William

Political Philosophy

Will Kymlicka

multiculturalism, nationalism, language rights, and self-determination.

To understand Kymlicka you must see him as a correction to Rawls. Rawls ignored all of these questions of immigrations, linguistic diversity, and/or federalism.

40% of humanity lives in a federal state, yet there is very little political philosophy about this fact. Rawls assumes away migration as a premise. Rawls assumes that you enter into a state by birth and leave by death. Immigration and emigration are not anything he can describe.

Kymlicka wants to see if we can correct that. Some of what I have to say about Kymlicka also has a sort of hidden influence from Herder, the german political philosopher. We need to think about nationalism, and tradition for our contemporary societies. Kant believed that all human beings reason according to the same cognitive frame. Herder argued against this idea of Kant, and had left behind the important issue of language, and that cultures have different cognitive frames, and that you need to allow a groupt to speak its own language in order to have that specific cognitive frame that is needed for them to be able to be full human beings as according to themselves. Herder says that for cognition you need to descend to the level of culture. Herder was also an enemy of European colonialism. He thought colonialism was morally terrible because it is one group taking over the state of another group and ruling over it, obliterating that group’s possibility for self-determination. He is a nationalist, but also a nationalist who is an anti-colonialist. So for him, nationalism and anticolonialism come together. For him colonialism is only wrong because nationalism is good. Colonialism allows for multinational states, which is not good. That is why Herder thought that the ideal is one state with one nation, one language, one culture. Ethnostates.

Multinational states are always going to see the domination of one nation over the other.

Kymlicka however is a multiculturaist. What is similar between Kymlicka and Herder is the basic reason for thinking that culture and language matter: that they open a cultural frame of referens. We perceive the world through glasses that are cultural and linguistic in nature. So to be free and autonomous you need access to your language and culture. This phrase, that language and culture provides the glasses in which you can see your options, is the phrase that both more or less agree on. Access to a way of life is mediated through the language you speak. We should pay attention to the language and culture of people.

So what is the nation? Societal culture is synonymous with nation. Societal culture that is institutionally provided for within a state. One example of a societal culture would be the quebecois, the flemish, etc. Is what Kymlicka invents here a real concept? For him Belgium is not a societal culture, but Flanders is. For Herder, the nation is a cultural community based in a language. Kymlicka more or less agrees with that.

His main book is multicultural citizenship in 1995. He also wrote Politics in the Vernacular which clears up a lot from the first one.

In the case of the EU he believes it is going to be an elitist project if democracy only takes place in eg. English. He believes that democratic politics is politics in the local language. To have mass participation in the EU will not work, because it would then have to take place of the official languages of the member states. Kymlicka calls himself a liberal nationalist. He belives we ought to be this, because the nation will always be the central unit of democratic debate. He is okay with federalism, there doesn’t have to be an independent quebec, but the quebecois have to have their politics in French. As a multiculturalist, he is also a nationalist.

Kymlicka starts with a Rawlsian premise of linguistic and culutral unity. ”My hope is that, if we begin in this simplified way, we can work out political principles that will, in due course, enable us to deal with more difficult cases where all the citizens are not united by a common language and shared historical memories”.

Kymlicka endorses Rawls’ liberalism by and large altough he criticises having paid proper attention to the importance of cultural membership. In contrast to communitarians however, Kymlicka doesn’t think this shortcoming is due to an unattractive atomism at the heart of liberalism.

