Alan Patten, professor de teoria política de Princeton, acaba de publicar Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights pela Princeton Press. O livro é uma tentativa de reformular a teoria liberal da legitimidade política levando em consideração as demandas de minorias culturais, na forma de um "multiculturalismo liberal" (diferente, contudo, daquele já proposto por Will Kymlicka). Tradicionalmente, o liberalismo mantém uma relação tensa com categorias como "cultura" e "identidade coletiva", tornando parte importante das lutas contemporâneas por reconhecimento identitário um desafio conceitual e normativo de primeira ordem para as teorias librais. Contudo, argumenta Patten, existiria uma ligação natural entre os fundamentos da democracia liberal, por um lado, e a premissa multicultural de respeito à diversidade, por outro. O conteúdo do livro pode ser encontrado aqui.
- Patten: "Liberalism and the Accommodation of Cultural Diversity" (chap. 1)
Equal Recognition: The Moral Foudations of Minority Rights
Alen Patten
Conflicting claims about culture are a familiar refrain of political life in the contemporary world. On one side, majorities seek to fashion the state in their own image, while on the other, cultural minorities press for greater recognition and accommodation. Theories of liberal democracy are at odds about the merits of these competing claims. Multicultural liberals hold that particular minority rights are a requirement of justice conceived of in a broadly liberal fashion. Critics, in turn, have questioned the motivations, coherence, and normative validity of such defenses of multiculturalism. In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten reasserts the case in favor of liberal multiculturalism by developing a new ethical defense of minority rights.
Patten seeks to restate the case for liberal multiculturalism in a form that is responsive to the major concerns of critics. He describes a new, nonessentialist account of culture, and he rehabilitates and reconceptualizes the idea of liberal neutrality and uses this idea to develop a distinctive normative argument for minority rights. The book elaborates and applies its core theoretical framework by exploring several important contexts in which minority rights have been considered, including debates about language rights, secession, and immigrant integration.
Demonstrating that traditional, nonmulticultural versions of liberalism are unsatisfactory, Equal Recognition will engage readers interested in connections among liberal democracy, nationalism, and current multicultural issues.
Alan Patten is professor of politics at Princeton University. He is the author of Hegel’s Idea of Freedom and the editor of the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs.
