The Multivisions of Multiculturalism

The Multivisions of Multiculturalism

ABSTRACT: The questions suggested by the term "multiculturalism" range far and wide, embracing: questions of inclusion; questions of criteria; questions of self-identity; and questions of the meaning of multiculturalism. In this essay I provide a framework: (i) that allows us to begin a discussion that might answer such questions; (ii) that illuminates why it is that such a modest aim is the most we can hope for at this time; and (iii) that provides an understanding of what we can do in a multicultural world in order to illuminate what we should do. This framework will reject both the idea of toleration as found in Berlin’s conception of human choice and will speak of as maximal multiculturalism, an orientation that is found in John Milton’s idea of truth as variegated and that sees multiculturalism as a great good. These views are plagued by at least three paradoxes that are really inconsistencies. In their place I develop the idea of a mitigated multiculturalism based on fear rather than on any ideal or vision, and with this a distinction between positive and negative toleration. Negative toleration proves to parallel a classic Hobbesianism, which while an unwelcome result, paradoxically, provides further direction and reason for hope that mitigated multiculturalism can and must be surpassed.

The questions suggested by the term "multiculturalism" range far and wide, embracing questions of inclusion: Who and what is to be taught?—questions of criteria: On what grounds, if any, can "we" make appraisals of "other cultures"?—questions of self-identity: When I say "we," who am I including in such august company?—questions of the meaning of multiculturalism: What is it? What is its purpose...

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...lstoy and Enlightenment," in Tolstoy: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed., R.E. Matlaw (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967), p. 48. The essay Berlin quotes from is Tolstoy's "Who Should Teach Whom to Write: We the Peasant Children or the Peasant Children Us?" (1862).

(3) "Two Concepts of Liberty," p. 168.

(4) Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans., Ted Humphrey (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), p. 43.

(5) See, for instance, Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

(6) See especially Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), and there, especially Chapter X.