“Identity or Status?”
7/17/03
Page 32
there will be expectations to be met, demands will be made. It is at this point that
someone who takes autonomy seriously will ask whether we have not replaced one kind
of tyranny with another.”
15
Another indication that the combination of an identity-based model of recognition with
a defense of group-differentiated rights is not inherently destined to prioritizing the
community over the individual is the work of Will Kymlicka. For he has consistently
argued for group-differentiated rights to an intact culture by means of a fully liberal ideal
of basic goods necessary for any individual’s capacity to pursue whatever vision of the
good life he or she chooses (Kymlicka 1995). In other words, one can be fully aware of
the dangers of intra-group pressures while still advocating the need for group recognition.
16
In (Fraser 2001), she claims without evident support that “both Taylor and Honneth
hold this view” (footnote 15, page 41) namely, that “everyone always needs their
distinctiveness recognized,” (page 31). Not only is this facially false concerning
Honneth’s view, it ignores the long argument that Taylor advances at the end of his essay
to the effect that we owe all cultures only a rebuttable presumption of worth. For Taylor
this is only a preliminary presumption that their difference and specificity ought to be
celebrated, not an ultimate, categorical obligation that we owe all groups. The
rebuttability of the claim, furthermore, is entailed by the possibility that we may well, in
the end and after a long hermeneutic process of reaching an informed interpretive
understanding, judge certain kinds of difference to be unworthy of recognition. See
(Taylor 1992: 63-73).
Convention