Edmund Burke’s Value Pluralism

ABSTRACT

Given his commitment to toleration, Edmund Burke is rightly seen as a moral pluralist. What has largely gone unnoticed, however, is his value pluralism. Whereas moral pluralism refers to normative positions regarding what we have reason to do when faced with diverse considerations, value pluralism is a meta-ethical position regarding how we resolve conflicts between any number of reasons for action. Like Isaiah Berlin, Burke maintains both that we may be faced with value conflicts and that we cannot identify the general rule for their resolution. However, Burke, at times, adopts a weak version of value pluralism, identifying a general rule for the resolution of some moral conflicts. This is the case when he insists that liberty cannot exist at all without order and virtue, and when he reassures his readers that toleration of Irish Catholicism poses no threat to the established order. At other times, however, Burke offers a strong version of value pluralism, eschewing any such rule. One of the benefits of doing so is the awareness that toleration may be justified even when contrary to the demands of order and virtue.

KEYWORDS:

• Isaiah Berlin
• Edmund Burke
• moral pluralism
• toleration
• value pluralism

Edmund Burke’s work tells us a great deal about the kind of reasoning we engage in when addressing moral and political problems. Because of the importance he gives to prejudice in his account of practical rationality, he is undoubtedly a philosophical conservative.¹ Moreover, his is a sceptical approach to practical reason, given his concerns with precedence in reasoning as well as the unavoidability of difficult cases arising in political practice.² What I emphasise in this article are the two ways in which Burke places pluralism at the heart of moral and political thought. For a start, he is rightly seen as a moral pluralist, not least because of his commitment to toleration.³ However, as others are beginning to notice,⁴ Burke also offers a value pluralist explanation of how to resolve moral conflicts.

There is considerable variation in our use of the terms moral pluralism and value pluralism.⁵ In this article, I use moral pluralism to refer to a wide range of normative positions adopted regarding what we have reason to do when faced with diverse considerations, including, for example, that we should seek means to satisfy diverse moral considerations.⁶ In contrast, I use value pluralism to refer to a meta-ethical position regarding how we resolve conflicts between reasons for action, a standpoint we can see in Isaiah Berlin’s contention that there is an irreducible plurality of “ends” and “claims,” and no general rule for the resolution of conflicts that arise between them.⁷ Burke is offering his own version of moral pluralism. He maintains that, when faced with diverse groups and diverse principles, what we ought to do is “preserve each … in its proper place and with its proper proportion of power.”⁸ However, Burke also highlights both that we may be faced with conflicts (between goods, and between goods and evils, and between evils) and that how we resolve them is not a matter of “exact definition.”⁹ Hence, we are justified in seeing Burke as offering the kind of meta-ethical approach to moral conflict that twentieth-century value pluralists will set out in a more systematic way.

In this article, I also distinguish between weak and strong versions of value pluralism. Value pluralism is weak when it puts forward a general rule for the resolution of some moral conflicts, whereas value pluralism is strong when it eschews all such rules. At certain points, but not others, Berlin’s value pluralism is weak, in particular when he maintains that value pluralists will be committed to toleration of difference.¹⁰ The same can be said of Burke. Despite insisting that conflicts cannot be resolved as a matter of strict definition, he concludes that liberty cannot exist at all without order and virtue, and he reassures his readers that toleration of Irish Catholicism poses no threat to the established order.¹¹ Although many contemporary theorists offer a weak version of value pluralism,¹² I argue here that it should be avoided. The benefits of doing so become clear when we consider Burke’s arguments on toleration. On the occasions when Burke does maintain a strong version of value pluralism, he is able to perceive the wide range of cases where toleration might be justified, including when toleration would be contrary to order and virtue.

Moral Pluralism and Value Pluralism

In this article, I argue that Burke is both a moral pluralist and a value pluralist. I begin with his moral pluralism. This is a normative position regarding what we have reason to do when faced with diverse considerations, including diverse moral principles and interests. Burke’s moral pluralism is apparent when, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, from 1790, he characterizes revolutionary politics as “simple” and, for that reason, “false”:

The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs. … The simple governments are fundamentally defective. … The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.¹³

When rejecting “simple” arguments, Burke has in mind the voluntarism of Rousseau, among others. Voluntarists maintain that political authority must arise from one principle, namely the voluntary choice of “the people,” and this presupposes “that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct.”¹⁴ Burke is scathing in his criticism of what he sees as Rousseau’s hypocrisy.¹⁵ He also believes that the “simple” ideas of Rousseau and others are responsible for terrible wrongs, including the destruction of anything and everything representative of contrary principles. For example, it is these simple ideas that were called on to justify the “destruction of the Christian religion” under the French Revolution.¹⁶ At the same time, this simplicity also appeals to many Christians, including dissenting Protestants. As Burke notes with alarm, the French Revolution, and its ideology of the rights of man, has found followers among English dissenters, most notably Richard Price.¹⁷

As an antidote to the dangerous simplicity of voluntarism, Burke offers the complexity of moral pluralism. When faced with diversity, what we ought to do is maintain both the plurality of political interests and forces and the plurality of justificatory moral principles. For example, the British Constitution, Burke says, consists of “three members, of three very different natures,” namely monarchy, aristocracy, and the people; and it is our “duty to preserve each of these members in its proper place and with its proper proportion of power.”¹⁸ Burke accepts that his approach will have the appearance of inconsistency. At one time, he strove to restrict the power of the English Crown, because he feared despotism emerging under George III, in particular because “factions predominated in the Court in which the nation had no confidence.”¹⁹ At other moments, as we have seen in his critique of the French Revolution, he rejects calls for a republic based solely on democratic principles as well.²⁰ However, this is not “an inconsistency in principle,” Burke maintains, but rather “a difference in conduct under a variation of circumstances.”²¹ On occasion, it is the Crown that threatens moral pluralism; at other times, it is the people and their representatives. At all times, however, you ought to act to “preserve” each in “its proper place and with its proper proportion of power.”