Kymlicka is a rawlsian liberal, and he wants to say something about multiculturalism. He is proposing a liberal theory of nationalism. In the 80s, the big enemy of liberalism was communitariansim, like Charles Taylor and McIntyre, or Michael Sandel. Michael Sandel was to criticise Rawls. Sandel argues that we should not be neutral about conceptions of the good life in the way that Rawls does. He thinks that we need to work out what our situated, non-neutral view, should be on controversial issues. We all have different conceptions of the good life. Rawls would say that we should have a constitution not based on a comprehensive doctrine. Communitarians in the 80s thought that there is an unattractive atomism at the heart of liberalism, as if our qualities don’t determine who we are. Communitarians reacted to this unattractive neutrality. For them, societies do need to figure a collective comprehensive doctrine, a conception of the good life that we will endorse together. In regards to pluralism, Charles Taylor would say that we need to have a complicated discussion based on comprehensive arguments in society in order to have a common view, whilst Rawls says that we should leave comprehensive doctrines for non-public life. There shouldn’t be controversies based on ideas or backgrounds. You would expect Kymlicka to side with the communitarians in this, but he does not. He wants to actively avoid being a communitarian. He doesn’t think it a flaw of liberalism, he just says that most liberal theorists work with a simplified model of the nationstate. The problem is that they worked with a kind of US model, and not really a model based on different states, and we should rather do something to accomodate that fact.

So he wants to create an actual liberal theory with rawlsian style principles to issues of multiculturalism.
Kymlicka received an horary doctorate from HIW. But then he studied, he showed that being a multiculuralist and a liberal were put against each other. He saw Taylor and Dworkin debating. At some point Taylor says that a liberal could never endorse the specific rights the quebecois have in Canada. Dworkin replies that Taylor is right: he condemnds multiculturalism, there should be one group of citizens who all share the same laws. Kymlicka realises that he actually wants to reconcile these two moral motivations.

Zoopolis. Animal society. Citizenship for and by animals.

If you are a liberal, and many people want to be liberals, then you should be a multiculturalist. If you are really a liberal, then that liberalism forces you to be a multiculturalist. He doesn’t just want to say that you can be a liberal and a multiculturalist, but rather that you should be.

1. Liberalism is committed to safeguarding individual anatomy.

2. Individual autonomy presupposes a range of options passed down to us by our language and culture (our societal culture).

3. Justice require compensation for underserved disadvantages.

Basically it’s about civil servants speaking the local language in a given area.

We need to make sure that all impediments to my individual choice are taken away.

He wants people to be able to choose and he wants us to be able to revise our choices.

Point 1 has implications for multiculturalism, because certain things cannot be tolerated still. Liberal multiculturalism is a theory which says that multiculturalism is good, but illiberal multiculturalism is not good. Internal restrictions cannot be allowed for example. That would be illiberal. eg. the right to limit individual choices in the name of a cultural tradition or cultural integrity. The goal of internal restrictions is to make it impossible for individuals within a group to question, revise, or reject traditional cultural role models and practices. Kymlicka does not like the inability of a certain group to make choices for itself. The majority of Canada is not French-speaking and will overrule any minority decisions made by the quebeqcois. But he doesn’t want to say that liberalism shouldn’t be compromised.

You need to have a tradition and a cultural frame of referens to be able to properly make choices. Kymlicka wants to allow you to criticise your culture, but you need to also be acquinated with your culture for that.

Many people have critiqued Kymlicka’s notion of societal culture. Many swiss scholars have said that altough German and French and Italian and Romansch are the constitutive languages of the nation, it is uncertain if these languages are constitutive nations, arguing that sometimes there can be bilingual cultures. Kymlicka does not give a fuck about bilinguals. They don’t exist.

He does not think that we should have a catholic quebec. This would be stupid. We need to base it on language. There can be multiple stratifications within a societal culture.

The idea of cultural or linguistic disestablishment is simply misguided (but religious disestablishment remains important). You cannot remain neutral about language and culture. The liberal wants this to be the case. The constitution of Belgium says nothing about my sweater, and it should be the same with nation.

”The analogy between religious and culture is mistaken. As I noted earlier, many liberals say that just as the state should not recognise, endorse, or support any particular church, so it should not recognise, endorse, or support any particular cultural group or identity. But the analogy does not work. It is quite possible for a sate not to have an established church. But the state cannot help but give at least partial establishment to a culture when it decides which language is to be used in public schooling, or in the provision of state services. The state can (and should) replace religious oaths in courts with secular oaths, but it cannot replace the use of english in courts with no language.”

