Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity

How can a society of diverse cultures, interests and viewpoints agree upon terms of debate, or come to a moral consensus and a coherent public policy? These probing, nuanced essays explore the philosophical and political dimensions of diversity and the ways in which different cultures are viewed by relativists, universalists and liberals. Lukes, a sociologist and author of The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: A Comedy of Ideas, mounts a skeptical defense of the quintessential liberal balancing act. Respect for other cultures, he argues, should not preclude moral criticism and judgment; the liberal creed of universal rights is not just a European folk belief, a""liberalism for the liberals"" comparable to""cannibalism for the cannibals""; and rationality is not just a product of Western-style modernity, but a common ground of traditional societies as well. Many essays are aimed at the relativism of the multiculturalist left, which he chides for thinking of cultures as cohesive, holistic, distinctive entities when in fact they are heterogeneous, ridden by conflict and shaped by outside influences. But he also takes on the right, in its communitarian and libertarian guises; in his best essay he demolishes free-market philosopher Friedrich Hayek's argument that society can neither conceive nor implement a coherent program of social justice. Lukes notes Robert Frost's definition of a liberal as someone who can't take his own side in an argument, and his own clear but somewhat dry prose sometimes leads to equivocal conclusions. In the end, though, his muted but tenacious defense of liberalism against cultural essentialism is welcome indeed.