Burke does not stop here. He also addresses situations where moral pluralism leads to moral conflict, including tragic conflicts where we do something wrong no matter what we do. This is evident when he considers how to deal with the moral conflicts occasioned by revolution. He says: “The burden of proof lies heavily on those who tear to pieces the whole frame and contexture of their country”; and what is more: “In their political arrangements, men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question.”²² Of course, he is drawing attention to the evils of revolution. However, his argument is not simply a conservative rejection of radical change. His position, it seems, is not that revolutions can never be justified. Rather, it is that we are faced with a genuine moral conflict here between, on the one hand, the requirement to avoid causing evil and, on the other, the requirement to bring about the good promised by revolution. Otherwise, there would be no question of “proof” being needed in the first place, even if Burke thinks its “burden” falls on the revolutionaries.

We now turn from Burke’s normative position (his moral pluralism) to his meta-ethical approach to the resolution of moral conflicts. The question is, how are we to resolve moral conflicts like these? This is where Burke gives a pre-eminent role to “prudence” and “prejudice.”²³ In his satirical “A Vindication of Natural Society” from 1756, Burke feigns to maintain precisely what he knows can never be, namely that “all moral Duties … rested upon having their Reasons made clear and demonstrative to every Individual.”²⁴ Similarly, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful from 1759, he concludes that the influence of reason in producing our passions, including the passions of pain and pleasure, is “nothing near so extensive as commonly believed.”²⁵ Reason can only go so far, and at some point comes up against mystery. However, what we do have is prejudice, or the opinions we take from those with whom we share a culture.²⁶ Hence, “the influence of most things on our passions is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinion of other men, conveyable for the most part by words only.”²⁷

Of course, it is understandable that many see this talk of prudence and prejudice as, simply, incontrovertible evidence of Burke’s conservatism. Conservative admirers note that his “momentous doctrine of prejudice” entails that “communal bonds are necessary to social order”;²⁸ and critics believe Burke is guilty of “contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradition with conflict.”²⁹ There is, of course, some truth to this. As he says about Irish Catholics in his “Tract on the Popery Laws,” from 1765, their religious commitment “was handed down to them from their ancestors.”³⁰ This counts in its favour; and this is explained by the fact that “Veneration of antiquity is congenial to the human mind.”³¹ The same is true of the liberties we can rightfully claim. Through veneration of antiquity, we arrive at justified conclusions about the liberties we may enjoy in our political community. This is what Burke, in a 1778 letter to Sexton Perry, refers to as “prescription,” or the continuity of custom.³²

Whether or not Burke’s account of reasoning is a conservative one, it is at the very least sceptical. As others have noticed, he shows the importance of precedent in common law, and hence he is making an argument against a priori rules of reason in legal matters.³³ With regards to moral and political reasoning more generally, his account of prudence rejects the idea that we can “reason demonstratively about moral and religious truths,” and he is showing instead that we “reason probabilistically in the face of uncertain evidence,” and that “the experience of ‘difficulty’ is the irremediable condition of political life.”³⁴ Indeed, even when talking about the veneration owed to antiquity, his argument is a sceptical one. As he says, people “defer to the wisdom of times past” in large part because its “weakness is not before [their] eyes.”³⁵

Burke is a conservative and he is a sceptic. However, what he says about prudence has another, more profound, implication, namely that this is a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. First, what is value pluralism? The value pluralist thesis is, in short, that we may be faced with conflicts between incompatible reasons for action and we have not identified the general rule for their resolution. As John Gray puts it in his discussion of Berlin’s work, we may be faced with “conflicts among the ultimate values” of a “morality or moral code”; conflicts within “internally complex and inherently pluralistic” values or goods; and conflicts that arise between “different cultural forms [that] generate different moralities and values.”³⁶ In Berlin’s own words, “we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others.”³⁷ If we must choose between claims, and whether or not they are each ultimate and absolute (and equally so, as Berlin says), we are thus faced with a dilemmatic choice, a moral conflict. We can present the dilemma as follows: I have a reason to ϕ, I have a reason to not ϕ, I can do either, but I cannot do both.

