When Is It Hard to Compromise?

Abstract

<p>In philosophy, it has been common to distinguish between compromises of principles, judgments, or deep values on the one hand, and compromises of interests, preferences, or personal values on the other hand. Many philosophers have argued that compromises that belong to the first group are harder to achieve than compromises from the second group. In this paper, I will re-evaluate this traditional assumption and evaluate three common arguments that reaching a compromise is more complicated in conflicts that concern principles, judgments, or deep values than in conflicts that concern interests, preferences, or personal values. I aim to show that these arguments are unconvincing. My discussion has some practical implications. The advice that we <em>should</em> interpret conflicts of principles as conflicts of interests, as the latter are easier to solve, does not seem very helpful if it turns out that all kinds of compromises can be equally difficult (or easy) to reach.<br></p>