"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy
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July 13, 2006
I've just come across this site -----Continental Philosophy: a Bulletin Board for Continental Philosophy, History of Philosophy and More..... It has a link to Francis Fukuyama's, Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy, which was published at the Journal of Democracy, and is now online. That is a good move as it shows a commitment to the public sphere in liberal democracy. The constellation around identity, immigration and integration have formed a hot problematic after 9/11.
Fukuyama succinctly identifies the problem:
Most Americans have tended to regard the jihadist problem as something that has been bred and nurtured in profoundly dysfunctional areas of the world like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East. Since jihadism is something that is happening "over there" the solution lies either in walling off the United States and other target countries, or else, as the Bush administration would have it, going over there to fix the problem at its root by deposing dictators andpromoting democracy.
However, the other side of this is that liberal democracies have problems concerning the integration of immigrant minorities--particularly those from Muslim countries—as citizens of pluralistic democracies. Thus Europe has become and will continue to be a critical breeding ground and battlefront in the struggle between radical Islamism and liberal democracy. Fukuyama says that:
This is because radical Islamism itself does not come out of traditional Muslim societies, but rather is a manifestation of modern identity politics, a byproduct of the modernization process itself.Most European countries have right-wing populist parties opposed to immigration and increasingly mobilized around the issue of Muslim minorities... Nonetheless, mainstream European academics, journalists, and politicians have been very reluctant to address the problem of Muslim integration openly until very recently.
This issue has been largely addressed by conservatives who have dumped a pluralistic society in the name of assimilation and rage against multiculturalism because it allows, fosters and supports a radical Islamism with a jihadist bent.
So what does Fukuyama have to offer? For one thing, Fukuyama correctly identifies the flaw in liberalism. He says that:
Modern identity politics springs from a hole in the political theory underlying modern liberal democracy. That hole is related to the degree of political deference that liberal societies owe groups rather than individuals. The line of modern political theory that begins in some sense with Machiavelli and continues through Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founding Fathers, understands the issue of political freedom as one that pits the state against individuals rather than groups.
He then introduces the Charles Taylor's Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition into the discussion:
Taylor points out that modern identity is inherently political, because it ultimately demands recognition. One's inner self is not just a matter of inward contemplation; it must be intersubjectively recognized if it is to have value. The idea that modern politics is based on the principle of universal recognition comes from Hegel. Increasingly, however, it appears that universal recognition based on a shared humanity is not enough, particularly on the part of groups that have been discriminated against in the past. Hence modern identity politics revolves around demands for recognition of group identities----that is, public affirmations of the equal dignity of formerly marginalized groups, from the Quebecois to African-Americans to women to indigenous peoples to homosexuals.
Multiculturalism, understood not just as tolerance of cultural diversity in de facto multicultural societies but as the demand for legal recognition of the rights of ethnic, racial, religious, or cultural groups, has now become established in virtually all modern liberal democracies, including Australia. Thus the liberal principle of equal individual rights has been breached.
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