ABSTRACT
With the end of the Cold War and the coming of the twenty-first century, the triumph of modern liberal democratic state was all but assured. Francis Fukuyama, for one, confidently declared, as mankind approaches the end of the millennium, the twin crises of authoritarianism and socialist central planning have left only one competitor standing in the ring as an ideology of potentially universal validity. Multiculturalism was one of the instruments that was to help achieve these two corresponding goals: offering both individual liberty and social cohesion while circumventing earlier and coercive assimilatory policies that spurred resentment in and alienation of immigrant groups. Similarly, Taylor describes “a language of perspicuous contrast,” which he aligns with fusion of horizons, as “a language in which we could formulate both way of life and ours as alternative possibilities in relation to some human constants at work in both”.
