ABSTRACT
Will Kymlicka has developed a novel and sophisticated argument to show that, in conditions of cultural pluralism, the liberal principle of equal respect for persons sometimes requires the recognition of collective rights for the protection of cultural groupings. This chapter begins with an evaluation of Kymlicka's argument for cultural rights. Kymlicka says that in many modern nation-states there is an important discontinuity between the scope of two different sorts of community: political community and cultural community. The political community is the grouping "within which individuals exercise the rights and responsibilities entailed by the framework of liberal justice". The cultural community, by contrast, is the grouping "within which individuals form and revise their aims and ambitions". A liberalism that allowed groups to claim rights that conflict with basic individual rights would appear to treat "respect for groups" as more important than "respect for individuals".
