Liberalism, Tolerance and Multiculturalism: The Bounds of Liberal Intervention in Affairs of Minority Cultures (original) (raw)
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Between Individual Rights and Group Rights-Academicus
The politicization of ethnocultural diversity and the demands posed by minority cultures for greater public recognition of their distinctive identities, and greater freedom and opportunity to retain and develop their distinctive cultural practices challenge liberal democracies. In response to these demands, new and creative mechanisms are being adopted in many countries for accommodating difference. This paper discusses some of the issues raised by these demands, focusing in particular on the difficulties that arise when the minority seeking accommodation is illiberal.
Between Individual Rights and Group Rights
Academicus International Scientific Journal, 2018
The politicization of ethnocultural diversity and the demands posed by minority cultures for greater public recognition of their distinctive identities, and greater freedom and opportunity to retain and develop their distinctive cultural practices challenge liberal democracies. In response to these demands, new and creative mechanisms are being adopted in many countries for accommodating difference. This paper discusses some of the issues raised by these demands, focusing in particular on the difficulties that arise when the minority seeking accommodation is illiberal.
GROUP RIGHTS AS HUMAN RIGHTS. A LIBERAL APPROACH TO MULTICULTURALISM (2006)
Liberal theories have long insisted that cultural diversity in democratic societies can be accommodated through classical liberal tools, in particular through individual rights, and they have often rejected the claims of cultural minorities for group rights as illiberal. Group Rights as Human Rights argues that such a rejection is misguided. Based on a thorough analysis of the concept of group rights, it proposes to overcome the dominant dichotomy between "individual" human rights and "collective" group rights by recognizing that group rights also serve individual interests. It also challenges the claim that group rights, so understood, conflict with the liberal principle of neutrality; on the contrary, these rights help realize the neutrality ideal as they counter cultural biases that exist in Western states. Group rights deserve to be classified as human rights because they respond to fundamental, and morally important, human interests. Reading the theories of Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor as complementary rather than opposed, Group Rights as Human Rights sees group rights as anchored both in the value of cultural belonging for the development of individual autonomy and in each person’s need for a recognition of her identity. This double foundation has important consequences for the scope of group rights: it highlights their potential not only in dealing with national minorities but also with immigrant groups; and it allows to determine how far such rights should also benefit illiberal groups. Participation, not intervention, should here be the guiding principle if group rights are to realize the liberal promise.
Self-Determining Multiculturalism
International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 2015
The burgeoning human rights discourse of the twentieth century inspired new attention to the location of minority groups within the nation-state and their experiences of violence, discrimination and inequality. The result has been attempts by the nation to address the diversity of its population through the recognition of cultural difference. Attending to two particular rights claims-those of Indigenous self-determination and multiculturalism-we can find a tendency toward subsuming the former within those of the latter. This is a move that results from a top-down approach to the recognition of difference, reproducing colonialist priorities and jurisprudence, and significantly undermining the goals and meanings of Indigenous self-determination. By contrast, when self-determination is approached from the bottom-up, we can gain new perspectives on the meanings of this Indigenous right, expanded to encompass a range of relationships, all crucially built in response to Indigenous identities as First Peoples.
Liberal Democratic Pluralism and When to be Intolerant of Harm
Paper presented at North American Society for Social Philosophy, 36th Annual Conference, "Home, Sanctuary, Shelter, and Justice" University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. July 11th, 2019 In this paper I seek to address the limits of the scope of toleration and investigate what recourse both citizens and states have to address intolerant positions within their particular social structure. I argue that liberalism is an inherently perfectionist account of political organization, whether it wants to be or not is beside the question: liberal pluralism is a value-laden concept that shapes the narrative structures of those in society, and not a neutral framework for Rawls’ comprehensive doctrines (CDs) to exist within. Liberalism can use a more robust version of the Mill’s Harm Principle as a foundation to deal with CDs that are intolerant and intolerable. Some structural harms are caused by prevailing communally held CDs, including issues of some religious communities, sexism, and racism. Here I defend the conclusion that, based on an expansion of Mill’s Harm Principle, the state and its citizens have legitimate authority within the tolerant society to actively reject CDs and coerce those that hold them. I develop my argument in conversation with Mill, Rawls, Raz, and others. Mill’s colloquial use of “harm” leaves much room for interpretation and application of the principle. By expanding on his version to include rhetoric into the harm category, and by considering the reduction of autonomous choices one can experience as harm, I arrive at the conclusion that the tolerant society does not have to tolerate everything. Rawls notes that it is not possible for all conceptions of the good to exist in a society: inevitably, some people and their underlying CDs will be coerced. Tolerant liberal democracies do not have a compelling answer towards addressing the intolerant CDs someone holds, as all are theoretically supposed to be allowed in the “value-neutral” and “pluralist” society. The expansion of the principle in this work shows that there is a possible answer for the tolerant liberals to reject other views that constitute harms towards others, and gives the grounds of legitimation for the state and citizens to do so. A nod towards possible policy considerations and a brief consideration of arguments against the Harm Principle as a means of coercion are also discussed.
In this paper, we engage critically with the understanding of majority-minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio-political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons for action with respect to some minority. We suggest supplementing the reference to toleration with a specific interpretation of respect for persons: all persons should be treated equally as self-legislators and as if they were opaque to our judgement as regards their agential abilities, on which their capacity for self-legislation supervenes. Minorities are disrespected in this sense whenever are treated merely as the addressees of the rules constraining the formulation and pursuit of their lifeplans, rather than as their co-authors on an equal footing with the majority, and whenever their treatment in politics and society is considered as legitimately influenced by the majority’s judgement of their agential abilities, either directly or by indirect inference from the evaluation of the content of their beliefs and practices.
Liberalism and the Limits of Multiculturalism
Journal of Canadian Studies, 2001
One of the most pressing issues facing liberal democracies today is the politicization of ethnocultural diversity. Minority cultures are demanding greater public recognition of their distinctive identities and greater freedom and opportunity to retain and develop their distinctive cultural practices. In response to these demands, new and creative mechanisms are being adopted in many countries for accommodating difference. This essay discusses some of the issues raised by these demands, focussing in particular on the difficulties that arise when the minority seeking accommodation is illiberal. Undoubtedly, ethnocultural relations are often full of complications that defy simple categories or easy answers; however, we can make some progress if we draw some distinctions between different kinds of groups and different kinds of group rights. This essay probes the nature of liberal tolerance and then delineates the limits of state intervention by looking at some troubling practices and analyzing pertinent court judgements.