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 respectively. This is not to say that some multi-

Hindu-Muslim relations in India as well as ques-
tions 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-emi-
nence, 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
culturalists 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 multi-
culturalism, 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 - 110 067, India. E-mail: dr_m_d_dusche@hotmail.com.

Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 238

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, adop-
tion, 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 womens 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 multi-
culturalists claim the inadequacy of individualism
as a methodological principle. Liberals, on the
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 239
other hand, maintain that a normative method-
ological 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, member-
ship in a culture is not normally acquired; one is
more or less born into ones 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 perspec-
tive 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
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 homo-
geneity 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 trans-
parent 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 lib-
eral state. I shall embrace this argument in a qual-
ified 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 delibera-
tion 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 indi-
vidual 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
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 240
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 politi-
cal 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 appar-
ent that neither of them helps to establish the case
of radical multiculturalism for even radical multi-
culturalism 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 unquestion-
ingly 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 Rawlss political liberalism to a more
principled level. Taking Rawlss 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 pos-
sible alternatives while construing their concep-
tions of justice. The effort of taking into account
alternative conceptions of justice makes for the
reasonableness of that conception. The require-
ment of reasonableness in the public use of rea-
son is a mutual one. A conception lacking reason-
ableness does not meet the criterion of mutuality
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 irrel-
evant 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 Rawlss politi-
cal liberalism. In the following, I shall briefly
outline how Rawlss political liberalism deals with
the problem of plurality of worldviews which
can also be seen as depending on culture co-
existing in the setting of a modern liberal democ-
racy. 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. How-
ever, the society, in spite of being divided along
such lines, is in need of a shared basis of funda-
mental 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-reli-
gious 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
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 241
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, accept-
able 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 rea-
sons 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
imperative of political reason. In Rawlss 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 politi-
cal 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 reason-
ableness 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
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 242
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 pub-
lic 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 them-
selves.
The actors of civil society, unlike the state, are
voluntary associations. The individuals right of
exit prevents associations from infringing on indi-
vidual liberties and becoming authoritarian.
Cultures, as we have noticed earlier, lack this
particular feature. Their membership is not volun-
tary 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 individ-
uals 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
individual citizens. This is true from the perspec-
tive of the state: the state should not engage in the
promotion of particular cultures; and from the per-
spective 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
Rawlss 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 politi-
cal 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 func-
tioning 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, architec-
ture, 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 individuals
need for cultural or community attachment
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 243
requires us to depart from normative methodolog-
ical individualism and to stipulate collective rights.
I shall call liberal the position that maintains that
we can account for the individual need for attach-
ment 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 multi-
culturalism.11 All these distinctions are valid. How-
ever, to quote a liberal position,
Included in the set of human rights are rights to cul-
tural membership. Everybody has the same right to
develop and maintain her identity in just those inter-
subjectively 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 indi-
vidualism, I mean any approach that uses the
individual as the basic unit for normative consid-
erations. 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. Nor-
mative 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
constitutive of any individual personality stems
from these allegiances, and that families and com-
munities are crucial in the maintenance of a
healthy (empirical) individual. In isolating an indi-
vidual for the purpose of moral reflection, the lib-
eral 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 nor-
mativity. Thus, the question is not how realistic
the concept of the individual would be after this
abstraction but the reverse: how much anthropo-
logical flesh do we have to add to an abstract
individual in order for our counterfactual consid-
erations to remain relevant for real-life pur-
poses?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 problem-
atic. 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 dif-
ferent groups simultaneously and over time. Thus,
the group allegiances of any individual cannot eas-
ily be defined objectively but have to depend on
the self-ascriptions and preferences of any indi-
vidual at a given point in time. An individual can
change its identity over time and/or have several
identities simultaneously depending on the con-
text. 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 cen-
tral importance. From the point of view of the the-
orist and more so from the point of view of the
policy maker, the individual cannot be bypassed
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 244
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 multiculturalists
claim, is rooted in something bigger than the indi-
vidual, 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. Cul-
tures do feature in the liberal account of just insti-
tutions. They are part of what Rawls had called
the basic structure of society and they are one
among many institutions under scrutiny in a nor-
mative 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 right-
ful place in the overall scheme of things in that
particular society. Cultural practices that violate
basic principles of justice would reasonably be dis-
missed, as any association of individuals would
have to be dismissed if it violated basic principles
of justice. Liberalism grants every individual a cat-
alogue 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 liberals account is flawed, for while individu-
als can join associations voluntarily, people are not
free in choosing their culture. Cultures are some-
thing into which one is born. People cannot easily
renounce their culture or assimilate to another cul-
ture. Thus, how to deal with a person who hap-
pens to be born into a culture deemed unjust in
some of its practices by liberal principles of jus-
tice? The liberal will dismiss the persons 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
person alike, indiscriminately of any non-chosen
circumstance, which includes culture; on the other
hand, principles of justice compel her to deliber-
ately 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. How-
ever, 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 individ-
uals 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 lib-
eral 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 peo-
ple belonging to any minority culture. As Kym-
licka15 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
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 245
political forum, people belonging to a linguistic
minority are at a disadvantage with respect to
others who are native speakers of the official lan-
guage. This disadvantage can be practical (fol-
lowing 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 lan-
guage:
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 per-
sonal identity, the identity of persons is constituted
in large measure by the language... Identification
with beliefs and desires is impossible without lan-
guage 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 rea-
sons in connection with personal identity.
Language being an important expression of
culture, multiculturalism has a point here. How-
ever, 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 cul-
tures to linguistic communities. Thus, what I had
called the recognition problem is sometimes sim-
ply 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.
 While all this is certainly true and has to be
negotiated within the framework of a liberal demo-
cratic 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 democ-
ratic 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 lan-
guage 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 democ-
racy, 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 dif-
ference a dilemma unknown in pre-democratic
multi-ethnic constellations where the accommo-
dation 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 majoritarian-
ism 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 liberal-
ism, is federalism, i.e. the establishment of
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 246
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 commu-
nities because their language happens to be among
the working languages of a local or central gov-
ernment. 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
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 gov-
ernment 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 else-
where 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 multiculturalists 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 monotheis-
tic 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
Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 247
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 oppor-
tunities 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 member-
ship in a culture, unlike membership in an associ-
ation, 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. Further-
more, the concept of a cultural group is notori-
ously vague and is thus not suitable to replace nor-
mative methodological individualism. Boundaries
of cultural groups cannot be defined, there is no
limit of sub-cultures within cultures and individu-
als may belong to several cultures simultaneously
and over time. Moreover, radical multiculturalism
risks falling prey to self-defeating normative rela-
tivism. 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
difference between membership in an association
and membership in a cultural community. How-
ever, the liberal concludes from this that the state
must not add its might to the limiting force of cul-
tural dependence but, in the contrary, enable the
individual to grow out of the confines of its cul-
ture. Furthermore, liberalism maintains that nor-
mative 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 pol-
icy 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 Scribners 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
ones estate under Muslim law, and that too not to a legal heir. The rest of ones estate is divided among ones 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 main-
tenance 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 2002. 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 authors 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

