1 Levinson, Sanford, ‘Is Liberal Nationalism an Oxymoron? An Essay for Judith Shklar,’ Ethics 105 (April 1995) 626-45CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Charte de la langue française, L.R.Q., c. C-11. Commercial signage, for example, has been an important source of conflict and judiciary debate in Quebec. The original version of the Charte de la langue française, adopted in 1977, imposed French as the exclusive language of public signage and commercial advertising (article 58). In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada concluded, in Ford, that the prohibition of any language other then French in public signage and commercial advertising was contrary to freedom of expression. The National Assembly then resorted to a constitutional dispensatory clause to maintain the exclusive use of French in exterior signage; but in 1993 article 58 was modified in such a way as to ensure the predominance of French without prohibiting the use of other languages, so as to avoid resorting to the dispensatory clause relative to freedom of expression (Law 86, 1993, C. 40, article 18).

3 Tamir, Yael, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1993), 65Google Scholar; Norman, Wayne, ‘Prelude to a Liberal Morality of Nationalism,’ in Brennan, S., Isaacs, T., and Milde, M., eds., A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy (Atlanta: Rodopi 1997Google Scholar [Value Inquiry Book Series #40]); Miller, David, ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 10:1 (1993) 6–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Taylor, Charles, ‘Why Do Nations Have to Become States?’, in French, Stanley G., ed., Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association 1979), 33.Google Scholar

4 Tamir, , Liberal Nationalism, 66Google Scholar

5 Tamir, , Liberal Nationalism, 66Google Scholar; Yack, Bernard, ‘Reconciling Liberalism and Nationalism,’ Political Theory 23:1 (February 1995) 180Google Scholar; Barnard, F.M., ‘National Culture and Political Legitimacy: Herder and Rousseau,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 44:2 (1983) 231-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Walker, Brian, ‘Culturalist Dilemmas: On Some Convergences between Kymlicka and the French New Right,’ presented at the CPSA Annual Meeting, Montreal, 1995, and ‘John Rawls, Mikhail Bakhtin, and the Praxis of Toleration,’ Political Theory 23:1 (February 1995) 112-16Google Scholar

7 Weinstock, Daniel, ‘Le nationalisme civique et le concept de culture politique commune,’ in Blais, François, Laforest, Guy, and Lamoureux, Diane, eds., Libéralismes et nationalismes. Philosophie et politique (Sainte-Fay: Presses de l'Université Laval 1995), 99–100Google Scholar (translation is mine). See also Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ‘The Hidden Politics of Cultural Identification,’ Political Theory 22:1 (February 1994) 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Varieties of Pluralism in a Polyphonic Society,’ Review of Metaphysics 44 (September 1990) 5.

8 Barnard, , ‘National Culture and Political Legitimacy,’ 250-1Google Scholar. See also Taylor, ‘Why Do Nations,’ and Yack, , ‘Reconciling Liberalism and Nationalism,’ 180Google Scholar.

9 Norman, , ‘Prelude,’ 12–13Google Scholar

10 Taylor, , ‘Why Do Nations,’ 24ffGoogle Scholar

11 Hurka, Thomas, ‘The Justification of National Partiality,’ in McMahan, Jeff and McKim, Robert, eds., The Morality of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press 1997)Google Scholar

12 Kymlicka, Will, ‘Misunderstanding Nationalism,’ Dissent (Winter 1995), 136-7Google Scholar

13 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press 1993), 223-7Google Scholar

14 Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis, ‘Moral Conflict and Political Consensus,’ Ethics 101:1 (October 1990) 69–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Dworkin, Ronald, ‘Lord Devlin and the Enforcement of Morals,’ in Wasserstrom, Richard A., ed., Morality and the Law (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1971), 55–72Google Scholar. Sincerity and consistency are also important elements in evaluating whether one's position is moral or not (ibid.).

