Radical Multiculturalism versus Liberal Pluralism

Transcription

1 Radical Multiculturalism versus Liberal Pluralism Michael Dusche ABSTRACT Radical multiculturalism claims that cultural groups, not the individual, should be the yardstick for considerations of justice, because the group offers the individual the indispensable good of being rooted in a community and since membership in a culture is not voluntary, abolition of culture would lead to uprooting of individuals. Thus, by taking this good away on grounds of justice, liberalism perpetrates another injustice. Against this, liberalism upholds the principle of normative methodological individualism, arguing that groups cannot be defined without recourse to the individual. Furthermore, the concept of cultural group is notoriously vague and not suitable to replace normative methodological individualism. Moreover, radical multiculturalism risks falling prey to self-defeating normative relativism. Since there is also a danger for the liberal to fall prey to culture-centrism, both parties agree on internal universalism. They also agree on the difference between membership in an association and membership in a cultural community. However, the liberal concludes that the state must not add its might to cultural dependence, but enable the individual to grow out of it. Furthermore, liberalism maintains that normative methodological individualism is sufficient for even group-related needs provided the group conforms to basic principles of justice. To this, radical multiculturalism objects that even if all cultural groups abide by the principles of justice of the larger society, liberalism still produces injustices for those whose language is not among the official languages of the polity. Since any democratic polity needs a medium of debate and deliberation that is universally understood, liberalism has to grant this point. Liberalism can only diminish its impact through intermediate levels of government and subsidiarity. KEYWORDS Multiculturalism; Language politics; Pluralism; John Rawls; India; Liberalism; Subsidiarity Introduction Hindu-Muslim relations in India as well as questions of religious pluralism in Europe and other parts of the West are often discussed from a multiculturalist or liberal perspective. This paper takes a deeper look at some of the theoretical problems surrounding those families of theories by pointing to the main concerns of multiculturalists, on one hand, and liberals on the other. The former are convinced of the importance, if not pre-eminence, of the group for the individual, whereas the latter are primarily concerned with the well-being of the individual. These concerns are expressed in the demand for group rights and individual rights respectively. This is not to say that some multiculturalists would not support individual rights. In fact, leading figures in the debate such as Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka give individual rights priority over group rights. This moderate multiculturalism, however, is not the norm everywhere in the world. In India, for instance, a far more radical multiculturalism is the living reality. India is an important example for the adoption of extensive multicultural policies in the form of legal pluralism, along with other institutional mechanisms such as federalism, the formation of states largely along lines of language use, and the introduction of preferential quotas for the lower and the middle castes in education and government AUTHOR INFORMATION: Michael Dusche, PhD. Assistant Professor-DAAD Lecturer, Centre for German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi , India. dr_m_d_dusche@hotmail.com. Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 238

2 employment. While the British introduced uniform laws governing features of social life such as crime and commerce, they recognized distinct family laws for different religious groups and some other cultural groups such as Hindus (including Parsis, Sikhs and Jains), Muslims, Christians, Jews, and various tribal groups. These diverse family laws, also called personal laws, govern features of family life such as marriage, divorce, alimony, property division, maintenance, inheritance, adoption, and guardianship. 1 While pledging in its constitution to eventually institute a uniform civil code, modern India has clung to the principle of legal pluralism thereby engendering all the problems in practice that multiculturalism faces in theory: customary laws do not necessarily reflect group practices; the boundaries of recognized groups are difficult to draw; access to law outside the hereditary custom is limited, as well as the scope for legal change; caste associations, prayer groups, local churches and temples, and obscure community leaders without democratic mandate act as adjudicative agents; and, most importantly, the equality before the law for every citizen irrespective of gender or community membership is compromised. Some of the customary laws are particularly discriminatory of women s rights to inheritance, alimony, and unilateral divorce, besides being discriminatory to women depending on hereditary community membership. Thus, in many cases, women have no access to the fundamental right to equality as recognized in the Indian constitution irrespective of gender and community membership. 2 It is such radical multiculturalism that poses the real challenge to liberal conceptions of justice for it calls into question its fundamental premise that the individual, not the group, represents the yardstick for any considerations of justice. I am therefore confronting liberalism with this extreme form of multiculturalism. In the controversy thus perceived, the individualism propagated by liberalism is the point in question. Radical multiculturalists claim the inadequacy of individualism as a methodological principle. Liberals, on the other hand, maintain that a normative methodological individualism is sufficient to account for even group-related needs of the individual. This is normally expressed in terms of individual rights to cultural or community membership. While radical multiculturalists tend to argue in favour of culture as an irreducible fact for normative reflection, liberals would warn of the trap of self-defeating normative relativism and favour some form of universalist ethics. As a mediatory position, I propose internal universalism, 3 which is a form of meta-ethical relativism (to be explained below). Internal universalism does not rule out the possibility of universal norms but insists that these are attained through a process of dialogue and negotiation approximating universal consensus. In the discussion of liberal individualism vs. the group-oriented multiculturalist approach, I am focusing on two areas in the debate between radical multiculturalists and liberals that are particularly salient in the Indian context: 1) the problem of the abolition of unjust cultural practices, and 2) the problem of adequate public recognition of cultures. 