Stéphane Courtois

Multiculturalism and Equal Treatment: Scope and Limits of the Uniform Treatment Approach

Abstract In this paper, I examine the scope and limits of Brian Barry’s uniform treatment approach to cultural differences through a critical assessment of its two main arguments. The first maintains that under a regime of institutions serving legitimate public purposes, equal opportunity is an objective state of affairs, and religious or cultural maladjustments to laws and public policies are morally irrelevant to the issue of equal opportunity. The other maintains that unlike physical disabilities, religious and cultural affiliations are the result not of morally arbitrary factors over which one has no control but of life choices for which people must assume responsibility. To the first argument, I respond that equal opportunity is best viewed as an interactive phenomenon encompassing subjective and objective components and that a deliberative approach to cultural claims is more likely than Barry’s uniform approach does to grant religious and cultural minorities equal opportunities and equal treatment. To the second argument, I respond that, even if they arise out of the life choices made by people, religious conducts and cultural practices deserve to be accommodated through law exemption because it is sometimes the only way our liberal democracies can show respect for citizens as ethical subjects.

Habermas’s epistemic conception of democracy Some reactions to McCarthy’s objections

The article aims at assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the objections to Habermas’s epistemic conception of democracy raised by Thomas McCarthy in some of his essays. The author defends two ideas. First, he contends that McCarthy is mistaken in believing that democratic debates would not be a matter of consensus. In this regard, two arguments are raised, showing that the search for agreement and consensus by citizens in public forums can hardly be dismissed and that consensus can be invested with many meanings in democratic life. Secondly, however, the author approves McCarthy when challenging Habermas’s epistemic claims regarding his theory of democracy. Not all democratic deliberations can be analysed in epistemic terms, in particular, debates on values. The pitfalls of any epistemic account of this form of deliberation are pointed out in the end of the essay.

Conscientious Conviction and Subjective Preference: On What Grounds Should Religious Practices Be Accommodated?

Abstract In this paper, I seek to challenge two prevailing views about religious accommodation. The first maintains that religious practices deserve accommodation only if they are regarded as something unchosen on a par with the involuntary circumstances of life people must face. The other view maintains that religious practices are nothing more than preferences but questions the necessity of their accommodation. Against these views, I argue that religious conducts, even on the assumption that they represent voluntary behaviours, deserve in certain circumstances certain kinds of accommodation. They must be understood as one possible expression, along with nonreligious or secular beliefs, of a persons convictions of conscience, which are strong ethical commitments upon which depends the moral integrity of those having such convictions. I demonstrate that the main ground for religious accommodation is the need to protect fairly, through such rights as religious freedom and freedom of conscience, the ethical commitments and conscientious beliefs of all citizens. Finally, against the objection that such a view risks leading to the proliferation of demands for accommodation, I maintain that a deliberative approach to religious accommodation is in a good position to put serious hurdles in the path of unreasonable demands.

Égalité de traitement et multiculturalisme

Dans cette etude, nous entendons montrer qu’une conception adequate de l’egalite de traitement des minorites religieuses et culturelles devrait souscrire a un ideal egalitaire plus large que celui, plus limite, auquel s’en remettent les principaux representants actuels du traitement uniforme et du traitement differencie des minorites, soit Brian Barry et Will Kymlicka. Un tel ideal peut selon nous etre explicite a la lumiere de theories politiques recentes ayant en commun de souscrire a un certain ideal deliberatif. Nous y trouvons une conception normative de l’egalite qui permet de deriver des mesures relatives a l’egalite de traitement qui rencontrent plus adequatement nos intuitions en matiere d’equite et de justice que ne le font les approches precedentes, notamment en reconsiderant l’importance accordee a la distinction entre choix et circonstance.

L'intervention humanitaire peut-elle être conçue comme un «devoir parfait»?

This article examines the claim recently put forward by Terry Nardin, Kok-Chor Tan, and Carla Bagnoli that humanitarian intervention ought to be conceived, not as an imperfect duty (a duty of assistance to the victims of crimes against humanity left to the discretion of the members of the international community), but—assuming that the permissibility conditions have been satisfied—as a perfect duty (an unconditional obligation demanded by justice). After explaining why such a position can be considered as legitimate, it underlines some of its difficulties and provides the elements of a response in order to overcome them.

Élection référendaire : plus de démocratie ou moins ?

L’auteur entend dans ce texte reagir a la proposition Parizeau-Laplante abondamment commentee dans les quotidiens au cours de l’ete 2004, proposition consistant en une remise en question de la demarche etapiste vers la souverainete jusqu’a maintenant favorisee par le Parti quebecois et son remplacement par une soi-disant election referendaire. Dans la premiere partie, il tente d’expliquer pourquoi cette proposition est inacceptable. Dans la seconde, il montre que la demarche jusqu’ici favorisee par le Parti quebecois, bien que necessaire, demeure insuffisante, parce que basee sur une conception restreinte de la democratie. Finalement, l’auteur propose dans la derniere partie une conception de la secession qu’il appelle deliberative, visant a la fois a elargir la demarche democratique jusqu’ici observee par le mouvement souverainiste quebecois et a corriger certaines de ses faiblesses.

L'éthique du discours et le problème de la connaissance morale

The aim of this article is to assess the coherence of the metaethical positions on which discourse ethics as developed by Habermas and Apel rests. After showing that one is faced here with a non-descriptivist, anti-realist but cognitivist moral theory, I examine whether a non-descriptivist cognitivism, on the one hand, and an anti-realist cognitivism, on the other hand, can consistently be held. I maintain that the problem of the relation between cognitivism and non-descriptivism is adequately solved by the two authors, but that the problem of the relation between cognitivism and anti-realism is still waiting for an appropriate answer, which I put forth in my article.

Les disciplines herméneutiques et la théorie critique sont-elles des formes de la rationalité scientifique?

The general aim of this paper is to question the idea that hermeneutic and critical social sciences have to be conceived as specific embodiments of the scientific enterprise. This idea is rather implicit in Habermass work, but has its grounds in his thesis about the argumentative unity of all sciences, upheld for the first time in 1973. Such a point of view turns out to be untenable for two reasons. First, the indiscriminating inclusion of the hermeneutic and critical social sciences in scientific enterprise raises problems of consistency with regard to the systematic guidelines of The Theory of Communicative Action. Moreover, the thesis of argumentative unity of the sciences itself is incompatible with Habermass methodological conception of the role of Verstehen in the social sciences developed in section 1.4 of the book. Finally, the author argues that this conception calls for another understanding of the status and role of the hermeneutic and critical disciplines, which is outlined in some detail.