7 - Eclecticism and Pluralism

Summary

This chapter focuses on eclecticism as a face of political moderation. Starting from the definition of eclecticism given by Michel de Montaigne in his Essays, it shows that eclecticism has important implications for the ways in whicb we conceive of our political attachments. It then considers the justification of eclecticism given by Daniel Bell in his book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) and compares it to the eclecticism at the heart of the fusionist movement initiated by Frank Meyer in the 1960s. Finally, it presents eclecticism as a way to avoid any form of “blueprint thinking.”