Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between the ideas of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberty is examined within the context of his value pluralism, in which goods, evils and forms of life are ultimately incommensurable (or incomparable through reasoning). Adopting this pluralist stance as to values, I try to answer the following question: does psychiatry need to/is it able to reach an explicit agreement as what is the best way to live? Given the precedence of practical reasoning in psychiatry, I suggest that, when confronted with certain kinds of human suffering (pathos), often associated with a clash between values, the last word (however tentative and always individual) should come from the clinical realm.