The fact of the matter is that you have to speak some language. If you think about public education, the teacher is going to have to use a specific language. You cannot take your hands off it. The liberal mainstream reaction simply does not work in this case, also known as benign neglect.

The cultural choice-context of cultural minorities is often threatened by external events, especially as a result of choices of a majority group.

”group-differentiatiated self-government rights compensate for unequal circumstances which put the members of minority cultures at a systemic disadvantage in the cultural market-place, regardless of their personal choices in life. This is one of many areas in which true equality requires not identical treatment, but reather differential treatment in order to accommodate differential needs.”

munorities have the right to their own societal culture, through self-government rights. These are justified as external protections (against undeserved and unchosen disadvantages).

Refusal to recognise the catalan independence is part of what led to the attempt at catalan secession. Some Catalans did come to discuss Kymlicka’s theory, arguing that they were a societal culture. They should have the right to at minimally self-governance, and ideally independence. Kymlicka is not a secessionist, he is a federalist. But Kymlicka does argue that the overarching state should be a federal state. A federal state is something inbetween a nation state and a seperate state. A federal Canada is a Canada that gives self-government rights within an overarching state. Both have authority over the citizens of Quebec. One is a member of two political communities. That’s why a federal state is somerthing between a seperate state and a unitary state. A unitary state recognises only one kind of governance. Belgium was a unitary state until 1968. Another alternative is a seperation of states – full independence. The Spanish state however refuses to become federal. It doesn’t want to move away from a unitary state to the federal model of eg. Canada.

Requejo wrote ’this is the end.’ I am a Kymlicka guy, Spain should be like Canada, but Spain refuses to become like Canada, and how long should we wait for Spain do this? Our only option then would be secession. Requqejo endorsed the independence movement.

Kymlicka is not a secessionist. He thinks federalism is the best. But his general message is that a liberal can be a federalist.

Kymlicka comes out positively in favour of the roma and their rights. Kymlicka primarily thinks about territorial groups however. Could you have a non-territorial state, with the member spread out elsewhere?

National minorities are entitled to minority rights, specifically self-government rights. These should enable minority members to sustain their own societal culture.

Immigrants have voluntarily left their own SC and it is therefore legitimate to expect them to integrate in the national SC of the host society. But immigrants group do get polyethnic rights, financial support and legal protection for certain practices associated with particular ethnic or religious groups. He does not think chinese immigrants in Canada, of which there are more than quebecois, should not have these minority rights.

He distinguishes between external protections and internal restrictions. And also between group rights and group differentiated individual rights.

In the UK there was a discussion about turbans for the Sikh, and whether they should wear helmets when they drive a motorcycle. Kymlicka was a multiculturalist and wanted to think for cultural inclusion and therefore exception to existing laws. Professor didn’t explain what his position was on the sikhs. I assume against?

In Belgium they abolished mother-tongue education for immigrants which Kymlicka’s adviced against.

Kymlicka does not reflect on dialects. In Italy there was a real question of language; which kind of Italian should be the standard language? Kymlicka just draws a line over the question and just looks at what languages we have now. He asks you what languages there are, and then he’ll tell you the just action. He doesn’t want to deal with the ontological question of language.

Many people don’t want self-government rights for immigrant languages. Dyab Aboud Jahjah argued that arabic should become a fourth official language of Belgium. By liberal right we should have that right.

The nations provides the batteries that make states run, Canovan. Rawls endorsed Tamir. For Rawls each nation is a state. Rawls probably get closer to ethnocultural nationalism. For Kymlicka it becomes peoples, not states.

Van Parijs wrote a letter to Rawls. He said that what Rawls says plays into the hands of the flemish nationalists. In the law of peoples there shouldn’t be global distributive justice, but national distributive justice. It makes the flemish nationalists feel that they can use his book to justify their own independence.