1) To an important degree, the identity of any person depends on culture. However, unlike membership in voluntary associations, membership in a culture is not normally acquired; one is more or less born into one s culture. Thus, if certain customs of a particular culture are dismissed following consideration of justice, its members suffer a depreciation of their culture, which members of other, more accepted cultures do not suffer. This is particularly disturbing from a liberal point of view. Since the liberal perspective is based on normative methodological individualism, the individuals of the dismissed culture count as much as the individuals of the majority culture. Liberalism, however, has little to offer them in compensation for the suffered devaluation of their culture. 4 The example that comes to mind in the Indian context is the abolition of certain customs in Hindu culture that contradict basic humanistic values. Thus, the burning of widows (sati) has been Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 239

3 banned, widow remarriage legalized, the concept of untouchability banned, and excessive dowry prohibited. Reforms in both Muslim and Hindu personal law brought a limited amount of homogeneity within community law. The so-called Shariat Act of 1937 partly homogenized features of Muslim law while legislation of the 1950s had the same effect on Hindu law. It made personal law applicable to most areas of family life while leaving the contents, particularly that of Muslim law, to the discretion of the judiciary. Thus, judges introduced reforms with reference to the Indian constitution, which, without leading towards the secularization or homogenization of family law, enabled greater gender equality. In spite of these attempts to have the different personal laws converge somewhere near an equal treatment of all citizens irrespective of gender or community membership, the idea of legal pluralism is not likely to be abandoned in favour of a uniform civil code any time in the near future. A uniform civil code, however, would make matters more transparent that otherwise remain a constant source of misunderstanding, subject to distortion and demagogy, and indirectly help foster violent tensions between the communities. 2) Critics of liberalism have pointed out that there is a limit to the cultural neutrality of the liberal state. I shall embrace this argument in a qualified way by asking in which domains the liberal state cannot avoid favouring one culture over another. I shall argue that language can be seen as representing such an aspect. Language provides the medium of political negotiation and deliberation and thereby contributes to making civic rights meaningful for the individual citizen. Its success as a political medium, however, depends largely on its being universally understood. At the same time, language is also the medium of identity formation for the individual. In this domain, its effectiveness depends often on its ability to provide the individual with a sense of difference. This tension between universality and difference is difficult to balance in a democratic polity. Federalism and the principle of subsidiarity provide limited means for the mediation between these two contradictory demands. In any case, it is the cultural domain of language that the liberal state cannot avoid getting involved in, thereby threatening to compromise on its aspiration to cultural neutrality. By choosing an official language (or a set thereof), the liberal state sets those members of cultures at a disadvantage whose language is not among the media of political negotiation, deliberation, education and similar domains that are relevant for the realization of civic rights. As it will turn out, both areas of debate, 1) and 2), provide grounds for criticism of liberal individualism. However, it will also become apparent that neither of them helps to establish the case of radical multiculturalism for even radical multiculturalism cannot offer any satisfactory solution to the problems entailed. As a corollary to 1), we need to know on what grounds to differentiate between just and unjust cultural practices without falling into the trap of culture-centrism, on the one hand, by unquestioningly universalizing the principles of justice taken from one culture, and, on the other hand, without falling into the trap of normative relativism, which is demonstrably self-defeating. As a basis, I am using an informed liberal conception of pluralism by taking Rawls s political liberalism to a more principled level. Taking Rawls s concept of public reason, I argue that, for good philosophical reasons, we are not to expect any conception of justice, liberal or otherwise culturally grounded, to be able to decide political matters in lieu of the members of a polity. At some stage, a collective decision cannot be avoided, which remains arbitrary to a certain extent. 5 From this fact of principled plurality follows the necessity, for the member of each culture, to take into account possible alternatives while construing their conceptions of justice. The effort of taking into account alternative conceptions of justice makes for the reasonableness of that conception. The requirement of reasonableness in the public use of reason is a mutual one. A conception lacking reasonableness does not meet the criterion of mutuality Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 240