Now the crucial thing to note is that there are value monist as well as value pluralist approaches to conflicts such as these. A value monist need not assume there is only one value or one source of value. A value monist may accept value diversity. Value monists can agree as well that we are, at times, faced with moral conflicts. However, they will maintain that, although we cannot in such situations both ϕ and not ϕ, nonetheless, we are not left caught on the horns of a dilemma; and this is the case because, for monists, there is a clear order of priority between the two options.³⁸ Hence, when John Stuart Mill says that utility is “the ultimate appeal on all ethical issues,” he is giving expression to a value monist position.³⁹ That is the approach to moral conflict that value pluralists reject. When faced with such conflicts, value pluralists contend, we do not have to hand the general rule for their resolution. One reason why this is the case is that “there are no comprehensive ‘lexical orderings’ among types of goods.”⁴⁰ That is, even in those instances when we can compare goods and values, we cannot rank-order them. And we cannot do so because they are incommensurable. That is, pace Mill, we cannot say that utility is the ultimate appeal on all ethical issues, because at times utility will be outweighed by other considerations: perhaps liberty, perhaps toleration, and so on.

Is Burke a value pluralist? When Berlin discusses Burke’s political theory, he refers to “Burke’s plea for the constant need to compensate, to reconcile, to balance.”⁴¹ Yet Burke is not saying simply that we cannot avoid moral conflict, and that we must strive, in response, to compensate, to reconcile, to balance. Rather, as we can see in the following passage, his thesis is that, when faced with conflicting reasons for action, we cannot identify the general rule for their resolution:

It is not worth our while to discuss, like sophisters, whether in no case some evil for the sake of some benefit is to be tolerated. Nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long, they admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live without definition; but Prudence is cautious how she defines.⁴²

Should we tolerate some evil for the sake of some benefit? There is no “universal” rule to decide the issue, such as the claim that utility is the ultimate appeal. Only “sophisters” waste their time in the futile search to discover such a rule. Rather, we will have to make “exceptions” and “modifications,” but to do so with “rules of prudence” rather than universal rules of logic, mathematics, or metaphysics.

What is the explanation for Burke’s value pluralism? We have already seen that he is a sceptic. That is why, concerning pain and pleasure, he states that people “are not liable to be mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the names they give them, and in their reasonings about them.” However, this is not just a sceptical claim that reasoning cannot explain the ultimate causes of human passions. Burke’s point is “that pain and pleasure … are each of a positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for their existence.”⁴³ Pleasure is not the absence of pain, for example. Hence, the passions, which themselves cannot be fully based on reason, have an irreducible plurality. As a result, the virtues, which likewise arise from the passions, have independent sources, and can come into conflict. That is why we have “fortitude, justice, wisdom,” on the one hand, and “easiness of temper, compassion, kindness and liberality,” on the other: for Burke, these virtues are incompatible, for having the former “hinders us from having” the latter.⁴⁴ Hence, sources of value are diverse, they can come into conflict, and philosophical reflection has not identified the general rule for their resolution. We are faced with choices that involve inconveniences, and so we must take “into consideration the different weight and consequence of those inconveniences,” and yet, in these matters “no lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition.”⁴⁵

Berlin will be in agreement with Burke on this point. For Berlin, we resolve moral conflicts by exercising our practical reason: that is, we do so for reasons that “cannot always be clearly stated, let alone generalised into rules or universal maxims.”⁴⁶ Both are saying that, when faced with moral conflict, we must make a judgement, balancing goods and evils. Crucially, we do so without recourse to a universal rule. So both Burke and Berlin adopt a value pluralist meta-ethics on how we resolve moral conflicts. However, I have drawn attention to the fact that value pluralism can be weak or strong. As we shall see, we find both kinds of value pluralism in the arguments of Burke and Berlin. However, they manifest in different ways, and the difference is informative.

Value Pluralism and Liberty

Let us start with Berlin. On one issue, Berlin’s value pluralism is strong. In his analysis of liberty, Berlin does not introduce a general rule for resolving moral conflicts. As it happens, in formulating his conception of liberty, Berlin is also rejecting the arguments of precisely the same figure Burke himself warns against, namely Rousseau. It is Rousseau who says that we can be “forced to be free”; and this is explained in part because freedom is, for Rousseau, “obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself.”⁴⁷ The law we prescribe to ourselves is what Rousseau calls the general will. Hence, we are free only when following the general will; and being compelled to follow the general will does not restrict our freedom. As Berlin puts it, freedom, for Rousseau, “is not freedom to do what is irrational, or stupid, or wrong.” ⁴⁸ And Berlin’s response is that Rousseau has ignored one aspect of freedom, what Berlin calls negative freedom. For the negative conception, “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body interferes with my activity.”⁴⁹ We may be justified in limiting negative freedom on occasion, Berlin accepts, including when we do so in the name of laws formed in accordance with the general will, but this is still a violation of freedom and, therefore, a moral wrong. As Berlin puts it, “law is always a fetter.”⁵⁰

