Abstract
Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between its appeals to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism.
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Notes
Parekh interviewed Cohen-Almagor about Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism in September 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA5mtaM9xyU [accessed 5 November 2021].
Smooha (2002b, p. 426) classifies republican liberal democracy, à la the French model, as a case of majoritarian preference rather than state neutrality.
In this, I do not entirely agree with Chaim Gans’s (2011) objection to Cohen-Almagor’s (2011) analysis of Israel as a case of liberal perfectionism. I think Cohen-Almagor (2011, 2021) is right to say that Israel has embraced some perfectionist policies which exceed liberal democratic bounds (such as the Law of Return, privileging Jewish immigrants). However, I share Gans’s view that liberal nationalism (he calls it nationalist liberalism) is the appropriate benchmark for assessing Israel. In my view, Cohen-Almagor wrongly supposes that the only alternative to a perfectionist liberal regime is liberal neutrality.
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Levey, G.B. Multiculturalism and Controversial Minority and Majority Practices. Philosophia 50, 2333–2346 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00518-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00518-8