Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Conclusions of Civic Virtues - Richard Dagger

Overall, I do appreciate Dagger’s argument in this book. However, I was confused by a couple of things in Chapter 11. As to the first challenge presented to republican liberalism that he discusses, that republican liberalism is hostile to cultural pluralism because it imposes homogeneity by ignoring differences among groups of people, I did not feel, from my understanding of the text, that Dagger addresses this point adequately. His response to this objection is to criticize this view by arguing that republican liberalism is superior to Young’s “politics of difference”. I did not see how criticizing “politics of difference” shows that republican liberalism is not hostile to cultural pluralism. Although, he does state that “The weakness of her theory does not guarantee the strength of mine in this regard” (180). So further, he aims to show that republican liberalism is more hospitable to difference than Young’s criticism suggests. In addressing this, he depends upon his previous discussion of autonomy and fair play. I understand his argument about how autonomy is something that can be developed only with the help and cooperation of others. How does this exactly contribute to difference, though? Does the cooperation of others not lead, in a sense, to homogeneity? Not homogeneity in the sense that we all become the same but in the sense that we all need to compromise toward certain similar or shared goals. I can see how this relates to respecting group differences, as he discusses in his recalling of the fair play argument on page 181, but does respecting group differences necessarily equate to recognizing all of the differences?

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