Two grounds of multiculturalism

Kymlicka’s freedom ground

The first justification of the value of cultural membership states that cultures enable freedom. Kymlicka’s freedom account is well known. It is coherently and succinctly stated in chapter 5 of Multicultural Citizenship:

“Put simply, freedom involves making choices amongst various options, and our societal culture not only provides these options, but also makes them meaningful to us” (Kymlicka, 1995: 83).

For Kymlicka, individuals do not form life choices ‘de novo’, as ‘atomists’ (1989: 177). Instead, “to have a belief about the value of a practice is, in the first instance, a matter of understanding the meanings attached to it by our culture” (1995: 83). So cultures provide a context of meaning, a non-neutral way of filtering our reality, which we absorb in order to be able to make choices in life, and to understand the value of those options. Quoting Ronald Dworkin, Kymlicka argues that “our culture not only provides options, it also ‘provides the spectacles through which we identify experiences as valuable’ (Dworkin, 1985: 228)” (1995: 83).

In a nutshell, this, then, is the foundation of the freedom justification for group-differentiated rights. Individual choice requires a cultural context of choice. To be free, one needs access to one’s culture. This access is enabled by group-differentiated rights.

This reliance on freedom makes the argument for cultural membership acutely palatable to liberals. After all, autonomy and freedom are basic tenets of liberalism. For liberalism to be true to itself, Kymlicka’s argument goes, it must embrace multiculturalism and its defense of ethnocultural minority rights.

In earlier work, I have argued that Kymlicka’s move instantiates a ‘liberal linguistic turn’ (De Schutter, 2016). It is liberal in the way I just described. It is a linguistic turn in the sense that Kymicka’s political philosophy presents a turn to language and culture in a way to similar to how mainstream analytical philosophy in the 20th century undertook a linguistic turn. In addition, Kymlicka’s move is also reminiscent of how in the 18th century certain early-romantic and romantic scholars criticized the atomistic universality of scholars like Immanuel Kant. Indeed, Johann Gottfried Herder argued that to understand reason as disentangled from language is misguided: “Pure reason without language”, says Herder, “is on earth a utopia” (1877-1913: XIII: 357, my translation ⁸ ). Instead, to reason we need words and concepts from our language. Our language gives us access to a world of shared meanings. As Herder puts it: “our mother-tongue was simultaneously the first world that we saw, the first sensations that we felt, the first efficacy and joy that we tasted!” (Herder, 2002: 143).

The infant who stammers his first words, stammers a repetition of the feelings of his parents, and swears with each early stammering, in accordance with which his tongue and soul forms itself, that he will make these feelings endure eternally, as truly as he calls them father- or mother-tongue. For his whole life these first impressions from his childhood, these images from the soul and the heart of his parents, will live and take effect within him: with the word will come back the whole feeling that then, early on, flowed over his soul; with the word’s idea all the side ideas that then presented themselves to him when he made this new, early dawn-survey into the realm of creation – they will return and take effect more mightily than the pure, clear main idea itself. (2002: 142).

Herder argues that the shared ‘feelings’ that parents (and by extension cultural communities, which were originally formed by families who spread over the earth) impinged upon the souls of children through language will forever be associated for those children with the concepts they stand for (2002: 142). We need the words of our language to reason and to be able to reflect on particular things. “A people has no idea for which it does not have a word” (1877-1913: XIII 357, my translation). This is indeed close to the argument that language and culture disclose particular options and shared meanings with which we need to be acquainted in order to have beliefs and convictions. ¹

Both Kymlicka and Herder, and the larger HHH tradition (for Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt), as Charles Taylor (2016) refers to it, as well as Taylor himself (1985; 215–247, 1994: 79–99), endorse the idea that language and culture are intrinsic to who we are. We are not tabula rasa human beings who conjure up options without a prior context. We are raised into specific cultures and languages, and to be a full human being we need access to those cultural contexts. Speech and words are not just external, ultimately expendable, clothing to what has already been fully formed in human reason. To stand for something, to have a belief, requires an understanding of the horizon of meanings that are associated with that belief, and that horizon is provided by our culture and our language. Both Herder and Kymlicka, then, endorse a central feature of the freedom case for cultural protection: that human beings have a fundamental interest in accessing their language and the meanings with which cultural traditions endow concepts and ideas.

