This article seeks to understand how values enter into political discourse via justification and how those values are negotiated over time. The article maps out the terrain of diversity discourses, both as a specific type of discourse and as an example of ethical, moral and pragmatic modes of argumentation. The author examines Swedish “diversity discourses” in the periods of 1968–1975 and 1991–1995 in an effort to tease out the pragmatic, moral and ethical aspects of these discourses. Diversity discourses are defined as discourses regarding how much and what kind of diversity is acceptable or desirable in a society, as well as how such diversity should be handled. I find that values, both contextually-dependent ethical values and universal moral values, rather than being “prior” to politics, arise out of the intersection of pragmatic, ethical and moral discourses. What is moral and ethical, then is colored by the particular nexus of moral, ethical and pragmatic concerns such that what is acceptable at one particular time and location, may be unacceptable in another, even coming from the same actors with the same ideological commitments. Shifts in the ethical/moral modes of justification, then, lead to shifts in who is included in a democratic community.

本文旨在了解价值观如何通过正当理由进入政治话语，以及这些价值观如何随着时间的推移而被协商。这篇文章描绘了多样性话语的领域，既作为一种特定类型的话语，又作为伦理、道德和实用论证模式的一个例子。作者考察了 1968-1975 年和 1991-1995 年期间的瑞典“多样性话语”，试图梳理出这些话语的务实、道德和伦理方面。多样性话语被定义为关于在一个社会中可以接受或期望的多样性的程度和种类，以及应该如何处理这种多样性的话语。我发现价值观，无论是依赖于语境的伦理价值观还是普遍的道德价值观，而不是“先于”政治，而是产生于实用主义、伦理和道德话语。什么是道德和伦理的，然后被道德、伦理和实用问题的特殊联系所影响，以至于在一个特定时间和地点可以接受的东西，在另一个特定时间和地点可能是不可接受的，即使来自具有相同意识形态承诺的相同行为者。因此，辩护的伦理/道德模式的转变会导致民主社区中包含的人的转变。