Two grounds of multiculturalism

Will Kymlicka has grounded group-differentiated rights for nationalcultural groups in the values of freedom and autonomy. An alternative moral foundation for such rights is dignity. In this contribution I contrast the freedom and the dignity case for multiculturalism in terms of their intellectual history and their contemporary justificatory potential. I show that the freedom grounding stands in the Herderian-romantic tradition, whereas the dignity case is older and hearkens back to the humanist claim for vernacular development. In terms of justification, I argue that, while freedom and dignity can independently justify group-differentiated rights, a theory that includes both justificatory grounds is stronger because these grounds can strengthen each other: firstly, dignitarian multiculturalism can help the freedom-based theory in withstanding the assimilationist claim that any cultural context – and not only people’s own culture – may foster freedom; while, secondly, the freedom case strengthens the dignity case by providing absolute ammunition to ward off the objection that dignity claims are normatively weak because they rely on subjective feelings.