4 and can be dismissed on these grounds. From this argument certain constraints on cultures can be inferred allowing us to distinguish (negatively) just from unjust cultural practices, without being forced to single out one practice as the only just one. Furthermore, the argument allows us to distinguish between politically relevant and irrelevant aspects of a culture. 1. Public Reason and Unjust Cultural Practice Since it was first conceived, liberalism has evolved into various forms, some of which attempt to constructively deal with the democratic, socialist and pluralist criticism to which it was exposed. A prime example of this sort is John Rawls s political liberalism. In the following, I shall briefly outline how Rawls s political liberalism deals with the problem of plurality of worldviews which can also be seen as depending on culture coexisting in the setting of a modern liberal democracy. Rawls speaks of comprehensive doctrines pertaining to questions of good life and just social order. These comprehensive doctrines can be based on secular parameters or grounded in a religious or culturally engendered perspective. Their defining feature is that in their attempt to give a foundation to a set of norms and values they refer to concepts and truths, which are not commonly shared among citizens outside this particular community. However, the society, in spite of being divided along such lines, is in need of a shared basis of fundamental norms forming a sort of background consensus upon which social institutions catering to all citizens alike can rest. Since Kant, the realm in which such a background consensus is sought is called the realm of public reason. 6 In his various publications on public reason, 7 John Rawls has developed a normative theory of politics for a plural environment where reasonable citizens who follow diverse religious and non-religious belief systems demand that their worldviews be respected equitably and the pursuit of their religious practices protected by the state provided that they are reasonable. Reasonableness is an important constraint, which is meant to protect us from relativism since we are not to expect that there exists an objective moral order which humans can appreciate through their faculty of reason. Under this assumption, a conception of justice would be true if it corresponded with this given moral order. According to this position, which is called rational intuitionism, 8 there can be only one true moral theory. Political liberalism rejects this position. There can be a plurality of moral conceptions, which can each be true by internal standards. Ultimately, however, only an overlapping consensus can bridge the gap between possible incommensurable doctrines. Thus, ultimately, truth is not the decisive factor but a decision taken collectively by all concerned citizens. Political liberalism calls reasonable a position that takes this fact of ethical diversity seriously. The reasonable individual develops her moral conception, which can be true internally, taking into account that others may have their moral conceptions, which internally may be equally valid. After coming to terms with herself on ethical matters, she enters into negotiation with other individuals to explore the possibility of an overlapping consensus. Ultimately a collective decision will be reached and one of the many equally suitable moral conceptions will be validated. Conceptions which are not, in principle, acceptable to all citizens are called non-reasonable because their becoming law and policy would have to rely on force and thus be perceived as arbitrary and illegitimate by those who do not share the reasons behind the conception. A public conception of justice is reasonable to the extent that it takes into consideration all reasonable positions as defined above. Reasonableness in the defined sense thus involves a momentum of adequacy (appreciation of the fact of reasonable pluralism) and preparedness to co-operate in building an overlapping consensus between several equally suitable conceptions of justice. The implied principle of compatibilization of reasonable positions could be called the categorical Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 241

5 imperative of political reason. In Rawls s terms, we have to differentiate between the scopes of public reason as opposed to non-public reason. Public reason is a matter of politics; ethics a matter of non-public reason. 9 The concept of political or legal ethics has traditionally been defined in terms of material propositions as if the difference between public and private matters would lie in the material norm itself. Rawls now suggests a Copernican turn in moral theory by formalizing the concept of the political. It is no longer implied in the material norm itself whether it is to be subsumed under the domain of legal ethics or virtue ethics. The distinction between legal matters and ethical matters is carried out by reference to form alone and dynamically by recourse to the criteria of reasonable disagreement. The realm of the political and the scope of legal ethics are solely defined by the scope of reasonable disagreement. The domain of politics corresponds to the domain of reasonable disagreement in ethical matters as they occur in a particular society. Politics is about the peaceful settlement of conflicts regarding matters of justice. It has to mediate between divergent views of justice in groups of individuals. How can the concept of public reason and the normative concept of politics help us to tackle the two aforementioned puzzles of multiculturalism: the abolition problem and the recognition problem? If the multiculturalist agrees on the criterion for reasonableness, i.e. that from within each culture an attempt is made to propose a conception of justice that is at least in principle acceptable also to non-members of that culture, then a culture which does not permit its members to conform to this very basic criterion of reasonableness would not be called reasonable since all reasonable cultures would converge on the fact of its unacceptability. Thus, even in the absence of any universally accepted conception of justice, the concept of an unjust culture is not vacuous. Moreover, much depends on how the radical multiculturalist defines the central term in her critique of liberal democratic pluralism. If culture is left undefined, the liberal will object with the observation that culture matters for persons in a variety of domains, that the state, however, is not meant to provide or substitute for whatever culture gives a person. This follows from the above delineation of the realm of the political. A state that takes upon itself the guardianship