Depicting the tree of life: The philosophical and historical roots of evolutionary tree diagrams

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Toleration, neutrality and historical illiteracy

John Gray has acquired international prominence and notoriety for his trenchant and uncompromising critique of the liberal tradition. According to Gray, the pervasive value pluralism that characterizes the contemporary world has rendered liberalism, and in particular its theory of toleration, both historically redundant and theoretically obsolete as a means of ensuring peaceful coexistence between competing values and practices. Gray insists that his alternative political framework of modus vivendi is far more capable of achieving these outcomes. This paper challenges Gray’s account of the liberal tradition, and its theory of toleration, revealing the shortcomings of that account at a historical and philosophical level. It argues that liberalism emerged in a European context characterized by precisely the sort of pluralism that Gray associates with the contemporary world, and was specifically conceived to deal with it in a manner which is still relevant today. In this way, it is possible to rescue the liberal tradition from the theoretical obsolescence and historical redundancy to which Gray seeks to consign it