I want to compare what Berlin is saying here with the arguments of those who, in their analyses of liberty, offer a weak version of value pluralism. In each case, the argument is that, because we cannot identify the general rule for the resolution of all moral conflicts, we must recognise that certain kinds of freedom should be given priority over Berlin’s negative freedom. Hence, for William Galston, because of value pluralism we have no general rule for resolving moral conflicts, and that is why freedom as toleration, or “expressive liberty,” has an “elevated status” when compared with mere freedom from interference.⁵¹ George Crowder’s argument is that, because we are faced with incommensurable values, what matters is that we choose autonomously, and so “the most important of all liberal goods is personal autonomy.”⁵² Both are responding to, and rejecting, Berlin’s belief that negative freedom is important and that its importance derives from the “agony of choice” created by value pluralism.⁵³ It might seem that Berlin himself is giving priority to negative freedom as a general rule. He is saying that value pluralism forces us to appreciate the significance of negative freedom. Echoing Alexander Herzen, Berlin insists that “a minimum area of free action is a moral necessity for all men.”⁵⁴ Nonetheless, as Berlin makes clear, he is not claiming “that individual freedom is, even in the most liberal societies, the sole, or even the dominant criterion of social action.”⁵⁵ Negative freedom is one value among others; it can come into conflict with those other values; and, crucially, there is no general rule for resolving those conflicts, for example, a rule stipulating that negative freedom always has priority over autonomy or toleration or any other reason for action.

I am emphasising that, regarding liberty, Berlin’s value pluralism is strong. It needs emphasising, because at other times his value pluralism is weak. In particular, as Susan Mendus observes, Berlin makes an “explicit connection … between the denial of pluralism and the flourishing of intolerance.”⁵⁶ Indeed, there is clear evidence for this. Berlin says the “one belief, more than any other” that “is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals” is “the conviction that all the positive values in which men have believed must, in the end, be compatible, and perhaps even entail one another.”⁵⁷ Just as monism leads to intolerance, so too, Berlin assumes, the moral commitment to tolerate difference follows from, is entailed by, the meta-ethical stance of value pluralism.

Berlin is saying that toleration is preferable to intolerance. Not only is this evidence of weak value pluralism; An argument can be made that strong value pluralism is the more defensible approach to the question of toleration. When we decide whether or not to tolerate any specific practice (or person, or behaviour, or type of speech, etc.) we are also resolving a moral conflict. This is true when we are asked to tolerate “some action or practice [that] is disapproved of for what are taken to be moral reasons.”⁵⁸ Therefore, the conflict in question arises where we morally disapprove of a practice, and so have reasons to intervene, but where there are also reasons to tolerate, and we can do either but we cannot do both. We are faced with a moral conflict, and so the decision to tolerate is just one possible resolution of the conflict. Strong value pluralism accepts that there is no general rule requiring us always to plump for toleration. And this is the most defensible approach to the issue. We do not know in advance whether we should tolerate or whether we should intervene. Strong value pluralism acknowledges this fact, whereas weak value pluralism simply side-steps the reality that we are faced with a moral conflict here.⁵⁹

What we have seen is that at times value pluralism is weak, and this is true of Berlin’s arguments on toleration, but not of his conception of liberty. What about Burke? With respect to liberty, at times, Burke approaches the issue in much the same way as Berlin. For example, at one point Burke insists there is no general rule for resolving conflicts that arise regarding our rights (and therefore our liberties) in the political community:

The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to discern. The rights of men in governments … are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil, and sometimes, between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.⁶⁰

We do not discover rights (including the rights protecting liberties) as universal truths, but rather discern them through a balancing of goods, and through compromises between goods and evils, in situations of moral conflict. Therefore, in this passage, Burke is saying that there is no general rule for resolving conflicts when we consider liberty, and so there is no general rule to determine when to restrict liberty and for what reasons. And this is the way some now represent Burke’s approach to liberty. For example, Carl Bogus claims that, for Burke, whether liberty should prevail over other values “depended on circumstances, not on a universal axiom.”⁶¹

However, this is not the only way in which Burke conceptualizes liberty. At other points, he insists on a clear order of priority between competing claims regarding liberty. As Burke says, “the liberty … I mean is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them.”⁶² Burke assumes here that we do not act freely when we act in ways that are contrary to one specific moral claim. However, that means Burke, in this second conception of liberty, is offering a general rule for resolving moral conflicts: when liberty appears to be in conflict with order and virtue, as a general rule, we give priority to order and virtue. Burke is offering a “universal axiom,” to use Bogus’s terminology. Burke is not the only value pluralist to go down this route, as we know. Others claim that we must always give priority to toleration or autonomy whenever they conflict with negative freedom. Burke’s meta-ethical position is that there is no universal rule to decide whether we should tolerate some evil for the sake of some benefit. However, from this he seems to be inferring the moral judgement that, when faced with a plurality of forces, and a plurality of justifying principles, we are required to preserve each in “its proper place and with its proper proportion of power.” Hence, liberty is not possible when it is incompatible with order and virtue, which is to say, when it is incompatible with preserving unity among these diverse forces and principles.