of the full range of affairs usually associated with the term culture would become authoritarian. It would not discriminate between the private affairs of its citizens a domain where citizens have the freedom to make individual choices, to embrace or reject certain parts of their tradition and public affairs the domain proper of the state where it can legitimately apply its right to enforce certain norms independently of the momentary choice of the person concerned. The liberal democratic state cannot take upon itself the tasks that the various actors of civil society are to accomplish by themselves. The actors of civil society, unlike the state, are voluntary associations. The individual s right of exit prevents associations from infringing on individual liberties and becoming authoritarian. Cultures, as we have noticed earlier, lack this particular feature. Their membership is not voluntary in the same way. If the state were to add its might to the inescapable character of cultures, then being part of a culture would become a fate. To prevent this, the state has to steer clear, to a certain extent, of the procreation of culture. Its job is to shield the polity from external threats and prevent internal strife so that the polity can negotiate its internal affairs through peaceful and democratic means. 10 The radical multiculturalist maintains that culture is a necessary condition for any individual to preserve a sense of identity and belonging. The political community, in turn, depends on individuals who are rooted in their respective culture and who have a sense of justice and ethical value to strive for. This however does not imply the reverse. The political community, while depending on individuals generally being rooted in some culture, does not depend on any particular culture for their Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 242

6 individual citizens. This is true from the perspective of the state: the state should not engage in the promotion of particular cultures; and from the perspective of the individual: the state should not limit the individual to any one culture. Moreover, we have to limit ourselves to those aspects of culture which the liberal democratic state cannot avoid getting involved in. It is here that Rawls s concept of the realm of the political can be of use. It provides us with a formula for discerning which cultural aspects fall into the domain of politics and which do not. Formally, the realm of the political is defined by a consensus on what constitute public reasons in a given political argument. Public reasons, according to Rawls, have to be based on what is uncontroversial between the followers of various incommensurable comprehensive doctrines. What exactly this is cannot be determined a priori but depends on the comprehensive doctrines actually existing in a given polity. For any polity, however, it should be safe to assume that consensus should prevail about the practical prerequisites for any functioning political institution. Some of these practical prerequisites involve aspects of culture, language for example. Any democratic polity needs a medium through which it negotiates and by the help of which the democratic right to political participation becomes meaningful. Certain aspects of education may provide further examples since only adequately educated citizens can be expected to become active and fully co-operating members of a political community. There are certain aspects of culture, however, which clearly need not be carried into the realm of politics. A political community need not take a uniform stance on religion, science, architecture, literature, theatre, music, etc. Those matters are not directly relevant as prerequisites for the process of political debate and deliberation. 2. Normative Methodological Individualism vs. Group Rights For the remainder of this paper, I shall focus on the question whether doing justice to the individual s need for cultural or community attachment requires us to depart from normative methodological individualism and to stipulate collective rights. I shall call liberal the position that maintains that we can account for the individual need for attachment and belonging within the limits of normative methodological individualism. In this sense, the positions of Taylor, Kymlicka and others still count as liberal positions. Radical multiculturalists, on the other hand, claim the need for a departure from that premise. They advocate collective rights (i.e. human rights for groups) on the same or even on a more fundamental level as individual human rights. Of course, intermediate positions exist. Bhargava, for instance, differentiates between republican and liberal individualism, political and cultural communitarianism, and democratic, authoritarian, liberal, and even boutique multiculturalism. 11 All these distinctions are valid. However, to quote a liberal position, Included in the set of human rights are rights to cultural membership. Everybody has the same right to develop and maintain her identity in just those intersubjectively shared forms of life and traditions from which she first emerged and has been formed during the course of childhood and adolescence. 12 From such membership rights follow almost all of the immunities, protections, subsidies, and policies which communitarians demand for cultural minorities in the liberal state. These rights need not be conceptualized in terms of collective rights. 13 I am therefore not interested in those kinds of multiculturalism that do not challenge normative methodological individualism. By the term normative methodological individualism, I mean any approach that uses the individual as the basic unit for normative considerations. On this level, lest it fall into the trap of the naturalist fallacy, liberalism does not make any claim as to how people really are, how they develop and what they need for a good life. Normative methodological individualism grants that individuals, seen from an empirical perspective, grow up in families and possibly in communities. It grants that much of the material normative input Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 243

