Vol.:(0123456789) The Journal of Value Inquiry https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-018-9674-5 1 3 Value Pluralism vs Realism in the Political Thought of Bernard Williams George Crowder 1 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 The current wave of political realism has a complex relationship with ethics. On the one hand, realism is often defined in opposition to moralism, or the idea that “political theory is something like applied morality”. 1 According to realists, mor- alists exaggerate the authority of morality and underestimate the distinctiveness of the political sphere and its characteristic concerns. On the other hand, recent com- mentary has stressed that realism is not opposed to morality or ethics itself. 2 Indeed, realism has an ethic of its own, which emphasizes the claims of social order above other considerations. The starting point is the permanent reality of social conflict. “If conflict is ineliminable,” William Galston writes, “it is natural to see the order- ing and channeling of conflict as the core of politics from which the rest radiates.” 3 Consequently, the dominant realist commitment is to the achievement and preserva- tion of social and political order. No sensible person doubts that social order is a value of vital importance to polit- ical life in general, but might the supremacy of order in politics sometimes be chal- lenged by other considerations? Social order has often been effectively enforced by absolute rulers or colonial or occupying powers, yet people have been prepared to overthrow such regimes for the sake of liberty, equality, justice or self-government. As Rousseau points out, the price for some kinds of order is “chains”. 4 Even within * George Crowder georgecrowder@outlook.com 1 College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia 1 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 2. Surveys of recent realism include Wil- liam Galston, “Realism in Political Theory”, European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010): 385–411; Enzo Rossi and Matt Sleat, “Realism in Normative Political Theory”, Philosophy Compass 9/10 (2014): 689–701; Edward Hall and Matt Sleat, “Ethics, Morality and the Case for Realist Political Theory”, Crit- ical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (2017): 278–295. 2 Hall and Sleat, op. cit., p. 279. 3 Galston, op. cit. p. 397. 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract [1762], trans. Maurice Cranston (Harmondsworth: Pen- guin, 1968), p. 49.