Aurélia Bardon

Culture, neutrality and minority rights:

Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition offers a new and powerful argument to support the ‘strong cultural rights thesis’. Unlike other culturalist arguments, his argument is not based on a problematic and essentialist conception of culture but on a particular understanding of liberal neutrality as fair treatment and equal recognition. What justifies the existence of such rights is not culture itself but what culture means for people and the negative consequences it can have for them when they form a cultural minority. Patten’s argument, however, faces another challenge: I argue that culture and neutrality cannot be fully reconciled, and that, ultimately, the concept of culture might not be playing any significant role in his argument for minority rights.

Introduction: Pluralism and Plurality

-- Aurelia Bardon, Maria Birnbaum, Lois Lee, Kristina Stoeckl – Introduction -- I – What is religious pluralism? 1. Elise Roumeas – What is Religious Pluralism? 2. John Wolfe Ackerman – Political-Theological Pluralism 3. Alberta Giorgi & Luca Ozzano – Italy and Controversies around Religion-Related Issues: Overemphasizing Differences 4. Milda Alisauskien? – What and Where is Religious Pluralism in Lithuania? 5. Agnieszka Pasieka – Religious Pluralism and Lived Religion: an Anthropological Perspective 6. Sebastian Rudas Neyra – Two Uses of “Laicidad” 7. Garvan Walshe & Stephen de Wijze – Civility within Conflict: Managing Religious Pluralism -- II – Pluralism and the Freedom of religion 8. Stijn Smet – Conscientious Objection to Same-Sex Marriages and Partnerships: The Limits of Toleration in Pluralistic Liberal Democracies 9. Eileen Barker – Freedom for Me and, Perhaps, You – but Surely Not Them? Attitudes to New Religions in Contemporary Democracies 10. Anna Blijdenstein – Egalitarian Theories of Religious Freedom and the Black Box of Religion 11. Dara Salam – Religious Exemptions and Freedom of Conscience 12. Volker Kaul – Is Religious Pluralism Simply a Matter of Justice? -- III – Disagreements, Differences and Public Justification 13. Anja Hennig – Habermas’s Translation Proviso and Conservative Religious Actors in the Public Sphere 14. Marthe Kerkwijk – Lost in Translation: A Critique on Habermas’s “Translation Proviso” 15. Bouke de Vries – Liberal Justificatory Neutrality and Mandatory Vaccination Schemes 16. Nemanja Todorovic – Respect for Persons and the Restricted Use of Religious Reasons in Public Justification 17. Ulrike Spohn – Challenging the Topos of “Religion and Violence” in Liberal Political Theory

Religious pluralism : a resource book

-- Aurelia Bardon, Maria Birnbaum, Lois Lee, Kristina Stoeckl – Introduction -- I – What is religious pluralism? 1. Elise Roumeas – What is Religious Pluralism? 2. John Wolfe Ackerman – Political-Theological Pluralism 3. Alberta Giorgi & Luca Ozzano – Italy and Controversies around Religion-Related Issues: Overemphasizing Differences 4. Milda Alisauskien? – What and Where is Religious Pluralism in Lithuania? 5. Agnieszka Pasieka – Religious Pluralism and Lived Religion: an Anthropological Perspective 6. Sebastian Rudas Neyra – Two Uses of “Laicidad” 7. Garvan Walshe & Stephen de Wijze – Civility within Conflict: Managing Religious Pluralism -- II – Pluralism and the Freedom of religion 8. Stijn Smet – Conscientious Objection to Same-Sex Marriages and Partnerships: The Limits of Toleration in Pluralistic Liberal Democracies 9. Eileen Barker – Freedom for Me and, Perhaps, You – but Surely Not Them? Attitudes to New Religions in Contemporary Democracies 10. Anna Blijdenstein – Egalitarian Theories of Religious Freedom and the Black Box of Religion 11. Dara Salam – Religious Exemptions and Freedom of Conscience 12. Volker Kaul – Is Religious Pluralism Simply a Matter of Justice? -- III – Disagreements, Differences and Public Justification 13. Anja Hennig – Habermas’s Translation Proviso and Conservative Religious Actors in the Public Sphere 14. Marthe Kerkwijk – Lost in Translation: A Critique on Habermas’s “Translation Proviso” 15. Bouke de Vries – Liberal Justificatory Neutrality and Mandatory Vaccination Schemes 16. Nemanja Todorovic – Respect for Persons and the Restricted Use of Religious Reasons in Public Justification 17. Ulrike Spohn – Challenging the Topos of “Religion and Violence” in Liberal Political Theory

Some Comments about the Object and Realization of Neutrality as Fair Treatment in Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition

In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten aims at providing a firm philosophical foundation to minority rights. The main problem with the usual multiculturalist arguments defending such rights is that they are based on controversial conceptions of culture that are at odds with liberal neutrality. To avoid such difficulty, Patten’s argument for strong cultural rights is based on a commitment to neutrality. In a surprising way, the key concept of Patten’s book on recognition, minority rights, and culture is then liberal neutrality. Neutrality, Patten convincingly argues, should be understood as neutrality of treatment rather than neutrality of effects or neutrality of intentions. Fair treatment can be achieved in three different ways: privatization, generic entanglement, and evenhandedness. Privatization is the best way to realize neutrality, and the two other strategies ‘‘will at best approximate neutrality.’’ But in the case of culture, privatization and generic entanglement, which are both forms of nonrecognition, are not an option: the state cannot be completely culturally neutral. Some recognition is, therefore, unavoidable. This leaves us with only two alternatives: majoritarian recognition, or equal recognition. Patten then argues that ‘‘the majoritarian approach to recognition is plainly nonneutral,’’ and therefore that the best strategy to realize neutrality toward culture is equal recognition. There are two different points in this argument that might be challenged. First, we might disagree about what Patten calls the ‘‘domain of neutrality,’’ i.e. the type of conceptions of the good to which neutrality should apply. Second,