The Possibilities of Pluralism

Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

LOUIS MENAND, in his popular history of American intellectual life, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, provides the following definition of pluralism: "Pluralism is an attempt to make a good out of the circumstances that goods are often incommensurable." He continues, "Philosophically, pluralism is the view that the world consists of independent things. Each thing relates to other things, but the relations depend on where you start" (377). Two more inaccurate characterizations of pluralism I can scarcely imagine, but these views are popular enough that setting them right is where I am obliged to start.