One interesting thing to note is that, by proceeding in this way, Burke’s conception comes close to that of Rousseau’s. For Rousseau, as we saw, freedom cannot be in conflict with the general will. For Burke, freedom cannot be in conflict with order and virtue. Despite this important degree of convergence in how they conceptualize liberty, we must not forget that Burke holds Rousseau responsible for the French Revolution, which, for Burke, is a great danger to real, genuine liberty. For the revolutionaries in France, freedom is a universal and abstract concept, according to which all individuals are to enjoy the same liberties. Rejecting this notion outright, Burke will not give “praise or blame to any thing which relates to human action … on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction.”⁶³ Indeed, to promote “liberty in the abstract” would be to facilitate “a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty.”⁶⁴ Recalling Montesquieu’s distinction between (genuine) freedom, “the power to do what one should want to do,” and (mere) independence, or “doing what one wants,”⁶⁵ Burke concludes that the revolution in France did not bring real or genuine liberty. It created “a new and far more despotic power, under which there is no trace of liberty, except what appears in confusion and crime.” It brought “nothing but the rein given to vice and confusion.”⁶⁶

As we know, much of the debate on Burke’s political thought concerns whether it is a conservative position.⁶⁷ Like conservatives, Burke is saying that liberty presupposes a certain kind of moral unity. He claims that “our constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of its parts”; and hence it preserves “an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.”⁶⁸ However, Burke also is an inspiration for later generations of liberals. For example, many liberals would agree with Burke that democracy can degenerate into tyranny because of too great a concentration of power in the hands of too small a group.⁶⁹ Perhaps it is more accurate to say that there are elements of both conservatism and liberalism in Burke’s politics. Indeed, I think viewing him as at least in part liberal is borne out when we examine his thinking on toleration, below. In any case, I approach this topic with a different concern. My aim is to examine how Burke’s approach to moral conflict shapes his politics more generally. Now, Berlin also approaches Burke in this way, but he arrives at different conclusions to the ones I will reach. So let us first consider Berlin’s reading of Burke.

We have already seen Berlin refer to “Burke’s plea for the constant need to compensate, to reconcile, to balance.” That this is meant as a compliment is clear from the fact that Berlin makes that comment in a passage discussing a number of different thinkers who are each cognisant of moral diversity and each accepts that it is “a necessary, not a contingent truth” that “we cannot have everything,” most notable among them being Mill and Kant.⁷⁰ However, Berlin does not usually praise Burke, or characterize him in this way. Instead, we see Berlin refer to Burke’s “anti-intellectualist diatribes,”⁷¹ his “uncritical acceptance of custom,” his “violent prejudices and romantic distortions,”⁷² and his “biased and irrational” approach to tradition.⁷³ Berlin goes on to conclude that Burke’s conservatism moves “in the same general direction” as Fichte’s, and in particular the latter’s belief “that the individual must vanish, must be absorbed, sublimated, into the species.”⁷⁴ It is not just Berlin’s criticism of Burke that is important, but the assumptions informing that critique. Berlin assumes that key aspects of liberalism are endangered by value monism, and are defended by value pluralists. As we have seen, one argument is that Rousseau’s value monism simply ignores the fact that negative freedom is one value among others; and another argument is that value monism allows intolerance to flourish.

Berlin castigates Burke as an enemy of liberalism, and for Berlin this means that Burke is in the value monist camp alongside, among others, Rousseau. As I said, I want to advance a quite different reading of Burke. My thesis is that Burke is a value pluralist, but at times, he, like Berlin, offers a weak version of value pluralism. This is evident in some of what he says about liberty. As we shall see, it is evident again in one line of argument about toleration. Just as, at times, he insists liberty cannot exist at all without order and virtue, in one of his arguments on toleration he is unable to appreciate that we may be required to tolerate people and practices that run contrary to our understanding of order and virtue.

Value Pluralism and Toleration

In calling for toleration of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, Burke is challenging the Penal Laws of the time. Of course, these Laws also penalised dissenting Irish Protestants, and Burke does call for toleration of dissenters, along with “Jews, Mahometans and even Pagans.”⁷⁵ However, Burke’s efforts are in the main directed towards securing toleration for Catholics, and that is what I focus on here primarily. Let us start by examining the various ways in which the Penal Laws removed rights and liberties from Irish Catholics.⁷⁶

In their first iteration (from 1607), the Penal Laws barred Catholics from holding public office, from serving in the army, and from having any role in the government of Ireland. Things worsened for Catholics with the Act of Settlement of 1652 following Cromwell’s victory over the Catholic Confederation. It barred Catholics from membership of the Irish parliament, and large Catholic-owned estates were confiscated. Many of the Laws were rescinded during the reign of Charles II; and then at the end of the Williamite War in 1691 (at the Treaty of Limerick), Catholics were, as Burke says, guaranteed that they “shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland.”⁷⁷ In reality, things did not improve for Catholics. In fact, the Penal Laws were re-introduced, forbidding Catholics from, inter alia, voting in parliamentary elections, entering parliament, joining the legal profession and the judiciary, owning firearms, receiving a foreign education, inheriting land from a Protestant, and owning a horse worth £5 or more.

Burke’s efforts to have the Penal Laws overturned saw some success before his own death in 1797. The laws began to be dismantled, in a piecemeal fashion, thanks to a number of Catholic relief bills, in particular in 1771, 1778, and 1793, before the last disabilities were removed in 1829. Here I want to set out the precise way in which Burke justifies the call for toleration. In fact, what we see are two distinct lines of argument, the first of which is an example of Burke’s strong value pluralism, the second of his weak value pluralism.

