicts. While it is true conflicts can lead to either enhanced perspectives or, in extremity, to the disintegration of morality or of a society, conflict is a reality.

Our task is how to manage and cope with conflict. We must redirect our thinking and nourish our imaginations in order to affirm where commonalities exist and to transform conflicts from conflicts of values to conflicts about the means of resolving conflicts.

For example, many political activists claim that one particular domination precipitates all really important oppressions. Whether economic, anarchist, environmentalist,  nationalist, or feminist, these ideal types argue that all important issues can be reduced to one central issue: the economy, state, nature, culture, gender, liberty, etc. These become monist positions that emphasize "reductionist" foundations. Such adherents of each perspective claim their particular concepts of power and structure are the CENTRAL determinants of oppression and social change.

Pluralism claims we must use more than one set of intellectual tools or perspectives because social causes cannot be reduced to a single determinating factor.

3. Yet pluralists also recognize the need for limits. It is not relativism. “Not everything is permitted," as Milan Kundera says. The importance of some values over others can be defended. Deep conventions protect the minimum requirements of all good lives and of a morally acceptable tradition. There must be the setting of limits where the most basic and serious values are recognized.

In one Unitarian Universalist advertisement I saw this week in another area, I read:

Pagans welcome here. . . as well as atheists, humanists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sufis, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists or people of any other religious persuasion, personal philosophy or unique world view.

But do UU congregations really want to welcome any and every personal philosophy or unique world view? Are their no limits?

When I was Senior Leader for the Ethical Society of New York a man started attending our services wearing a Nazi armband and carrying Mein Kampf. We had many holocaust survivors as members and attendees. One member lost all her family but herself and a cousin. 117 members of her family had died in concentration camps! Any way, when I realized what philosophy or world view that this person was supporting I pulled him aside and told him he could not visit if he wore the arm band and carried Mein Kampf. He protested and spoke about his freedom of speech rights. I told him if he wanted to stand out on the public sidewalk and praise Nazi philosophy he could do so, and I would even defend his right to do so even though I see Nazism as evil. But the Ethical Society was not a public institution and we would not allow within it a philosophy that saw some human beings as inferior.

An essay by Michael Kinsley in the New Yorker, entitled The Intellectual Free Lunch refers to how our current culture, Kinsley states, “celebrates ignorant opinion and undifferentiated rage.”  And this, he adds, is exacerbated by a media that is “eroding representative government by providing instant feedback between voters’ whims and politicians’ actions.”

Opinion polls assume everyone should have views on all subjects at all times and all such views are equally valid. People believe their opinions are not to be fettered by either facts or reflection. Yet, as Robert Bellah has said, democracy depends on citizens paying attention. Limits and responsibilities are necessary.

Pluralists define a prospect for moral progress. The pluralist ideal is that a tradition be as receptive to a plurality of conceptions of a good life as is consistent with the limits needed to maintain itself. Individually, we must construct for ourselves a reasonable and satisfactory ranking of the possibilities we value, and then we must live our commitments. Wrenching conflicts can be transformed into committed habits. Pluralism is not about always wavering between choices and never choosing and acting. Eternal fence-sitting is not pluralism.

So, at its best, realitys many parts act together to form an entwined whole. All of life is to be understood not as independent and permanent but as a part of the whole flowing movement. This means all phenomena influence other phenomena, and cannot be successfully extracted from the whole. This liberating theory has been called "complementary holism."

William Perry studied this very issue among young people in their development from dependence to independence to interdependence. This is a movement from a simple to a more complete and complex world view that young people who move into maturity experience:

1. First, we are embedded in a tradition perceived as right.

2. Then we recognize there are a multiplicity of viewpoints, but consider those different from ours as wrong.

3. Then we realize there are some areas of knowledge where no one has the one right answer.

4. We then get to where we acknowledge large areas of thought and action where a multiplicity of answers are valid.

5. Then we accept context as valid, and move into relativism.

6. From there we come to realize an alternative to relativism is through personal commitments and affirmations to perspectives that seem appropriate to us, and serve as more valid for us.

7. We make major choices for ourselves based on thorough considerations of many alternatives available.

8. We become aware that life is filled with commitments and convictions that are key in forging our own major personal identity.

9. We maintain balance and continuity in our lives through many commitments and changes, always open to new perspectives and what they might offer us.

I probably could have made this talk much shorter just by telling a light bulb joke.

How many people in the following religious traditions does it take to change a light bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1. Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal : 10. One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None. Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None. Candles only.

Baptists: At least 15. One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3. One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Methodists: Undetermined. Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to share.

Nazarene : 6. One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None. Lutherans don't believe in change.

Amish: What's a light bulb?

Unitarians: We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

If we think of life as a garden, we will want to plant our garden with all the best diversity.

Pluralism as a topic, leads us directly to a discussion of multiculturalism as well. The conflict is centered on two widely accepted but yet at some points divergent values. The value of equal dignity is based on the idea that all human beings are equally worthy of respect. The other value is in recognizing the uniqueness and difference among people.

The issue is the recognition of the authentic self and authentic cultures, and the need to do so by maintaining and cherishing distinctness.

These two are bound to diverge and result in conflicts, which we see all around us. In a fascinating book entitled Multiculturalism, edited by Amy Gutmann, we have lived with a historic intellectual tradition (exemplified in Rousseau and his followers) that assumes that we can satisfy the perceived universal need for public and personal recognition by converting human equality into common identity. This politics of recognition is suspicious of all social differences and seeks to homogenize all tendencies into a politics of the common good which reflects our universal identity.

But democracies cannot regard citizenship as a comprehensive universal identity because:

• People are unique, self-creating and creative individuals (a view expressed by John Stuart Mill, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ethical Culture founder Felix Adler).

• People are also culture-bearing and the cultures they bear differ depending on their past and present identifications. As one Frenchman wrote in 1797:

In the course of my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians; I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian; but man I have never met.

Yet while we do have particular identities of a collective dimension, we also have a personal dimension. Who wants to be seen as only an American, an African-American, or a gay? Categories of identity must always come up short before the realities of actual people’s lives. So Felix Adler, provided a direction at a First Universal Races Congress he initiated:

What we really require is a new respect for the unlikeness that goes with likeness. 

We should emphasize the fact that essential human unity did and should express itself in essential difference. This is the task for people everywhere.

• Human identity is created dialogically, in response to our relations, including public deliberations with each other, which are now woefully few.

But multiculturalism, to enhance a democracy, cannot simply be about preserving distinct and unique cultures. The value of diversity is in expanding the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual horizons of all individuals, enriching ourselves and our world by exposing us to differing perspectives and increasing our possibilities for intellectual and spiritual growth, exploration, and enlightenment.

The survival of many mutually exclusive cultures is not enough. It must be joined by knowledge and experience of these myriad cultures, of respect for them, and dialogue among them. We can make a virtue out of the reality and necessity of our differences.

The moral promise of multiculturalism depends on not just tolerance, but dialogue, deliberation, and respect. Our motivation must not be that multiculturalism helps out the minority and is therefore an altruistic act, but that we ourselves, whoever we are, cannot be whole without knowledge, experience, dialogue and relationship with the other. We only need a sense of our own limited part in the whole human story to move ahead. It is only arrogance than can deprive us of this. Hopefully we will choose the better way.

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