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Building Common Ground: Going Beyond the Liberal Conundrum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2013

Deen Chatterjee
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Extract

Liberalism as a political ideology and a philosophical doctrine has championed individual autonomy, social and political equality, and democratic and inclusive political institutions. Consequently, liberalism is known for its commitment to tolerance and value pluralism. Yet liberalism has been critiqued for being insensitive to claims of culture. Indeed, an attitude of benign neglect toward diversity was once quite common among liberals, as was a general lack of interest in global concerns. Worse yet, according to some critics the liberal tradition—in spite of its purported liberating mission of autonomy and self-determination (quintessential democratic values)—has provided the rationale for imperialism rooted in the liberal assumptions about reason and historical progress. Though these ironies are a clear source of embarrassment for today's liberals, liberalism still displays an uneasy commitment to pluralism. Liberals today are more challenged than ever to look at the dynamics of diversity both at home and abroad.

Type
Essay
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , Summer 2013 , pp. 119 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2013 

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References

NOTES

1 Benhabib, Seyla, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Deveaux, Monique, Gender and Multicultural Justice in Liberal States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eberle, Christopher, Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Challenge of Gender Justice,” in Gotoh, Reiko and Dumouchel, Paul, eds., Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 94–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha, “Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 39, no. 1 (2011), pp. 3–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spinner-Halev, Jeff, “Feminism, Multiculturalism, Oppression, and the State,” Ethics 112, no. 1 (2001), pp. 84–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swaine, Lucas, The Liberal Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of Religious Pluralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Valadez, Jorge, Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-Determination in Multicultural Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

2 Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Anghie, Anthony, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crenshaw, Kimberle et al. , eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

3 Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States; Eberle, Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics; Swaine, The Liberal Conscience.

4 John Rawls famously championed the connection between liberal justice and the practice of democracy, but critics contend that the Rawlsian reasonable pluralism is not democratic enough. See Sen, Amartya, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Benhabib, Seyla, “On the Alleged Conflict Between Democracy and International Law,” Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 1 (2005), pp. 85–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, “Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls's Political Liberalism,” The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 3 (1995), pp. 109–131Google Scholar; Bohman, James, Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Young, Iris, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

5 In fact, John Rawls's transition from his earlier robust liberalism to his political liberalism took place partly in response to this challenge of conflicting equalities.

6 Allen, Anita, “Undressing Difference: the Hijab in the West,” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice 23 (2008), pp. 1–15Google Scholar; Scott, Joan Wallach, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

7 Mark Landler, “German Judge Cites Koran, Stirring Up Cultural Storm,” New York Times, March 23, 2007.

8 Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)Google Scholar; McConnell, Michael, “Accormmodation of Religion and a Response to the Critics,” George Washington Law Review 60 (1992), pp. 685–742Google Scholar; Nickel, James and Reidy, David, “Relativism, Self-Determination, and Human Rights,” in Chatterjee, Deen K., ed., Democracy in a Global World: Human Rights and Political Participation in the 21st Century (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp. 91–109Google Scholar; Nancy Rosenblum, “The Moral Uses of Pluralism: Freedom of Association and Liberal Virtue Illustrated with Cases on Religious Exemption and Accommodation,” University Center for Human Values Working Papers No. 3 (Princeton University, 1993).

9 Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States; Eberle, Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics; Swaine, The Liberal Conscience.

10 Sen, Amartya, “Human Rights and Asian Values: What Lee Kuan Yew and Le Peng Don't Understand About Asia,” The New Republic 217, no. 2–3 (1997), pp. 32–40Google Scholar; Gastil, John, Kahan, Dan, and Braman, Don, “Ending Polarization: The good news about the culture wars,” Boston Review 31, no. 2 (2006), at p. 18Google Scholar; Talbott, William J., Which Rights Should Be Universal? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Landler, “German Judge Cites Koran, Stirring Up Cultural Storm.”

12 Seyla Benhabib, “Culture, Human Rights and Vulnerable Minorities: A Modest Proposal” (unpublished draft, originally prepared for presentation at Honorus Causa Ceremony at the University of Valencia, November 8, 2010).

13 Sen, Amartya, The Idea of JusticeCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a fuller account of Sen's idea of justice, see my “Reciprocity, Closed-Impartiality, and National Borders: Framing (and Extending) the Debate on Global Justice,” Social Philosophy Today 27 (2011), pp. 199–215; and my chapter titled “Sen, Amartya” (co-authored with Lynette Sieger), in Deen K. Chatterjee, ed., Encyclopedia of Global Justice, vol. II (Dordrecht, Neth.: Springer, 2011), pp. 987–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Sen's capabilities approach was later endorsed and considerably expanded by Martha Nussbaum. Though Sen and Nussbaum differ in their ideas of justice, they both find the contractarian account inadequate.

16 On this, see also Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States.

17 Again, see Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States; also Martha Nussbaum, “Challenge of Gender Justice.”

18 Valadez, Jorge, “Response to My Critics,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 29, no. 1 (2003), pp. 107–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 “Multiculturalism has failed us: it's time for muscular liberalism, says Cameron,” The Times, London, February 5, 2011, p. 15.

20 Along this line, Nussbaum sees liberalism as a political theory of “human justice more generally.” See her “Challenge of Gender Justice,” p. 95.