7 constitutive of any individual personality stems from these allegiances, and that families and communities are crucial in the maintenance of a healthy (empirical) individual. In isolating an individual for the purpose of moral reflection, the liberal does not pretend that the resulting abstraction is a realistic image of a human being in this anthropological sense. That is not the purpose. Moral thinking has to abstract from certain givens in order to reach the counterfactual realm of normativity. Thus, the question is not how realistic the concept of the individual would be after this abstraction but the reverse: how much anthropological flesh do we have to add to an abstract individual in order for our counterfactual considerations to remain relevant for real-life purposes? 14 For the radical multiculturalist, culture is an irreducible level of analysis when it comes to questions of identity and belonging. However, the moral-theoretical and legal status of groups, defined as communities or cultures, is problematic. Firstly, many questions arise regarding the definability of cultural groups: what carries the moral or legal status of a group if the boundaries between groups cannot be drawn easily and groups within groups cannot be limited to a manageable number? Moreover, there is no easy one-to-one correspondence between individuals and groups. Each individual may belong to a number of different groups simultaneously and over time. Thus, the group allegiances of any individual cannot easily be defined objectively but have to depend on the self-ascriptions and preferences of any individual at a given point in time. An individual can change its identity over time and/or have several identities simultaneously depending on the context. Identities can overlap and mutually depend on one another in a variety of ways. Ultimately only the individual person can inform us about her various allegiances and their preferential order. It seems that thereby, again, the individual gains central importance. From the point of view of the theorist and more so from the point of view of the policy maker, the individual cannot be bypassed in the definition of the community or culture in which it wishes to be included. All these problems are set aside, in this section; I am asking whether radical multiculturalism does succeed in demonstrating a fundamental flaw in the liberal approach. The identity of the individual person, according to the radical multiculturalist s claim, is rooted in something bigger than the individual, namely its culture. The conclusion is that cultures need to feature somewhere prominently in the normative account of just social institutions. The liberal answer to this could be swift. Cultures do feature in the liberal account of just institutions. They are part of what Rawls had called the basic structure of society and they are one among many institutions under scrutiny in a normative account of social justice. Thus, a culture whose customs conform to the basic principles of justice for the basic structure of any society would be called a just culture and would occupy its rightful place in the overall scheme of things in that particular society. Cultural practices that violate basic principles of justice would reasonably be dismissed, as any association of individuals would have to be dismissed if it violated basic principles of justice. Liberalism grants every individual a catalogue of basic rights including the right to form, or be part of, any association provided that this association respects the same basic rights of all the other members of the society. Here the radical multiculturalist can object that the analogy between cultures and associations in the liberal s account is flawed, for while individuals can join associations voluntarily, people are not free in choosing their culture. Cultures are something into which one is born. People cannot easily renounce their culture or assimilate to another culture. Thus, how to deal with a person who happens to be born into a culture deemed unjust in some of its practices by liberal principles of justice? The liberal will dismiss the person s culture. Will he dismiss the person along with it? At this point, the liberal faces a problem. On one hand, by force of normative methodological individualism, she is committed to treat each Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 244

8 person alike, indiscriminately of any non-chosen circumstance, which includes culture; on the other hand, principles of justice compel her to deliberately set a group of individuals at a disadvantage since these principles mark some of their practices as unjust. An ideal society conforming to a given set of liberal principles of justice will not leave any room for unjust cultural practices. A less than ideal society progressing towards more justice will thus have to work towards the abolition of unjust cultural practices within its cultural groups. However, abolishing the stipulated unjust customs, the society cannot offer any compensation to those whose culture and thereby identity it has to tamper with. It cannot give them a new culture to make up for the loss in identity and belonging, if our assumption is correct that cultures in a certain deep sense cannot be voluntarily acquired. The individuals concerned, i.e. at least one or two generations from those who used to belong to the dismissed culture, will suffer the consequences of feeling uprooted until their offspring eventually grow up among equals in the majority culture. Moreover, the radical multiculturalist could claim that even in a polity that consists only of cultural groups that do conform to the basic principles of a conception of justice that the liberal might advance, members of some cultures will be at disadvantage compared to members of other cultures, since the political culture of a given society is bound to reflect the preferences of those who form the majority culture. Being the standard culture, their culture normally receives more public recognition than minority cultures. The people belonging to the majority culture are thus at a greater advantage in terms of public recognition of what forms their identity than people belonging to any minority culture. As Kymlicka 15 Menke, 16 and other critics of liberalism have pointed out, there is a limit to how neutral a liberal state can be with respect to culture. In many existing nation-states, which language is to become the official language is a divisive factor. The problem is that with a secondarily acquired language being the official language in the political