 5
See Der Philosoph als Mediator, 3, and the authors Conceptions of Justice: Relevance, Adequacy, & Universal-
ity, in Justice: Political, Social and Juridical, eds. Rajeev Bhargava et al. (New Delhi: forthcoming).
6
Cf. Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklrung? in Ak. VIII: 33-42.
7
See John Rawls, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, in The Law of Peoples, 129-180, 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): 223-251; The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus, New York Univer-
sity Law Review 64 (1989) 233-255; the introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism, xxxvii-lxii; Reply
to Juergen Habermas, Journal of Philosophy 92 no. 3 (1995): 109-131; and Das Ideal des oeffentlichen Vernunftge-
brauchs [The Ideal of the Public Use of Reason], in Zur Idee des Politischen Liberalismus. John Rawls in der Diskus-
sion, ed. Wilfried Hinsch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 116-141.
8
John Rawls, Kantischer Konstruktivismus in der Moraltheorie, in John Rawls: Die Idee des politischen Liberalis-
mus. Aufsaetze 1978-1989, ed. Wilfried Hinsch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 137f.
9
See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 220.
10
Cf. Human Rights, Autonomy, and Sovereignty and the authors 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), 77-99.
11
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
Kohlbergs moral psychology. While Kohlbergs 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 Rekon-
struktive vs. verstehende Sozialwissenschaften, in Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1983), 29-52.
15
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 fr Philosophie 50, no. 6 (2002): 897-906.
17
See Rajeev Bhargava et al., eds., Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1999), 4-9.
18
I have criticized this in my review of Kymlickas States, Nations, and Cultures in Ethical Perspectives 5, no. 3
(1998): 227-229. For a theory on propositional attitudes (the ascription of beliefs and desires involves propositional-atti-
tude 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), 161194, as well as my Interpreted Logical Forms as Objects of the Attitudes, Journal of Logic, Language, and
Information 4, no. 4 (1995): 301-15.
19
See authors Human Rights, Autonomy, and Sovereignty, in Ethical Perspectives 7, no. 1 (2000): 24-36.
20
See Kymlicka, States, Nations, and Cultures.

Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004)4, p. 249