DAVID
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tions" have one true answer, that there must be a "dependable path to–
ward" those true answers, and there can be no incompatability among
them. The force of this formulation, it seems to me, sets up an effective
and ironic contrast between the severity of the expectation for truth in
moral and political thought with the proliferation of the concepts of
undecidable propositions, incompleteness theorems in mathematics, and
of indeterminacy and statistical probability in physics.
Although Berlin often presents the philosophical issue in direct and
incisive manner, throughout this volume he does not, as a rule, join the
issue in philosophical terms but focuses upon the intellectual history of
the relevant concepts. So the confrontation with this Platonic
cum
en–
lightenment monism comes through his reading and interpretation of
Machiavelli. This is not the Machiavelli who analyzed the strategies of
political realism but the Machiavelli who affirmed the tragic dilemma
which Berlin had earlier explored in his celebrated essay, "The Originality
of Machiavelli." For, in terms of the public domain with its values of
international peace, domestic order and civic virtue, the ideal society can
be identified with the more stable periods of the Roman empire. In terms
of the realization of human spirituality, individual piety or the expression
of moral good will, an alternative historical period, perhaps within
medieval Christianity, would provide the ideal society. The differences
between these two ideals cannot be synthesized or adjudicated and there
is no neutral point of view from which they can be ranked and
evaluated. Each of these ideals embodies objective values that develop
from different features of an historically changing human nature.
This point is generalized for Berlin in the Vichian representation of
history, particularly "cultural history." The values of the society por–
trayed by Homer and the literary accomplishment of that portrait are
not commensurable with the values demonstrated in the writings of
Dante or, in turn, with its poetic virtue. Thus, any attempt to compare
the two on a single hierarchical scale would be incoherent. The
conclusion is that historical societies demonstrate an incompatible
plurality of values which are not reducible to a single inclusive ideal.
One philosophical issue which must then be confronted is whether
pluralism leads to value relativism, and Berlin's argument is that it does
not. Value pluralism involves the recognition that it is difficult for a
person of one culture to enter into the frame of reference of any other
culture and understand the people and their expression from the agent's
point of view. Yet this recognition has led to many strategies to achieve
a more authentic and empathetic understanding of the products of an–
other culture, rather than to interpret them as abnormal or variant ex–
tensions of the native culture or of a fixed human nature. These efforts,
pioneered on Berlin's account by such founding fathers of pluralism as