Burke’s First Argument

The first argument is that the Penal Laws lack legitimacy as law. One reason for this is that they are laws persecuting the majority of the population.⁷⁸ As he says in his “Address at Bristol on the Gordon Riots and the Catholic Question,” from 1780, “I do not at all exaggerate the number. A nation to be persecuted!”⁷⁹ This renders the Penal Laws incompatible with law itself: it “has not the nature of a reasonable institution, so neither has it the authority.”⁸⁰ Nonetheless, what matters is the nature, and gravity, of the wrong, and not only or even primarily the proportion of the population affected. The law is rendered “void in its obligatory quality on the mind,” Burke says, when it involves “transgressions against common right and the ends of just government” that are “considerable in their nature and spreading in their effects,” something that “goes to the root and principle of the law.”⁸¹

Burke offers three reasons for this conclusion, and each one draws on the normative force of a general moral principle. The first is that the people of Ireland did not “consent” to these laws. Regardless of the form of government, Burke says, “the people is the true legislator … the remote and efficient cause is the consent of the people.”⁸² Burke does say that the right to vote is a “shield” against “the persecution of private society and private manners.”⁸³ However, in sharp contrast to voluntarists, he does not insist that consent must always be “actual.” Instead, Burke calls for “virtual representation,” which he describes as a “communion of interests and a sympathy in feelings” between people and their trustees, and even this is absent in Ireland, where Catholics and their representatives are seen as “not only separate nations, but separate species.”⁸⁴ In addition to the consent requirement, Burke also refers to what he calls the “foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility.”⁸⁵ Taxes, in particular, should be equitable, but this is not the case when “a great body of the people who contribute to this state lottery are excluded from all the prizes.”⁸⁶ Finally, there is utility. As he puts it in “A Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendancy,” from 1793, laws should not do what they currently do in Ireland, namely “render millions of mankind miserable.”⁸⁷

So the Penal Laws lack legitimacy because they are incompatible with the general principles justifying law. In advancing this line of argument, Burke is well placed to explain why opposition to Roman Catholicism should be overcome in the name of toleration. Indeed, at many points, Burke makes clear that toleration involves the weighing up of competing evils: the evil of the practice we are opposed to and the evil caused by interfering in that practice. For example, in listing the numerous vices of individual members of the clergy in France before the Revolution, vices Burke says he will tolerate (or “allow”), he concludes: “I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men. … I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.”⁸⁸ In the case of Irish Catholics, his conclusion is that, although the “opinion may be erroneous,”⁸⁹ the Penal Laws are a far greater evil.

It is also evident that this approach to toleration represents a strong version of value pluralism. Burke does not assume that toleration must trump opposition. Rather, in deciding whether or not to tolerate a practice, we make a decision, and we do so without having to hand a universal rule (or “definition”). Specifically, in deciding whether to tolerate Catholicism, what is required is “prudence,” which is, he says, “determined on the more or the less, the earlier or the later, and on a balance of advantage and inconvenience, of good and evil.”⁹⁰ However, this is not Burke’s only line of argument on Catholic toleration. And in a second argument, he is employing the weak version of value pluralism. That is, he assumes that commitment to toleration does, as a general rule, trump opposition.

Burke’s Second Argument

There are a number of strands to this second line of argument. The first is that the Penal Laws conflict with the inherited rights and liberties of the British constitution. When rejecting the French Revolution and its conception of liberty, Burke says that British liberties are those guaranteed by the 1688 Revolution. In Ireland, however, 1688 did not guarantee liberty: it was “not a revolution, but a conquest,” as it was pursued “at the expense of the civil liberties and properties of the far greater part [of the population].”⁹¹ As we have already seen, although in 1691 Irish Catholics were guaranteed continued enjoyment of their ancient liberties, this commitment was subsequently reneged upon. As a result, 1688 resembles “a conquest made by a fierce enemy”;⁹² the Catholic has been “rendered a foreigner in his native land.”⁹³

Catholics are denied the inherited rights and liberties of the British constitution. Burke goes on to reassure his readers that guaranteeing those rights poses no threat to the established order. In fact, repeal of the Penal Laws is the best guarantee of order. To begin with, toleration will not dissolve or undermine hierarchy. Instead, it can help “to raise an aristocratic interest, that is, an interest of property and education, among [Catholics],” while failure to act may lead to “overturning this happy Constitution, and introducing a frantic democracy.”⁹⁴ There is a justified hierarchy between Catholic commoners and Catholic aristocrats, and this, according to Burke, is what should replace the current situation, which he characterizes as “absolute slavery.”⁹⁵ It is “civil servitude” to be “subject to a state without being citizens,” and while that condition may be made more or less favourable to Catholics, it does not make it any less one of domination: “The mildness by which absolute masters exercise their dominion leaves them masters still.”⁹⁶

Just as toleration does not overturn hierarchy, nor does it encourage political rebellion. There is no reason to believe, Burke says, “that indulgence and moderation in governors is the natural incitement in subjects to rebel.”⁹⁷ For a start, despite the very real threat of invasion from France at this time, Catholics, according to Burke, show “nothing but a decided resolution to stand or fall with their country.”⁹⁸ This is the case, despite what Burke refers to as “a pretended conspiracy among Roman Catholics against the King’s government.”⁹⁹ Burke does warn that “the real danger to every state is, to render its subjects justly discontented,”¹⁰⁰ but, despite the injustice of the Penal Laws, he is confident that there is allegiance to the Crown among Catholics, and it demands, in return, repeal of the Penal Laws: “To delay protection would be to reject allegiance.”¹⁰¹

