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The Politics of Freedom

Value Pluralism & Plurality of Choice

Christophe Bruchansky looks at maximising the diversity of choice.

“Every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946.

In its broadest sense, pluralism has a general consensus behind it. Hardly anyone would argue that the co-existence of different types of people making different choices based on different opinions is a bad thing for society. And, from liberalism to anarchism to libertarianism, all value systems concerned with freedom of choice are in favour of diversity: not facilitating choices made by different types of people would not demonstrate different ways of thinking, and so could hardly be described as ‘freedom’, at all.

Utilitarian theories, with their maximisation of the sum of happiness, also rely on diversity.

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