 The first barrier to pluralism is absolutism. Values and their associated imperatives are absolute when they are thought to apply to all human beings, at all times irrespective of social or historical conditions. This is because absolutist conceptions of values are derived from, and ultimately justified by something other than the lived-experiences of human beings, be it God, or human rationality. Whereas pluralism is intended to accommodate a wide array of contending values, absolutism countenances one, and only one set of values universally applicable to all human beings. Locke claims that “absolutism has come forward again in new and formidable guise,” and he warns us to be on guard for “social and political forms of it, with their associated intellectual tyrannies of authoritarian dogmatism and uniformitarian universality” (PID 53). These newer forms of absolutism, Locke claimed, are the products of older ones. When values are held to be absolute there often results a tendency to discount the legitimacy of rival values. Pluralism avoids conceiving of values in absolutist terms. Setting various value conceptions on equal footing is the aim of Locke's pluralism.