Agonistic liberalism

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The term Agonistic liberalism appears in John Gray's book Isaiah Berlin from 1995. Gray uses this phrase to describe what he believes is Berlin's theory of politics, namely his support for both value pluralism and liberalism.

More generally, agonistic liberalism could be used to describe any kind of liberalism which claims that its own value commitments does not form a complete vision of politics and society, and that one instead need to look for what Berlin calls an uneasy equilibrium between competing values. Under Gray's understanding, many contemporary liberal theorists would fall in this category, for instance John Rawls and Karl Popper.

[edit] References

• John Gray: Isaiah Berlin, HarperCollins 1995
• John Gray: Two Faces of Liberalism, Polity Press 2000
• Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Oxford University Press 2002
• Isaiah Berlin: The Crooked Timber of Humanity, John Murray 1990

[edit] External links

• The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library