forum, people belonging to a linguistic minority are at a disadvantage with respect to others who are native speakers of the official language. This disadvantage can be practical (following and participating in political processes, standing for office); it can also be subtler. Rajeev Bhargava, for instance, gives an account of how personal identity relates to culture and links it to intentionality (beliefs, desires) and thereby language: To have an identity, a person must consciously be able to identify with some of his / her beliefs, desires and acts... [O]n the assumption of the centrality of beliefs, desires, and acts to the whole issue of personal identity, the identity of persons is constituted in large measure by the language... Identification with beliefs and desires is impossible without language because a person would not know what these beliefs and desires mean... Since entry into a world of meaning is crucial for the formation of beliefs and desires; the identity of humans is related to a world of meanings... a culture. 17 Thus, language becomes a central point for practical reasons as well as for more subtle reasons in connection with personal identity. Language being an important expression of culture, multiculturalism has a point here. However, multiculturalism does not normally focus on language but speaks of culture in a very broad and often undefined sense. 18 For practical purposes, the problem can often be narrowed down from cultures to linguistic communities. Thus, what I had called the recognition problem is sometimes simply a problem of equal recognition of different linguistic communities. In a wider sense, however, all cultural production is in some way related to the production of symbols and therefore meanings. In this broader sense of language, the recognition problem can be made to apply to almost every cultural domain. Art, dress, architecture, music, etc. may be seen as contributing to a world of meaning whose official recognition may enhance the self-esteem of those so benefited and whose lack thereof may lead to a sense of deprivation. Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 245

9 While all this is certainly true and has to be negotiated within the framework of a liberal democratic constitution, we have seen that there are certain cultural domains which are more intimately connected to the preconditions of the working of any participatory democracy than others. This would be any cultural skill that enables a person to become a fully participating member of a democratic polity. Such domains would be, for instance, the medium in which to engage in political debate, as well as the education and the access to information required to this end. Both of these examples point to the mastery of a common language as a crucial prerequisite for any effective engagement in politics. Language, like no other cultural domain, is at the same time the medium for the negotiation of separate cultural identities and the medium for the negotiation of common political deliberations. This is why liberal democracy, with its promise of universal participation, has an inherent penchant for a uniform national language which, however, can get in the way of other guarantees such as respect for cultural difference a dilemma unknown in pre-democratic multi-ethnic constellations where the accommodation of cultural minorities was sometimes easier because no room existed for their participation in government affairs and therefore there was no need for a universal medium of political debate and deliberation. As examples, one may think of the empires of the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans, or of Al-Andalus. In a democratic polity, linguistic majoritarianism seems inescapable to a certain extent. In the paradigmatic, largely monolingual nation-states of Europe this does not pose much of a problem any more. A state can afford to have two or more working languages. However, in larger states like India and in conglomerations of states like the European Union the number of autochthonous linguistic communities is simply too large to be accommodated through a multi-language formula. One solution already at hand for this problem, and well within the boundaries of democratic liberalism, is federalism, i.e. the establishment of intermediate levels of political deliberation. A communal or regional government deliberating on behalf of a linguistic community can mediate between the central government and the citizens without infringing on the priority of individual rights over collective rights. Of course, federalism and decentralization cannot solve, but only reduce the problem that people belonging to some linguistic communities have an advantage over individuals belonging to other linguistic communities because their language happens to be among the working languages of a local or central government. But this is a problem faced by liberal pluralism and multiculturalism alike. The radical multiculturalist seeking greater autonomy for certain linguistic communities faces the same problem. Within the domain of that linguistic community there will again be minorities who would fall under the hegemony of the main language of that area. There can only be an approximate solution, never a principled one if one wants sovereign political entities to exceed the size of a village. A related idea that can help us to cope with the impasse is the principle of subsidiary government, which is available to the liberal and the radical multiculturalist alike. The concept of subsidiary government has one root in the imperial German legal tradition, meaning the prevalence of the local customary law over the imperial law. The former used to be Germanic; the latter emerged as an adoption of Roman law. Roman law was used to supplement Germanic law where it was not sufficiently specific. Today, of course, as in other federal states, the law of the Bund breaks the law of the Land and the law of the Land prevails over Gewohnheitsrecht (customary law); common law is used to supplement codified law where it is not specific enough. Thus, in the continental legal tradition, but not necessarily in India, subsidiary government has come to mean almost the inverse. The idea is that matters should be decided as far as possible by the people concerned: local matters by local legislative bodies, regional matters by regional ones and so forth. Following its inherent Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 246