In short, the critique that Herder levels at cultural atomism – that it analyzes human reason without fully taking into account the role played by language – is reminiscent of Kymlicka’s critique of mainstream liberalism, which has neglected to take cultural membership seriously. In addition, also the solution that Herder provides – to allow cultural-linguistic communities their own space uninhibited by linguistic domination, colonialism and assimilation by others – shares a basic similarity with Kymlicka’s alternative – which is to grant ethnocultural groups forms of minority rights in order for them to access their own culture, including external protections against assimilation (Kymlicka, 1995: 7). That said, in contrast to Herder, Kymlicka embeds this project explicitly within liberalism, and Kymlicka famously rejects the legitimacy of any internal restrictions, which“limit the liberty of [a group’s] individual members in the name of group solidarity or cultural purity” (1995: 7), a safeguard that Herder does not provide (for further differences, see De Schutter 2016).

To summarize, I have presented contemporary Kymlicka’s freedom-based moral grounding of minority rights, and I have shown how this argument can be understood to stand in a line of thinkers originating with Herder, who also endorsed the essence of the freedom case. In the next section, I will present the second, dignity-based moral grounding.

The dignity ground

The second justification of group-differentiated rights for cultural-linguistic groups is that such rights enable dignity. Perhaps the best way to summarize the dignity account is by quoting one recent adherent of it. In his Linguistic Justice, Philippe Van Parijs (2008) employs dignity as the main argument for the case for state recognition of native languages. Van Parijs argues:

“(…) justice requires people to be granted equal dignity. In a situation where people’s collective identities are closely linked to their native languages, there arises a major threat to the recognition of an equal status for all as soon as the native language of some is given what is, unquestionably, a superior function. In this light, linguistic injustice as unequal dignity can plausibly be claimed to constitute the most fundamental form of linguistic injustice”(Van Parijs, 2008: 14)

Van Parijs’s dignity claim rests on the idea that for the state to treat everyone with equal dignity, it must treat native languages on the same basis, at least where people link their identity to their language. Extended this to the broader multicultural cause, the dignity claim holds that, when people identify with their cultures, the state ought to treat its existent cultures with equal dignity. This cultural dignity claim, then, says that, individuals have a fundamental interest in being treated by the state with equal dignity, and that this is violated when the state grants superior recognition to one group (assuming there is identification by group members). Superior recognition to some implies undue respect to others, which is demeaning, and treats the non- or lesser recognized groups as inferior. In this sense, misrecognition implies a lack of “due respect” (Taylor, 1994: 26 ² ).

This argument entails a claim both about dignity and about equality. A group’s dignity is imperiled when others are treated with superior attention or recognition. And this is the case when a norm of equal treatment is violated. Equality here is essential to dignity. Unequal dignity would be fine for those whose culture is the recipient of superior recognition, but is tantamount to a violation of dignity of the less fortunate.

To give one empirical example, in the history of Belgium, a violation of dignity was experienced by many on the Flemish side resulting from the inequality of language recognition accorded by the Belgian state. In the history of Belgium since its founding in 1830 and certainly up until the language laws of 1932, Belgium’s language policy regime strongly favored French. For instance, in 1830 the constitution was only written in French, and legal and political life as well as public administration occurred uniquely in French (Witte and Van Velthoven, 1998: 49–51). Toward the end of the 19^th century, some first language recognition was granted to Dutch in the form of small language laws, but this did not imperil the official dominance of French in the Flemish north of the country. For example, criminal proceedings in Flanders had to use Dutch from 1873, but lawyers could speak French when defendants allowed for this, and most lawyers preferred French (Raskin, 2012: 140–141). Secondary schools in Flanders were obliged to teach in Dutch from 1883, but only some courses, and it was possible for the children of French speakers to avoid these courses (Witte and Van Velthoven, 1998: 62). Analogous uses of Dutch in the south of the country did not exist.

