No âmbito dos seminários de Terça-Feira Illiberal minorities, exit rights and state neutrality: between tolerance and autonomy

19 de Janeiro de 2010, 17:00 – 19:00, Sala de Seminários do CES, 2º Piso, Coimbra

Roberto Merrill (Centro de Estudos Humanísticos: Universidade do Minho)

Comentários: Mathias Thaler (CES)

Resumo

In a liberal state, what is the best way to deal with illiberal minorities? Should we tolerate them or consider them illegitimate? If we tolerate them, how can we guarantee exit rights from those minorities to the individuals who feel oppressed by them? If we shouldn’t tolerate them, how can we conciliate this intolerance with respect for the autonomy of individuals?

I will first expose the debate regarding treatment of illiberal minorities in a liberal state. I then expose two liberal pluralist theories which give an answer to this problem: one gives priority to tolerance of illiberal practices, the other gives priority to the autonomy of individuals even if this amounts not to tolerate some of their practices, including cases where there is no harm to others. I will show the limits of these two theories by confronting them to practical cases like the use of hijabs and burkas in France. I mainly wish to avoid what seems to me the main problem with these two theories, i.e. the problem of state paternalism. The autonomy theory restricts people’s freedom in the name of a controversial conception of autonomy. The tolerance theory can also restrict people’s freedom because it implies strict perfectionist conditions regarding effective exit rights.

I then try to defend a version of the autonomy theory which does not imply hard paternalism. This version does imply state paternalism on illiberal minorities, but a soft or non coercive paternalism. I end this paper suggesting that non coercive state paternalism is compatible with liberal neutrality.

Nota biográfica

Doctor in political philosophy. Post-doctoral student (grantee in political sciences) at CEHUM, University of Minho (Braga).

Doctoral dissertation on political neutrality and pluralism of values, carried out at the Centre Raymond Aron (EHESS), under supervision of Monique Canto-Sperber and Daniel Weinstock.

Masters dissertation in philosophy at Paris1 - Panthéon Sorbonne under supervision of Yves Michaud.

Research Fields: Human rights, egalitarianism; applied ethics; liberalism; right-wing and left-wing libertarianism; multiculturalism; neutrality and perfectionism; paternalism; moral pluralism; public reason; republicanism.