10 logic, human rights, since they concern everyone, would fall into the domain of a global legislative body, which so far does not exist. The people concerned should be in a position to deliberate on their own affairs. The principle of subsidiary government tends to maximize the autonomy of local and regional institutions thereby leaving a maximum of questions to be decided within the bounds of the respective linguistic community. Which matters can legitimately be decided on a supra-regional or central level has to be negotiated between local political entities. I have argued elsewhere that a nation-state consisting of a variety of linguistic communities should conceivably be the result of a hypothetical process of deliberate convergence of local political entities on a common ground of shared fundamental values. 19 Any multiethnic or multinational union where such deliberate joining together is inconceivable would be regarded as illegitimate. The radical multiculturalist s argument rests on the assumption that cultures thrive better when they are officially recognized. 20 Specifically, cultures gain from being state cultures. Conversely, cultures are said to wither away when they are pushed into the domain of the unofficial. (I am not saying private because I believe that there is a third realm between the private and the official that is the public sphere.) The liberal could simply deny that these assumptions are correct. There are numerous examples of cultures that have failed to wither away in spite of never having been official in any way. A prime example is the Jewish diaspora that has maintained its cultural and religious distinctness over centuries in spite of not only being not official but even officially suppressed. There are also examples of cultures that have disappeared in spite of being state cultures, and not only because their states have vanished. One may think of the polytheistic Roman civilization that gave way to a monotheistic Christian civilization even before the Roman Empire fell apart. However, the liberal cannot deny that states do have to make a choice in some aspects of culture and that therefore even in the liberal state, absolute neutrality with respect to cultural matters is not conceivable. As a consequence, some groups of individuals have an advantage over others in that their access to political participation is facilitated by the fact that their culture is part of the official culture. Those whose cultures are marginal in the state find it more difficult to profit from the opportunities that a state offers to its citizens. Conclusion Radical multiculturalism poses a challenge to liberal conceptions of cultural plurality without, however, being able to offer viable alternatives. Radical multiculturalism claims that culturally engendered groups not the individual should be the yardstick for considerations of justice, because, firstly, the group, even if it violates the principles of justice of the wider society, offers the individual an indispensable good, namely that of being rooted in a community and of forming an identity accordingly; and secondly, since membership in a culture, unlike membership in an association, is not voluntarily acquired, abolition of a culture would lead to an irreversible uprooting of the individual. Thus, by taking this good away on grounds of justice, liberalism perpetrates another injustice. Against this, liberalism upholds the principle of normative methodological individualism, arguing that groups cannot be defined without recourse to the level of the individual. Furthermore, the concept of a cultural group is notoriously vague and is thus not suitable to replace normative methodological individualism. Boundaries of cultural groups cannot be defined, there is no limit of sub-cultures within cultures and individuals may belong to several cultures simultaneously and over time. Moreover, radical multiculturalism risks falling prey to self-defeating normative relativism. Since there is also a danger on the liberal side to fall prey to culture-centrism, both parties should agree on internal universalism as a common basis. Both also would agree on the fundamental Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 247

11 difference between membership in an association and membership in a cultural community. However, the liberal concludes from this that the state must not add its might to the limiting force of cultural dependence but, in the contrary, enable the individual to grow out of the confines of its culture. Furthermore, liberalism maintains that normative methodological individualism is sufficient for even group-related needs provided the group conforms to basic principles of justice. To this, radical multiculturalism objects that even if all cultural groups abide by the principles of justice of the society of which they form a part, liberalism still engenders injustices for those groups whose language is not among the official languages of the polity. Since any democratic policy needs a medium of debate and deliberation that is universally understood, liberalism has to grant this point to multiculturalism. Liberalism can only diminish the impact by introducing intermediate levels of government (local, state) and by adhering to the principle of subsidiarity. Notes 1 Narendra Subramanian, Family Law and Cultural Pluralism. Basic Features and Directions of Family Law Policy in India, in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert and Raju G. C. Thomas (New York: Charles Scribner s Sons, forthcoming). 