It took over a century before Dutch publicly maneuvered into a position of relative equality with French. The frequently expressed experiences of violation of dignity by many Flemish throughout this period contributed to the formation of a strong Flemish consciousness. Up until today those historical grievances contribute to the popularity of the Flemish secessionist movement. It also continues to motivate the refusal by some people in Flanders to address Belgian speakers of French in French, at least when they are in Flanders (see for instance Van Parijs, 2011: 118 for an anecdote about the refusal of a waiter in Bruges to speak French, which motivates Van Parijs’s plea for parity of esteem).

While, as I have claimed, the historical precursor to the freedom case is German romanticism, the historical antecedent of the dignity case is older, and goes back to the arrival of the defense of vernacular languages. In early-modern Europe, a dignity case has emerged against conducting science only in Latin, and for the importance of vernacular languages, such as modern Italian, Spanish, French or German. In this ‘humanist case for the vernacular’ (Patten, 2006), Renaissance scholars pleaded for the idea that a dignified citizen will not bow to foreign languages, and will, for the sake of his dignity, use the vernacular, and use it in a dignified manner. For instance, in his famous plea for French, Joachim du Bellay addresses his fellow French citizens in 1549 by arguing:

“Why are we such great admirers of others? Why are we so unfair to ourselves? Why are we begging for foreign languages, as if we were ashamed to use our own ³

Instead, a number of these scholars set out to develop their vernaculars by producing the first dictionaries and grammars for it, and by setting out to show the intrinsic value of their language. The highly respected natural scientist Simon Stevin, for instance, goes at great length in his ‘Discourse On the Dignity of the Dutch Language’ (Uytspraeck vande weerdicheyt der duytsche tael, 1586) to show “its dignity above all other’ languages” (1955: 64 – my translation). Similar arguments were presented for Italian, Spanish, Danish and other languages.

Note that, from the start, this justification for recognition was collective in nature. Indeed, the argument we are considering was one for culture-based dignity: we the speakers of French, or Dutch, or Spanish or Italian, should not be ashamed for our language. We should not bow to Latin and other dominant languages, but speak our own language with pride and eloquence.

Importantly though, none of these humanist scholars pleaded for equal group dignity. Most advocated the opposite, as Stevin did: the dignity of their own language above all others. But they did invoke the language of dignity to utter their claims. Just like Kymlicka set out to liberalize the Herderian justification, the contemporary defense of dignity must also render the dignity case through a liberal and equalizing filter, in order for it to cash out as parity of esteem or equal dignity. Indeed, the version of the dignity argument for cultural recognition that I am working with here is not for dignity per se, but for equal dignity.

Apart from the focus on equality, a second difference between the early-modern and the contemporary invocation of dignity for language and culture is that the former stresses intrinsic dignity, whereas the latter stresses dignified treatment. By dignified treatment I mean the idea that the state or some other entity ought to accord public recognition to the vernacular (through such things as state subsidies or by organizing public education in it). Vernacular humanists such as Lorenzo de Medici, Joachim du Bellay or Simon Stevin would agree that the state ought to recognize the vernacular, but they grounded this support in the intrinsic linguistic dignity of the vernacular. Contemporary dignitarian multiculturalism uncouples these and pleads for according equal recognition irrespective of judgments of intrinsic linguistic quality. ⁴

To conclude, the dignity case for minority rights argues that citizens have a fundamental interest in being treated with equal dignity, and that this implies treating language identities and cultural affiliations with equal recognition. ⁵ Its historical antecedent is early-modern vernacular humanism, but it has contemporary adherents, and is a driving force of much nationalist discourse.

A dual account

Let us now zoom in a little further on the two accounts and compare their strengths and weaknesses, The freedom account states that people ⁶ have a fundamental interest in access to their cultural context of choice, and that states should enable this access by granting them group-differentiated rights such as self-government rights or mother-tongue education. The dignity account states that people have a fundamental interest in being treated by the state with equal dignity, and that the state should enable this equal dignity by granting equal public recognition to the ethnocultural groups people identify with.