So much for Irish Catholics. What about toleration of Protestant dissent? For Burke, dissenters are committed to “our common hope” as fellow Christians.¹⁰² Nonetheless, dissent is sometimes utilised to raise a “faction” (as opposed to a principle-based “party”) and when that is the case, it should not be tolerated.¹⁰³ In contrast, as Burke is at pains to stress, toleration of Catholicism will in no way disturb the prevailing order. According to this second line of argument, there are no evils released by Catholic toleration: no damage to property, to hierarchy, or to political authority. Burke goes further still. He emphasises the positive qualities of Catholicism itself as a set of beliefs and practices. In 1795, in “A Letter to William Smith, Esq., on the Subject of Catholic Emancipation,” Burke makes clear that Catholicism is “not” to be “tolerated as an inevitable evil” but “cherished as a good.”¹⁰⁴

When we reflect on Burke’s personal life, it is not surprising that he should think of Catholicism in this way. Although raised a Protestant, he grew up in Ireland and spent much of his youth with his mother’s Catholic landowning family, the Nagles, in the valley of the Blackwater; and retained close personal links with Irish Catholic relations and friends throughout his life.¹⁰⁵ However, although Burke’s positive disposition towards Irish Catholicism is not unexpected, it is not the most salient point either when we consider this second line of argument. What is noteworthy is that Burke is no longer making an argument to those who oppose Catholicism: he is no longer asking others to tolerate what they could reasonably see as vice, as error. Instead, in the second line of argument, Burke assumes there is nothing about Irish Catholicism to be opposed to in the first place. We must be careful not to overstate the extent or nature of Burke’s pro-Catholicism. It is going too far to say that Burke is here giving expression to “a suppressed revolutionary part of his own personality.”¹⁰⁶ That does not fit in with his life-long defence of the Established Church in Ireland, which he sees as “fundamental of the Constitution.”¹⁰⁷ The point is that Burke defends a form of toleration that will stop short of challenging the status quo, including the elevated position in the status quo set aside for Protestantism.

Conclusions

This article is a contribution to a new reading of Burke, one that draws attention to his pluralism. As a moral pluralist, he tells us that, when faced with diversity, what we ought to do is maintain both the plurality of political forces and the plurality of justificatory moral principles. Toleration is one way to attain this end. However, Burke also highlights that we may be faced with value conflicts and that we cannot identify the general rule (the “definition”) for their resolution. That is, Burke is offering the kind of approach to moral conflict that twentieth-century value pluralists will set out in a more systematic way. We have also seen that, at times, Burke offers a weak version of value pluralism, as he assumes that some values should trump others, whereas at other times his is a strong version of value pluralism, one that eschews all such general rules.

Burke’s strong value pluralism is evident in his first line of argument on toleration. That argument accepts that repeal of the Penal Laws (especially those relating to the rights and liberties of Irish Catholics), as a radical change, will cause some evil. There are good reasons not to tolerate, and there is no universal rule for deciding whether or not to tolerate. However, in his second line of argument, Burke is simply unable to appreciate this possibility. Instead, he assumes that toleration, as a general rule, trumps opposition, at least for a group he characterizes as, unequivocally, a positive source of good in the community. Burke warns that, if toleration is not granted, Catholics will turn towards the ideas of the French Revolution, namely the “Rights of Man,”¹⁰⁸ and what can lead only to “Jacobinism.”¹⁰⁹ As later history shows, many Irish dissenters also took that intellectual journey, one that led to Wolf Tone’s republican rebellion in 1798. Burke’s first line of argument demands that he take seriously the possibility that he should tolerate such republican agitators, that he should, perhaps, overcome his opposition to them. While it is in situations like this that toleration may be an appropriate response, very rarely does Burke permit himself to see this possibility.

The strong version of value pluralism permits us to appreciate that toleration may be appropriate in situations where there is reasonably grounded opposition. That is why strong value pluralism is best placed to identify the full range of situations in which toleration might be appropriate. It does not tell us what to tolerate. It does not tell us how to decide between toleration, on the one hand, and opposition, on the other. It does not do so because it is a meta-ethical position rather than a normative one. But that does not mean it has no importance for political thought or political practice. Strong value pluralism shows us that, when we do decide to tolerate, we do create the very real danger that this will disturb the established order. It is only when Burke keeps to the strong version of value pluralism that he is able to appreciate this possibility.

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Allyn Fives

Allyn Fives, PhD, is a lecturer in political theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is the author of Judith Shklar and the Liberalism of Fear (Manchester University Press, 2020), Evaluating Parental Power (Manchester University Press, 2017), Political Reason (Palgrave, 2013), and Political and Philosophical Debates in Welfare (Palgrave, 2008).

Notes

1. See Berlin, “Review of Montesquieu and Burke,” 450; Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 229; Wilkins, Burke’s Political Philosophy, 160; Cliteur, “American Conservatives;” Carey, “Intellectual History,” 209.

