Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

In a recent New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash weighed in on the subject of multiculturalism.  Correction: make that “subjects” of multiculturalism, in the plural, since the word has multiple meanings.

“Multiculturalism” has become a term of wholly uncertain meaning. Does it refer to a social reality? A set of policies? A normative theory? An ideology? Last year, I served on a Council of Europe working group with members from eight other European countries. We found that the word meant something different, and usually confused, in every country.

Note his point at the end: that it is not just that the word has fixed meanings that vary by culture and locale.  The word also has “confused” meanings in any given country or culture.  It’s a mess, and one that Ash hopes to reason through, looking to straighten out the real world by first straightening things out in the world of ideas.

Read the whole thing, as they say.  If you are interested in the subject, of course–it is a little on the long side, but manageable.

What’s my summary?  Well, per the above, I think Ash totally gets right the conceptual mess that goes by the name of multiculturalism, and I endorse the project of trying to straighten things out.  I tried myself in shorter form, and much more modestly, back here.

Ash’s effort consists of a review and restatement of good old-fashioned pluralism, Isaiah Berlin-style.  Is it a big enough concept as to permit itself to wrap itself comfortably around the multicultural conundrum?  Ash answers yes.

In so doing he creates what he calls a liberal pentagram for living together: five underlying principles that are strong and robust enough to weather the challenge to the liberal project summoned up by multiculturalism.

Correction again: it is not strictly speaking “multiculturalism” that presents a challenge to liberalism.  That would be putting the conceptual cart before the real-world horse.  No, the challenge comes not from ideas but from real conditions: the way-increased velocity of social friction arising from different kinds of people living together.

His five concepts:

Inclusion.  If you are going to have people with quite different behaviors and values living with you, seek to include not exclude.

Clarity.  If you are going to have people with quite different behaviors and values living with you, seek clarity in what is expected of them relative to rights and duties.

Consistency.  If you are going to have people with quite different behaviors and values living with you, try to set expectations consistently–avoid one rule for the more familiar Amish over the less familiar Cambodians.

Firmness.  If you are going to have people with quite different behaviors and values living with you, be willing to act quite firmly when violations of the clear and consistent rules take place.

Liberality.  Approach all questions with the open-minded spirit Berlin associated with liberal thinking.

Note I prefaced all the above but liberality with the phrase “if you are going to have people with quite different behaviors and values living with you.”  That’s because, while liberality Berlin-style does not depend on the newer multicultural challenge, the other four sides to Ash’s pentagram do.

Indeed, one can argue that the five sides are not really equivalent.  It seems more useful to me to consider the fifth side–Berlin liberalism–as the cornerstone.  The other four represent the need for liberalism to step up its game in order for it to make the claim that it is sufficient to meet new cultural, religious and ethnic challenges.

Ash himself seems to realize this.  As he concludes his piece:

Having reached the last corner of the pentagram, a disaffected reader may complain, “but here is nothing new; just old, familiar liberal virtues, applied and adapted to the new circumstances of multicultural societies.” Exactly so.

And nicely said, too.

But does it fly?  Ash has nicely restated his belief that liberal philosophy, properly understood and sufficiently charged-up, can handle the new.  Can it?

Ideas are surely tools and in my mind Ash has chosen the right tool for the right job.  If I were in charge I would be starting from a liberal point of view and asking for a lot of beefing up in terms of inclusion, clarity, consistency and firmness.  But if ideas are tools, they are also only tools.  You never know completely whether they will work since, living forward, you never really know the job you are working on, and how intractable it may yet become.

All well and good for Ash to pronounce this philosophy from on-high, the Oxford don as Platonic leader.  One has to hope that, at least in Europe, it is not a little too late to expect philosophy to save the day.