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Charles Taylor and John Gray are among the vanguard of the 'full-fledged value-pluralist movement' in contemporary moral and political philosophy (Galston, 2002, 5).1 As such, they are engaged in what has become the central project of liberal theory in recent years: criticizing our traditional understanding of liberalism from the pluralist perspective, and attempting to reformulate it to take pluralism properly into account. Generally, pluralism is 'the thesis that there are a number of equally reasonable yet mutually incompatible philosophical, moral and religious doctrines, each of which promotes its own distinctive vision of value, truth, obligation, human nature, and the good life' (Talisse, 2000, 243). Because modern societies contain individuals and groups who live by these conflicting doctrines, the political challenge of pluralism is to reconcile these diverse ways of life in a just and stable regime. This challenge, of course, has always been liberalism's primary concern.2 Nevertheless, in recent years, political theorists have begun to question whether liberalism truly recognizes pluralism and respects it appropriately.
Although liberalism touts itself as uniquely tolerant and open to pluralism, some pluralists argue that liberalism illegitimately imposes a set of controversial ethical ideals, such as individualism, autonomy, and equality, on citizens who live reasonable ways of life that are incompatible with these ideals. For example, the liberal ideal of autonomy, which emphasizes critical reflection and self-direction, appears to be at odds with a life of religious devotion that emphasizes faith, obedience, and humility. If liberal regimes require or foster autonomy, then they seem to discriminate against religious devotion. As Stephen Carter argues, 'The basic response of liberal theory to serious religion is to try to speak words that seem to celebrate it (as part of the freedom of belief, or conscience, or the entitlement to select one's own version of the good) while in effect trying to domesticate it -- or, if that fails, to try to destroy it' (Carter, 2003, 22). This charge of intolerance hits liberals where they live: freedom of religion is allegedly one of liberalism's crowning achievements. Nevertheless, accusations that liberalism fails to accommodate pluralism have become increasingly common as religious and other cultural groups demand forms of collective political recognition which they claim cannot be achieved through liberal institutions concerned primarily with...