Notice the following important difference. In the freedom account, the state comes in only in a second step of the argument. It is first stated that individuals need cultural access, and then, in a second step, it is posited that the state should enable this cultural access. This second step then rests on a normative political theory that establishes that it is a task of the state to bring about the realization of people’s freedom, such as liberalism.

This order is different in the dignity account. Here the state – or the relevant recognition-distribution social entity ⁷ – comes in right from the start of the argument: the argument begins with the normative premise that states must treat their members with equal dignity.

What this brings to light is the relative nature of the dignity account and the absolute nature of the freedom account. Whether the freedom interest is realized can be determined without reference to how other groups fare or how other actors treat them. Even if there was only one cultural group in the world, its members might experience a lack of cultural options: it might be too small, or a hurricane might obliterate most members, and so on. We also do not need to look at what the state is doing: either people have access to their cultural context of choice, or they do not. The state might be actively trying to harm a group without succeeding in destroying its cultural preconditions of freedom. Or, conversely, the state might actively aid the group in securing cultural access but without success.

In contrast, a violation of dignified treatment is always a relative assessment: to assess whether it is harmed, we need to examine how they are treated by others. Some group must be treated with greater official respect, esteem or recognition than other groups. A complaint of dignity, triggered by a violation of equal treatment, is only possible if there are multiple groups, one or some of which get a greater share of a certain public good, in this case recognition. If there was only one group in the world, the cultural dignity complaint could not arise.

This absolute/relative difference between the two accounts is central to an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. Some people criticize dignity claims for this relativity. As Steven Pinker put it, “ascriptions of dignity vary radically with the time, place, and beholder” (Pinker, 2008: 30). What was once or by some found undignified might no longer be a concern for others or today: Pinker’s examples are wearing visible stockings or licking ice-cream. Or, says Pinker, “we chuckle at (…) Brahmins and patriarchs of countless societies who consider it beneath their dignity to pick up a dish or play with a child” (Pinker, 2008: 30).

Pinker is concerned with the invocation of dignity in the case of healthcare. But the critique is also relevant for dignitarian multiculturalism. Two cultural-linguistic groups might as a matter of absolute cultural options be identically situated, whereas one might have a complaint of dignity whereas the other does not.

Pinker argues that this relativity is a problem. But I find his argument not convincing. The very fact that we have a concern that we did not have before or that others do not share with us, is not a reason to dismiss the concern. If the moral argument backing up a concern shows that the concern is protection-worthy, then it does not matter whether others do or did not have it or experience it differently.

What is that moral argument in the case of cultural dignity? As we have seen, what makes something admissible as a claim of dignity is the fact that a certain good that is held to be valuable (be it language recognition, or religious recognition embedded in a state’s public holiday system) is publicly distributed, which, if all else is equal, generates a claim for equal treatment. This provides normative force to the indignity and injustice claims of groups who are treated with lesser recognition than that received by others. That inequality of recognition or esteem makes them experience a form of second-class citizenship. So what matters here is that a good is found valuable. Whether it was found valuable before, or whether it is found valuable elsewhere or by others, is not in itself normatively relevant to the success of the claim.

This way of grounding dignitarian multiculturalism allows for the moral legitimacy of heeding to different preferences and needs in different contexts. For example, it can account for the differences between Frisian and Icelandic. Icelandic and Frisian have similarly small numbers of speakers (300.000 vs 400.000) but Icelandic is the sole official language of a country (Iceland), whereas Frisian is a linguistic minority in The Netherlands which grants higher official recognition and esteem to its main language, Dutch. Of these two, only the Frisians have complained about unequal treatment, and have argued for (more) public recognition of Frisian. This complaint makes normative sense because the fact that Frisian is part of a multilingual country with Dutch as it is main language affects the relative treatment of Frisian speakers. This relative treatment is unequal and may at one point may become perceived as a matter of indignity, a claim which simply cannot arise in a context without sizeable other groups such as in Iceland. If Icelandic speakers made an indignity claim in Iceland, this claim would be normatively void; it is simply not the case that Icelandic receives lesser recognition. In Iceland it receives all the cultural recognition the state hands out. (Note that these assessments of dignity can be made irrespective of the question whether both the Frisians and the Icelandic have their cultural freedom needs met, which is something that can be assessed as an absolute, not relative, manner.) So Frisian and Icelandic speakers, despite being quite similar when it comes to absolute parameters (such as number of speakers), have a different understanding of what cultural dignity entails, but this relativity is normatively accounted for.

