diVerent backgrounds. Yet, in spite of these developments, there has not been
a complete convergence on common ethical standards. Customs remain
diverse. Even in the face of pressure to sign up to or abide by international
declarations of human rights, many states insist on cleaving to their own
ethical traditions. Many immigrants also have attempted to continue to live
by the moral standards laid down by their cultural communities of origin,
rather than conform to those of their host societies. At the same time, there
has been a resurgence of claims by indigenous peoples around the world to
recover some of the lands they have lost to colonizers, and to reassert the
ethical vitality of their own native traditions. While the native peoples of the
past four centuries tried, with limited success, to resist the advance of
Christian morality into their lands, cultural minorities now resist the intru-
sion of the morality of Western liberalism into their communities. A sign-
iWcant part of contemporary political theory now wrestles with the problem
of how to measure the claims of particular cultures against the demands of
universal morality (Benhabib 2002 ).
2 The Differentiated Rights
Solution
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
One prominent solution to the problem attempts to resolve it by identifying
special rights to be accorded to cultural groups to enable them to hold on to
their particular customs and traditions. The best-known and most inXuential
theory here is that developed by Will Kymlicka, who put the case for the
protection of cultural minorities in terms that were consistent with the univer-
salist commitments of a liberal political outlook. Liberals, he contended, had
failed to take proper cognizance of the claims of cultural minorities wanting to
hold on to their cherished traditions, and wishing to avoid being assimilated
into the dominant culture of the wider society. Yet there was no reason why
liberalism, with its universalist aspirations, shouldWnd this problematic, for it
was perfectly capable of marrying its commitments to universal moral stand-
ards with respect for cultural diVerence (Kymlicka 1989 , 1995 , 2001 ).
The key to Kymlicka’s position is his claim that what matters for all human
beings is being able to live autonomously. Liberalism, he contends, has always
moral universalism and cultural difference 583