KNIGHT,FRANK,H. AND ETHICAL PLURALISM

For Frank Knight, the fact that we are free to engage in economic purs uits brings out what is both best and worst in human nature. The same competitive economy that liberates individuals to choose their own des ired ends also provides them with socially undesirable wants and foste rs habits potentially at odds with the demands of liberal democracy Gi ven Knight's desire both to defend human liberty and his concession th at liberty is likely to be abused his version of liberalism must of ne cessity be anticonsequentialist. Paradoxically, Knight's philosophical pluralism-his insistence that there ave any number of incommensurable perspectives on the good or just society-underlies both his criticism of the ''ethical'' possibilities of the competitive order and his def ense of human liberty against the dangers of social planning.