How do you split the difference when the difference can’t be split?

Abstract

Some political philosophers believe that claims to autonomy and protection made by some minority cultural groups are morally legitimate, and that the liberal framework is unable to account adequately for them. According to these philosophers, liberalism's insistence on neutrality and proceduralism makes it hostile to the accommodation of such claims. Others believe that liberalism is well equipped to deal with such legitimate claims, because substantial autonomy for at least some kinds of groups flows naturally from liberalism's axiomatic commitments. Most famously, Will Kymlicka has argued that if one accords importance to the individual's ability to choose, then one must also be ready to accept ways of protecting those cultural 'contexts of choice' within which this ability can be exercised (Kymlicka, 1995). Others still have worried about giving too much weight to the claims of cultural minorities. They fear that doing so will end up constituting a threat to the 'internal minorities', for example women and children, who might end up being oppressed by the group's oppressive internal norms and prac tices. For example, the late Susan Okin has argued that where liberalism's commitments to gender equality clash with the values of patriarchal cultures, the latter, rather than the former, must give way (Okin, 1999). All these positions tend to assume that cultural differences are perma nent features of the landscape of modern societies. Acceding to claims to autonomy this means accepting that groups will over the long term exercise semi-sovereignty over some aspects of their affairs, or at the very least receive some form of benefit that will allow them to exercise some aspect of their collective lives made more onerous by their minority status. The creation of permanent cleavages, or of permanent differential entitlements, within the body politic is one of the things that raises liberal hackles. Liberal commitments to equal citizenship are well-nigh impossible to realize if society is permanently divided up along ethnic and cultural lines. Patrick Loobuyck's proposal is to split the difference between those theorists, liberal or not, who would erect permanent institutional bound aries between groups, and those theorists who view all concessions to cultural minorities as suspect, at least in part because of their permanency. In his view, foundational liberal commitments, for example to equal opportunity, might sometimes require temporary differential treatment.