Religious Pluralism and the Role of the State

This chapter tests the theoretical solution worked out in the previous chapter in relation to Indian religious pluralism. After considering some relevant features of religious pluralism in the Indian context, the chapter presents two of the most influential theories that have tried to accommodate it (Rajeev Bhargava’s and Neera Chandhoke’s). These views, despite their merits in trying to defend a specifically Indian understanding of secularism, are quite demanding and criticizable. The notion of equality they employ is too substantive. Indeed, this egalitarian impulse pushes the role of the state well beyond what PT liberalism requires. The problem is that the effects of the expansion of the state’s powers have not always been conducive to social peace. Thus, the constraints imposed by PT liberalism to the exercise of state power are particularly required in this discourse on secularism.

Liberalism and Minority Rights

This chapter illustrates CA liberalism through the exposition of Will Kymlicka’s theory. Kymlicka works out a systematic liberal theory sensitive to cultural belonging and minority rights. The liberalism he defends is overtly comprehensive and pro-autonomy, and alleges to be adequate in addressing the cultural diversity represented by national and ethnic minorities (or migrants). In spite of caution in his use of the notion of autonomy, it is the sole reliance on this value that make Kymlicka’s liberalism seriously objectionable. In fact, Kymlicka explicitly aims at liberalizing the minorities. This liberalization transforms minorities into something they reject as extraneous to their conception of the good life. Thus, the liberalization of minorities put their diversity at risk, and entails disrespect for their conception of the good. This means that our search for a theory that is able to accommodate diversity should go beyond CA liberalism.

Liberalism and Diversity

This is an introductory chapter that defines and clarifies some notions that will be fundamental to the rest of the book. First, liberalism is seen as a theory looking for an answer to the question ‘how to live together?’ in condition of deep diversity. Second, diversity is considered as a fact marking contemporary society, a fact to which liberalism has to find an answer. This chapter distinguishes between comprehensive and political liberalism, and between pro-autonomy and pro-toleration liberalism. Combining the two distinctions, one obtains four kinds of liberal theories: comprehensive pro-autonomy (hereafter CA), comprehensive pro-toleration (hereafter CT), political pro-autonomy (hereafter PA), and political pro-toleration (hereafter PT). These four theories, the author contends, offer a wide overview of the contemporary academic debate. This chapter also contains a schema of this book.

Conclusion

This chapter, after a short synopsis of the book, argues that the version of liberalism defended in this work is not culturally particularistic: In fact, rather than presenting liberalism as a substantive world view, this book presents liberalism as a theory of the limits of the state power. The last section offers some remarks on distributive justice, a topic largely unaddressed in this book but still a relevant one.

The Liberalism of Diversity

As the most important chapter in the book, it shows that the political turn should be completed with a commitment to diversity rather than to autonomy. Pro-toleration liberalism, in fact, combines the politicization of liberalism with a general pro-diversity orientation. Chandran Kukathas’s ‘liberal archipelago’ model is assumed as an instance of PT liberalism. It is deeply analysed and criticized. It becomes acceptable only after some substantial amendments. In particular, after an enquiry into the kind of obligations binding individuals to groups and to the mainstream society (and to the state), the chapter claims that understanding such obligations as associative obligations can render PT liberalism more tenable. This view is increasingly defensible when it is completed with a much more extended account of the mainstream society and of the role of the state.

Liberal Pluralism and Diversity

This chapter engages with William Galston’s work as depictive of CT liberalism. In this approach, a pro-diversity attitude coexists with a reliance on comprehensive commitments (especially value pluralism). Galston’s diversity liberalism promises to be more accommodating of diversity than CA liberalism. Galston objects to any version of autonomy liberalism on the basis that autonomy is not the only way of life in liberal societies. The chapter analyses expressive liberty, political pluralism, and value pluralism as three theoretical pillars on which diversity liberalism relies. However, after a deep analysis of diversity liberalism that considers also educational policies, this approach is found highly problematic. Galston’s view of value pluralism might lead towards ethical relativism. Further problems in Galston’s view come both from his assumption of diversity as a value to be protected rather than merely a factual condition to be faced, and from his strong conception of exit rights.

Political Liberalism and Diversity

This chapter engages with the way in which PA liberalism deals with diversity. Stephen Macedo’s work is assumed as an illustration of this kind of theory. Here, the politicization of liberalism coexists with a commitment to the value of autonomy, although the autonomy that political liberalism refers to is a political notion. However, even in its political form, autonomy is still too controversial to be the leading value of a liberal theory. This holds especially if the centrality of autonomy does not allow a complete understanding of the transformative process of individual and group identities involved in accommodating diversity. Thus, autonomy as the main liberal value must be rejected both in its comprehensive and political form. It is the rejection of autonomy that allows us to bring to a completion the Rawlsian political turn that, in conjunction with the reliance on the value of autonomy, is unable to give diversity its due.