At the same time, the equality notion embedded in the moral argument for cultural dignity also sets limits to what can be justified in the name of dignity. If two groups live in the same state and one of them enjoys superior cultural recognition, which is experienced by the other group as insulting or painful, then the complaining group has a valid claim of dignity against their lesser treatment. But if the group that enjoys superior recognition were to complain of indignity, this claim would not be justified. Understood in this way, dignitarian multiculturalism cannot be invoked to support the claims of cultural bullies – groups that already receive the lion share of recognition and want more.

So it is not the case that anything goes when it comes to dignity: not every feeling or subjective experience of indignity counts as a reason for action when it comes to the way the state ought to distribute certain goods like cultural recognition or language rights. Only those feelings or experiences of (in)dignity that are backed up by the interest in being treated by the state with equality compared with others have normative force. Only the recipients of lesser recognition have a valid complaint of dignity. Relativity, in short, is not a problem, as long as the equality principle backing dignitarian multiculturalism is satisfied. (This equality also helps show why the indignity experienced by Brahmins in Pinker’s example is unjustified.)

For this reason, I think dignitarian multiculturalism can withstand the relativity objection. At the same time, the solution I have proposed comes with a cost. It is not able to distinguish between seemingly trivial and more serious forms of unequal treatment. On this account, any good might be desired and lead to legitimate dignity complaints when it is unequally provided. But is this not too strong? Should we not distinguish between ‘fundamental goods’ – goods that, when unequally distributed for no good reason, can legitimately give rise to a complaint of dignity – and other, ‘non-fundamental goods’ or ‘preferences’, that do not give rise to legitimate dignity complaints in the event of unequal treatment, simply because they are not morally weighty enough? For example, image that at some point certain groups come to experience a dignity concern over the unequal distribution of a seemingly trivial good. Say that those whose favorite color is red start complaining about the fact that the official flag is blue. Should this complaint really have normative significance (see also Stilz, 2015, who answers in the negative when it comes to preferences such as that over Word Perfect over Word)?

I suggest to bite the bullet in such cases. If groups come to be aligned in such a way that some sincerely claim that the unequal distribution of a seemingly trivial good tramples on their dignity and is understood as humiliating, then I think this fact does have moral significance, especially if the state could relatively easily accommodate the associated identities or preferences. What matters is not whether a good is fundamental or not, but whether its unequal distribution is experienced by some as making them into second-class citizens.

An alternative solution is to reduce the relativity of dignitarian multiculturalism by appealing to the freedom-based multiculturalism, thus putting forward a dual grounding for multiculturalism: dignity + freedom. Doing so can add objectivism to counter dignity’s relativity. Such an account might hold that only those dignity complaints are morally admissible whereby unequal treatment also leads to freedom problems. Or it might hold that both dignity and freedom independently ground multicultural claims, but that groups that experience both a loss of dignity and of freedom have a stronger claim to group-differentiated rights.

To be clear, I believe that dignitarian multiculturalism can stand on its own feet. Dignitarian multiculturalism does not need the freedom account to ground its claims. But adding the freedom argument to a dignity-based multicultural claim does make the latter stronger in the face of criticism over dignity claims over unequal divisions of trivial goods.

