concerned to emphasize the equality of all persons and groups, and therefore
to ask how they might be included as participants within the framework of a
single moral community. The idea that social unity is not important, and that
we might do better to maintain greater moral distance among groups, may,
nonetheless, have something to oVer.
To adopt this stance would mean taking a particular view of the nature of
groups and of the claims of culture. Rather than think of the world as made up of
Wxed groups, whose claims need to be considered by those in power, we should
begin by recognizing that groups themselves are not permanent or stable
entities but more or less temporary associations of individuals. How they
associate, who they encompass, and how strong their identities, is determined
not simply by their ‘‘shared’’ histories but by the conditions in which theyWnd
themselves. Australia’s Aborigines did not view themselves as a single people
before the arrival of European settlers, although now theyWnd themselves
united to some degree as a people with a common cause. DiVerences can be
identiWed along many dimensions (from religion to language to ethnicity),
although any one of these dimensions might easily supply the basis of a form
(more or less stable or enduring) of social unity. A good society is one that leaves
people free to form, or persist in, the forms of association theyWnd congenial.
On this view, there are no cultural rights (Kukathas 1992 a, 1992 b). Groups
are to be regarded not as established with the right to protection or guaran-
tees of perpetuation into the distant future, but as associations of people who
are entitled to continue in association with one another if they so desire. Each
is free to depart and the authority of the group’s leaders rests only on the
willingness of the members to acquiesce in their rule. The outside world,
however, is neither entitled to intervene in its activities nor obliged to help it
sustain them. The proper stance here is one of radical toleration: groups are
tolerated even when their practices are themselves highly intolerant of dis-
senters in their midst. There is no expectation that groups or their members
must conform to the standards of the wider society, although those who wish
to leave their groups may not legitimately be prevented from doing so—and
no one is under an obligation to help groups retain their unwilling members.
Implicit in such a view is a certain kind of universalism. Everyone has a duty of
forbearance from intervention in the aVairs of others, which only self-defense can
defeat. It is certainly a view that acknowledges the humanity of all peoples. But
it takes a step that Vitoria and Las Casas were unwilling to contemplate in
suggesting that those who do not acknowledge this universal morality may
withdraw from its ambit, and continue to live beyond its frontiers. There is no
moral universalism and cultural difference 593