2 Ibid., Hindu daughters have rights to shares equal to those of sons in intestate succession to their parents self-earned property, in contrast with Muslim daughters having rights to only half the shares that Muslim sons do. However, the succession rights of Hindu daughters are restricted to intestate cases, i.e. cases in which the parent did not leave a will. Hindu parents are free to will self-earned property as they wish, and typically will all or most of such property to their sons and perhaps other male kin. Besides, male coparcenaries control ancestral Hindu property in much of India and daughters do not have the right to demand the partition of such property so that they may control their shares... Muslim daughters have the right to half the shares of sons in all forms of parental property. One may will only up to a third of one s estate under Muslim law, and that too not to a legal heir. The rest of one s estate is divided among one s children, spouses and kin according to prescribed shares. So, Muslim parents cannot deny their daughters rights to inherit shares in their property by willing self-earned property to male kin alone, or by effectively presenting more of their property as being of ancestral origin... From 1973 onwards, indigent Hindu women (and other non-muslim women) had the right to alimony until their remarriage or death. Many courts did not recognize the right of divorced Muslim women for maintenance from their ex-husbands beyond a three-month period after divorce... [until] the Supreme Court... recognized the alimony rights of Muslim women and placed conditions for the validity of unilateral Muslim male divorce in two landmark judgements of 2001 and The courts allow Muslim men to marry up to four wives while not permitting Muslim polyandry, in contrast with the statutory ban on Hindu bigamy. The ban on Hindu bigamy is however not very effective as courts set high standards to recognize the validity of Hindu marriages in bigamy cases... 3 See the author s Der Philosoph als Mediator. Anwendungsbedingungen globaler Gerechtigkeit (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2000), 5, where the term is introduced, and the same Experts or Mediators? Philosophers in the Public Sphere, Ethical Perspectives 9, no. 1 (2002): 21-30, where the concept is further developed. 4 In India, compensation is often sought on the basis of communities as the smallest unit of reckoning based on a conception of collective and trans-historical responsibility. A positive expression of this are the many affirmative-action programmes that attempt to make good the historical discrimination against outcasts and under-casts, tribals and women. A negative expression of this sense of collective responsibility is the justification given for acts of violence against members of a community somewhere on accounts of some transgressions by some elements of that community elsewhere (this was the recurrent explanation of the recent pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat as voiced by the Hindu right). Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 248

12 5 See Der Philosoph als Mediator, 3, and the author s Conceptions of Justice: Relevance, Adequacy, & Universality, in Justice: Political, Social and Juridical, eds. Rajeev Bhargava et al. (New Delhi: forthcoming). 6 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklärung? in Ak. VIII: See John Rawls, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, in The Law of Peoples, , for his latest discussion of the topic. Earlier publications on the same include his Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical, Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): ; The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus, New York University Law Review 64 (1989) ; the introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism, xxxvii-lxii; Reply to Juergen Habermas, Journal of Philosophy 92 no. 3 (1995): ; and Das Ideal des oeffentlichen Vernunftgebrauchs [The Ideal of the Public Use of Reason], in Zur Idee des Politischen Liberalismus. John Rawls in der Diskussion, ed. Wilfried Hinsch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), John Rawls, Kantischer Konstruktivismus in der Moraltheorie, in John Rawls: Die Idee des politischen Liberalismus. Aufsaetze , ed. Wilfried Hinsch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 137f. 9 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), Cf. Human Rights, Autonomy, and Sovereignty and the author s Ethik in der internationalen Politik zum Recht auf nationale Souveraenitaet, in Die Autonomie des Politischen und die Instrumentalisierung der Ethik, eds. Ulrich Arnswald and Jens Kertscher (Heidelberg: Manutius, 2002), Rajeev Bhargava, Introducing Multiculturalism, in Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy, ed. Rajeev Bhargava et al. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 48ff. 12 Cf. Juergen Habermas Multiculturalism and the Liberal State, Stanford Law Review 47 (May 1995). 13 Ibid. 14 The relationship between normative and empirical theory has been elucidated by Habermas in his discussion of Kohlberg s moral psychology. While Kohlberg s six-stage model of moral development admittedly presupposes a normative theory whose direct justification has to rest on independent normative grounds to avoid natural fallacy, it nevertheless contributes indirectly to the justification of the normative theory by proving its usefulness and relevance to real-life matters. Thus, multiculturalism can attack normative methodological individualism for two reasons. It can call into question the normative validity of normative methodological individualism or it can attack liberalism on the ground that normative methodological individualism renders it irrelevant to real-life affairs. Cf. Juergen Habermas Rekonstruktive vs. verstehende Sozialwissenschaften, in Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), See Will Kymlicka, States, Nations, and Cultures (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1997). 16 See Christoph Menke, Spiegelungen der Gleichheit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000); Grenzen der Gleichheit, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 50, no. 6 (2002): See Rajeev Bhargava et al., eds., Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), I have criticized this in my review of Kymlicka s States, Nations, and Cultures in Ethical Perspectives 5, no. 3 (1998): For a theory on propositional attitudes (the ascription of beliefs and desires involves propositional-attitude sentences, i.e. that-clauses) emphasizing individual autonomy in belief ascription see my Signification in Opaque Contexts, in Signification in Language and Culture, ed. Harjeet Singh Gill (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2002), , as well as my Interpreted Logical Forms as Objects of the Attitudes, Journal of Logic, Language, and Information 4, no. 4 (1995): See author s Human Rights, Autonomy, and Sovereignty, in Ethical Perspectives 7, no. 1 (2000): See Kymlicka, States, Nations, and Cultures. Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 249