The reverse is also true: adding dignity to the freedom account strengthens the freedom argument. This is so because of the particularity problem with the freedom account. The freedom account posits that individuals need culture as a context of choice which enables freedom. But in principle any sufficiently option-rich culture would do; there is no good reason here for why the option-providing culture has to be the individual’s own culture. Kymlicka’s argument, it has been argued, justifies a right to culture but not a right to a particular culture (see for this critique, Margalit and Halbertal, 1994; Forst, 1997: 66; Galeotti, 2002: 208; Van Leeuwen, 2006; Patten, 2014: 75–76). In principle, any culture could open up a world of options and meanings for individuals. The objection, then holds, that the freedom argument, in itself, is compatible with two solutions: the first is group-differentiated rights for minorities that help them sustain their own culture; the second is cultural assimilation.

I believe this particularity objection is partially successful. It is not successful with respect to people who are already fully culturally situated and were raised within a particular cultural context. Already existing adults who are forced to assimilate from culture A to B would face serious costs of disorientation due to their lack of access to options in the new culture. And they would likely forever continue to incur these costs. Once people have been brought up to think a certain way, once they have attached meanings to particular options and oriented their lives – such as their expectations, relationships or careers – around those options, it is impossible to get fully disentangled from those earlier options. Something irretrievable would be lost if they were forced to leave their original context of choice behind and experience the public disappearance of many of their options.

But the objection does work for future generations. For those who have not yet been assigned to a culture because they are not born yet, any culture or language would do. Whether future persons will be acquainted with German, Persian or Amhara, in each case a world of culturally specific options will be available to the child. For them, any culture and language will do.

At the same time, future children have parents, and parents have a moral reason to worry about the freedom-restricting cleavage between the options of the children and those of the parents, as well as about their inability to offer options in a new context of choice in which they were not acculturated. We should aim for some sort of continuity between the option set of parents and that of their children.

Still, if this is the case, a very slow project of cultural assimilation spanning several generations would be hard to withstand on the freedom argument alone. As Alan Patten has argued, a language shift is often not very abrupt but occurs slowly, and this has normative repercussions. “Options in the vulnerable language will not disappear completely but will gradually diminish in importance, and the language’s decline will be accompanied by a gradual shift away from unilingualism” (Patten, 2001: 78). Imagine a case of strategic nation-builders in a country with a strong successful majority language A and a small minority language B. These nation-builders decide to attempt to assimilate a small neighboring minority language B. Imagine they are determined to stay within the normative premises of the freedom account and so do not want to imperil people’s access to options. Instead of aiming for a massive overnight take-over, these strategic assimilators might opt for a gentler language shift, gradually exposing the speakers of B to ever more sources and options from language A, and this over the course of several generations. The state still spends some resources on B but makes sure the public offering of public education, state communication and the public broadcasting (such as public TV and radio) in A is more present and more easily accessible. In this scenario it is imaginable that the first generation will realize their freedom interests most strongly in language B, whereas the second generation will be more or less fluently bilingual. Unhurriedly, these assimilators subsequently begin taking options in B away, progressively banning B from public schools, public broadcasting, government websites, public hospitals, and other areas of public life. Depending on the empirical circumstances and the cunning of the approach of the assimilators, it seems realistic for a large-scale shift from B to A to occur over the course of perhaps a century.

Such a smart assimilation project would be impossible to resist on the basis of the freedom argument alone. A scenario is perfectly imaginable whereby no individual would ever lack access to a full option context. Freedom would be ensured at each point in time. Of course, we have every reason to believe that real-life realizations of this hypothetical scenario would go along with less gentle methods and far more freedom costs. But the point here to assess the normative potential of the freedom account. Although this account can easily dismiss an abrupt language shift within the same generation, it cannot provide a normative bulwark against a future assimilation project. For this reason, I think freedom-based multiculturalism cannot stand on its own feet in the way dignitarian multiculturalism can.

