Rancor and conflict are inevitable in any society of considerable size and populated by individuals of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, and ideological backgrounds. The modern pluralist society is not built to suppress differences under one unifying purpose and identity. Such a system-level teleology conflicts with a vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, who possess a great variety of values, and pursue a great diversity of ends. A universalist liberalism, as John Gray (2000; 2007) has warned, is not possible because history has continually frustrated its claims. The Enlightenment project must adapt to this historical evidence and give up its self-image as a secularized religion with eschatological hopes of universal peace and harmony. If this self-confidence is not corrected, the future of liberalism is one of fracture under the constant pressure of nationalism, religious and ethnic identity, and cultural conflict.

A version of liberalism grounded in the pragmatic doctrine of modus vivendi, though, may through practical reasoning, produce a social order characterized by peaceful coexistence among groups possessing incommensurable values. In this more humble form, liberalism can survive, and provide the institutional framework within which the Enlightenment promise of progress can be fulfilled. The “Good Society” is one that both benefits from humanity, in its rich diversity, and the exchange relationships that are formed that reflect the continuous flow of goods and services, and ideas. It is, as Hayek (1973) put it, a means-related order, not an ends-dictated one. There simply is no agreed upon scale of values in a modern pluralistic society. It works because it operates within institutional guardrails that enable us to see, recognize, and interact with each other as one another’s dignified equals. This ideal of peaceful social cooperation out of a situation prone to conflict is the very essence of the liberal project. It does not require us to be better or smarter, but instead works with the ordinary behavioral assumptions about imperfect human beings—sometimes good, sometimes bad, occasionally smart, more often stupid. It is the guardrail function of liberalism, not the cognitive capacities and moral convictions of the population that makes the liberal project work.