Abstract
In this chapter I examine the relationship between beliefs and identities. More particularly, I examine how interpreting beliefs as expressions of identity affects the status of beliefs, the conduct of democratic politics and the standing of freedom of belief and freedom of expression.
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Notes
For an example of this sort of approach, see Susan Mendus, ‘The Tigers of Wrath and the Horses of Instruction’, in John Horton (ed.), Liber-alism, Multiculturalism and Toleration (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993) pp. 193–206. I am indebted to Susan Mendus’s original and searching article on the issues raised by the Rushdie affair for stimulating the argu-ments that I develop in this chapter.
See, for example, M. Brewster Smith, Jerome S. Bruner and Robert W. White, Opinions and Personality (New York: John Wiley, 1964); Daniel Katz, ‘The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes’, in Fred I. Greenstein and Michael Lerner (eds.),A Sourcebook for the Study of Per-sonality and Politics (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1971). Analogously, it seems that people sometimes adopt opinions because those opinions are endorsed by the political party with which they identify, rather than support a political party because it espouses opinions of which they independently approve. See Hugh Berrington, ‘British Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons’, in Catherine Morse and Colin Fraser (eds.), Public Opinion and Nuclear Weapons (London: Macmillan, 1989).
See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Charles Taylor, ‘Atomism’, in Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
See Simon Caney, ‘Liberalism and Communitarianism: a Misconceived Debate’, Political Studies, XL (1992) pp. 273–89.
I give a fuller justification of these claims about the relationship between choice and belief in ‘Bearing the Consequences of Belief’, Journal of PoliticalPhilosophy, II (1994) pp. 24–43. I am commenting here upon the logic of belief. I do not deny that, psychologically, people are capable of coming to hold a belief because they want it to be true; when that hap-pens, they might be said, colloquially, to ‘choose’ what to believe. It is also possible for someone intentionally to place himself in a position which he reckons will lead him to believe something that he does not cur-rently believe. For example, an agnostic might join a religious community in the expectation that living in that community will eventually induce in him the confident belief in God that he currently lacks. Prima facie, there is something odd about consciously inducing oneself to believe some-thing that one now regards as false, but someone might adopt that tactic because he reckons the new belief will make his life happier or more bearable. However, even in this rather unusual sort of case, it still requires more than a mere act of choice to bring about the belief.
Sandel seemes to think otherwise. See Liberalism and the Limits of Just-ice, pp. 62, 179.
Cf. ‘beliefs of this sort [moral and religious beliefs] define what we are, in the sense of specifying where we belong. If they are undermined or despised, we ourselves are also undermined and despised’. Mendus, `Tigers of Wrath’, p. 204.
See Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 92–139; Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) pp. 25–6.
See, for example, Richard Bellamy, Liberalism and Modem Society (Oxford, Polity Press, 1992), pp. 252–61; Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1990) pp. 96–121, 156–91.
Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977) pp. 41–4.
Although even different political beliefs, in some measure and for some issues, might be dealt with by way of a privatising strategy. Segmental autonomy might be used to establish a sort of politically based federalism so that, for certain issues, different political groups would form a number of separate sub-policies. We could, of course, go all the way to total sep-aration so that different political groups became wholly separate publics; separatism is merely the most extreme version of the private solution. See Robert Nozick’s idea of Utopia in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974) pp. 297–334.
By ‘private to their holders’ I mean only that the interest is conceived as an interest of each holder. I do not mean to imply that the demands of identity can always be fully satisfied by measures confined to the belief-holder’s ‘private sphere’.
See Stephen Darwall, ‘Two Kinds of Respect’, Ethics, LXXXVIII (1977/8) pp. 36–49.
See Mendus, ‘The Tigers of Wrath’, p. 205; and Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) pp. 146–69.
See Peter Jones, ‘Respecting Beliefs and Rebuking Rushdie’, British Journal of Political Science, XX (1990) pp. 415–37.
See Gutmann, Multiculturalism, 1994, p. 24: ‘Multicultural societies and communities that stand for the freedom and equality of all people rest upon mutual respect for reasonable intellecutal, political, and cultural differences. Mutual respect requires a widespread willingness and ability to articulate our disagreements, to defend them before people with whom we disagree, to discern the difference between respectable and disrespect-able disagreement, and to be open to changing our own minds when faced with well-reasoned criticism.’ That is the sort of vision with which I believe the identity argument to be at odds.
See Lijpjart, Democracy in Plural Societies, pp. 87–99.
See Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962) pp. 170–1.
I accept that this can vary with circumstances. Derision and mockery may provoke a strong and determined reaction among a group of believers. But ridicule may also cause people to become shame-faced and less con-fident about their beliefs.
Jon Elster, Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp. 43–108.
Again, I use the word ‘logically’ advisedly. I do not deny that, psycholo-gically, a wish may be father to the thought.
Even Rorty’s ironist would not claim to be able to yoke these together. It seems she might play along with other people’s beliefs — or rather with their illusions about their beliefs — but only out of her desire not to humili-ate. She seems to be someone who has a split level understanding of her own beliefs so that she can take them both seriously and not seriously, but that trick seems possible only because, in my terms, she might be more properly described as possessing commitments rather than beliefs. See Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1989). For what seems to be an attempt to resist the kind of argument I develop here, see Taylor, The Ethics of Authen-ticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992) especially Chapter 8.
An early draft of this essay was presented to the Workshop on ‘Citizen-ship and Plurality’ organised by Anne Phillips for the Joint Session of the ECPR held in Leiden in April 1993. I am grateful to the participants in the workshop for many helpful comments. I have also benefited from dis-cussions with several of my colleagues at Newcastle, particularly Mark Bevir, Kay Black, David George and Martin Harrop. I am especially indebted to Simon Caney and John Horton for their careful scrutiny of my argument and for their many helpful comments and crticisms.
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Jones, P. (1999). Beliefs and Identities. In: Horton, J., Mendus, S. (eds) Toleration, Identity and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983379_4
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