This is where the dignity account might come to the rescue of the freedom account. After all, no particularity problem exists with the dignity account. While in principle any culture might give future unborn people access to choice, only respect for the specific culture that people identify with grants them equal dignity. The dignity account can also easily withstand the ‘smart assimilation’ charge: if the nation-builders want to change the affiliation of minority members to another language and culture and are able to use state resources to realize their plan, the equal dignity of minority members is already violated, because the minority’s identity interests are not publicly valued or protected in the same way as those of the majority. Even where an entire language is wiped out, and, consequently, hardly any case for the protection of the current freedom interests still exists, as with respect to Irish, the dignity case for its protection can still flourish, all the more so when the assimilation was experienced as harsh or demeaning, for example in the context of a historical linguistic injustice. (Note here that, for the freedom-only account, it would be fine if the state endorsed the plan of the nation-building assimilators and made it public: what matters on this account is access to options, and sufficient options would continue to be available even if the policy is public knowledge, whereas in the case of the dignity justification, public knowledge of the plan would trigger the dignity charge when it was experienced as demeaning or humiliation.

Dignity, then, can add a context specifier to the context of choice argument. To avoid dignity costs, the particular culture that people consider their own must receive equal recognition.

To summarize, whereas the dignity-only account is weakened by the relativity charge resulting from the apparent need to provide equal dignity to trivial goods, the freedom-only account is damaged by the particularity charge resulting from the fact that any future culture might provide a context of choice. This provides one strong argument for an account of multiculturalism that includes both dignity and freedom. In such a dual account, the freedom argument adds an absolute dimension to the dignity ground, whereas dignity adds a context specifier to the freedom account.

Conclusion: A plea for dualism

I have argued that there are two main grounds for multicultural claims, with distinct moral bases, historical trajectories and strengths and weaknesses. If this is true, two main argumentative routes are open to the multiculturalist case. One is to stick to a monist theory. The second is to switch to multicultural dualism.

The advantage of monism is evident: monist theories require fewer steps and a smaller ontological footprint. But as I have argued, Occam’s razor cannot fully mandate sticking with monism in the case of freedom-based multiculturalism, because we need a way to close the assimilation exit due the particularity problem. In my view, a monist version of dignitarian multiculturalism can do the work by itself, but it comes with the price of the inclusion of potentially trivial goods due to the relativity problem.

We may therefore explore a dualist account, taking both dignity and freedom on board. Such an account has two important advantages. Firstly, it offers multiple moral grounds for cultural recognition. This may help in getting more adherents on board in a society marked by reasonable pluralism, and thus makes the theory more inclusive. Secondly, it bolsters the multiculturalist case by correcting for the weaknesses of monist accounts: freedom solves the relativity of dignity-only views by adding absolutism, and dignity provides a context specifier to the particularity-lacking nature of the freedom-only account in the case of future generations.

We can distinguish two versions of this multicultural dualism: the first is unified dualism, the second is multiple dualism. Unified dualism states that we need both dignity and freedom to be imperiled for group-differentiated rights to be justified. Only if dignity and freedom are at stake is there reason for action. The advantage of unified dualism is that, as I argued, it can overcome both the relativity and the particularity problems, improving on both monist accounts. But this account also faces an important drawback. What if a group faces only a lack of freedom access, but no dignity problems? For example, a group with sufficient dignity might at some point experience strong assimilation pressure or become too small to sustain a full context of choice. Conversely, what if a group only experiences dignity problems, but no lack of freedom-generating options? Two groups could have a sufficiently rich choice set, while one of the groups gets lesser recognition by the state than the other. A dignity problem exists here but there is no freedom issue. In both cases, the unified dualist account would see no reason for action, although there are significant freedom and dignity losses at stake.

For this reason, one might want to switch to multiple dualism. Multiple dualism holds that freedom and dignity problems suffice each on their own to trigger cultural recognition. Whereas unified dualism stipulates that dignity and freedom interests must be involved, for multiple dualism cultural recognition is justified when freedom or dignity needs exist. On the latter view, we have weighty moral reasons to act in either case. It would be open to this view to hold that if both problems exist at the same time, we should intervene more urgently or the case for intervention is morally weightier than if only one of these problems is involved. But an argument for group-differentiated rights still exists in the absence of one of both grounds.