2. Bourke, “Burke, Enlightenment and Romanticism”; Hampsher-Monk, “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”

3. See Sartori, “Understanding Pluralism”; Lakoff, “Tocqueville, Burke.”

4. See Bogus, “Rescuing Burke”; Mookherjee, “Value Pluralism.”

5. In this article, I make a distinction between moral pluralism and value pluralism. However, others use the term moral pluralism to refer to what I here call value pluralism (see Gill, Humean Moral Pluralism, 1–2), whereas Berlin himself simply uses the term “pluralism” for what I here call value pluralism (see Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 216). Finally, John Kekes uses “pluralism” to refer to both an ethical and a meta-ethical theory (see Kekes, Morality of Pluralism, 13).

6. Yack, “Antigone in Hertfordshire,” 490.

7. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 172–73, 213.

8. See Burke, Reflections, 152–53; “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 478.

9. Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 232, 233. See also Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry,” part III, sec. X, 145; Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 476.

10. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 212.

11. See Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 480; Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 332.

12. See Crowder, Isaiah Berlin; Galston, Liberal Pluralism.

13. Burke, Reflections, 152–53.

14. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 488.

15. Burke, “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” 513.

16. Burke, Reflections, 211–12.

17. Ibid., 93.

18. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 478.

19. Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 230 (emphasis in original).

20. See Burke, Reflections, 227ff.

21. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 479.

22. Ibid., 476.

23. Ibid., 496.

24. Burke, “A Vindication,” 5.

25. Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry,” part 1, sec. XIII, 91.

26. See Berlin, “Review of Montesquieu and Burke,” 450; Wilkins, Burke’s Political Philosophy, 160; Cliteur, “American Conservatives;” Carey, “Intellectual History,” 209.

27. Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry,” part V, sec. VII, 196.

28. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, 229.

29. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 221.

30. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 305.

31. Ibid., 306.

32. Burke, “Burke to Edmund Sexton Perry,” 8; See also McBride, “Burke and Ireland,” 192.

33. Hampsher-Monk, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” 199.

34. Bourke, “Burke, Enlightenment and Romanticism,” 30, 37.

35. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 306. See also commentary by Donlan, “Burke on Law and Legal Theory,” 71.

36. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 79–80.

37. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 213.

38. Others would refer to such a position as non-conflict multiplism or ordered multiplism, and would retain “monism” for those who maintain there is no plurality of ends to begin with. See Gill, Humean Moral Pluralism, 3.

39. Mill, On Liberty, 70.

40. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 11, 13.

41. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 215.

42. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 476.

43. Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry,” part I, sec. II, 80.

44. Ibid., part III, sec. X, 145.

45. Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” 232, 233.

46. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 172–73.

47. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1:7, 1:8.

48. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 194.

49. Ibid., 169–70.

50. Ibid., 170.

51. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 65.

52. Crowder Isaiah Berlin,,85.

53. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 213–14.

54. Berlin, “Herzen and Bakunin,” 98.

55. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 214. This reading of Berlin stands opposed to John Gray’s, for whom Berlin’s intention is to ground a liberal political morality that gives “pre-eminence” to the “promotion of negative liberty” (Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 67).

56. Mendus, Toleration, 13.

57. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 212.

58. Horton, “Traditional Conception of Toleration,” 290; Horton, “Toleration as a Virtue,” 33.

59. Fives, “Toleration,” 252.

60. Burke, Reflections, 153 (emphasis in original).

61. Bogus, “Rescuing Burke,” 391; See also Mookherjee, “Value Pluralism.”

62. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 480 (emphasis added).

63. Burke, Reflections, 89–90.

64. Ibid., 90.

65. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, bk. 2, chap. 3.

66. Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 480, 484.

67. Bourke, Empire and Revolution, 16.

68. Burke, Reflections, 119.

69. Ibid., 229.

70. Berlin, “Two Concepts,” 215.

71. Berlin, “Counter Enlightenment,” 9.

72. Berlin, “Montesquieu,” 151, 161.

73. Berlin, “Moses Hess,” 250

74. Berlin, “Nationalism,” 343.

75. Burke, “William Burgh,” 111–12.

76. See McBride, “Burke and Ireland.”

77. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 308.

78. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 334.

79. Burke, “Address at Bristol,” 317 (emphasis in original).

80. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 296.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid.

83. Burke, “Letter to a Peer,” 329.

84. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 346, 347.

85. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 298.

86. Burke, “Letter to a Peer,” 328.

87. Burke, “Letter to Richard Burke,” 350.

88. Burke, Reflections, 251.

89. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 305.

90. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 334.

91. Ibid., 340.

92. Burke, “Letter to a Peer,” 327.

93. Burke, “Address at Bristol,” 312.

94. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 332.

95. Burke, “Letter to Richard Burke,” 349.

96. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 333.

97. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 309.

98. Burke, “Address at Bristol,” 316.

99. Burke, “Letter to a Peer,” 329 (emphasis in original); See also Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 344.

100. Burke, “Tract on the Popery Laws,” 309.

101. Burke, “Address at Bristol,” 316.

102. Burke, “William Burgh,” 111–12.

103. Burke, “Toleration Bill,” 385; see also Burke, “On Parties,” 644.

104. Burke, “Letter to William Smith,” 358.

105. Bourke, Empire and Revolution, 30.

106. O’Brien, “Introduction,” 34.

107. Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 338.

108. Burke, “Letter to Richard Burke,” 352; see also Burke, “Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,” 347.

109. Burke, “Letter to William Smith,” 358.