16 Gutmann, and Thompson, , ‘Moral Conflict,’ 71Google Scholar

17 Gutmann, and Thompson, , ‘Moral Conflict,’ 17Google Scholar

18 Audi, Robert, ‘The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 18:3 (Summer 1989) 278Google Scholar

19 Audi, , ‘Separation,’ 281, 284, 295Google Scholar

20 Stroud, Barry, ‘The Study of Human Nature and the Subjectivity of Value,’ The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1989), 234Google Scholar. Joseph Raz suggests the following test of publicly acceptable reasons: “If p is an acceptable reason for a certain action, or for the adoption of a certain principle or the institution of certain political arrangements, then while there may be disagreement over whether p is the case, whether it is or [is] not overridden or defeated by other reasons, and so on, it is nevertheless agreed that p, if true, is a reason for the claimed conclusion. When the reasons proposed for coercive political action meet this test they are acceptable reasons (…) Of course, that does not guarantee actual agreement. We may not agree on this particular reason, but we may nonetheless recognize it as a reason.” Raz, Joseph, ‘Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 19:1 (Winter 1990) 39.Google Scholar

21 Weithman, Paul J., ‘The Separation of Church and State: Some Questions for Professor Audi,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 20:1 (Winter 1991) 61, 63Google Scholar; Audi, , ‘Separation,’ 282-3Google Scholar

22 Weinstock, Daniel M., ‘The Justification of Political Liberalism,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75 (1994) 179-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 See for example Flanagan, Owen, Varieties of Moral Personality. Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1991), 138-9Google Scholar: he stresses that “the self as represented often has motivational bearing and behavioral effects,” and that self-represented identity draws on available theoretical models about the nature of the self.

24 Norman, , ‘Prelude,’ 13Google Scholar

25 By pointing to what seems acceptable or not in our liberal democratic societies, I want to stress that such ‘agreement’ is the result of a specific historical and intellectual journey, but that this should not close the door to judgments of practical reason as to the worth of these achievements. The point of view from which we proceed to such judgments will always be ours; but we should not give up the quest for objectivity.

26 See for example the decisions of courts in the following cases: B. (R.) v. Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto [1995]1 S.C.R. 315; Wisconsin v. Yoder 406 U.S. 205; Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education 827 F. 2nd 1058 (6th Cir. 1987).

27 Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 4–5Google Scholar

28 Flanagan, , Varieties of Moral Personality, 82Google Scholar

29 See my ‘Ontologie, philosophie et politique: la critique de la tradition épistémologique chez Charles Taylor,’ Dialogue 35:3 (1996), 553-569.

30 Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989), 164-6, 178Google Scholar

31 On this paradox, see also Danley, John R., ‘Liberalism, Aboriginal Rights, and Cultural Minorities,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 20:2 (Spring 1991) 180-1Google Scholar.

32 Wayne Norman, ‘Domesticating Secession,’ unpublished paper

33 For example, Habermasians may argue that such a point of view confuses the justification of norms with their applicability, whereas we have to keep these issues separate.

34 Dworkin, , ‘Lord Devlin,’ 63Google Scholar. Kedourie's Nationalism is a good example of an emotional characterization of nationalist aspirations: “It is at these extremes of human nature which they knew so well how to explore, where horror and delight, love and hate, cruelty and tenderness are indistinguishable, that the Romantics sought a heightened, transformed, superhuman existence, which might abolish life as it is actually lived; nationalism is the political expression of this quest.” Kedourie, Elie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson 1966), 87Google Scholar. In the same vein, Ignatieff writes that “As a moral ideal, nationalism is an ethic of heroic sacrifice, justifying the use of violence in the defence of one's nation against enemies, internal or external.” Ignatieff, Michael, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (Toronto: Viking 1993), 3Google Scholar. He also blames romanticism for this ‘dark’ side of nationalism (see, for example, 4 and 63-64).

35 Gutmann, and Thompson, , ‘Moral Conflict,’ 79Google Scholar

36 Liberals such as Norman and Kymlicka recognize that the stability of liberal institutions depends on the sense of a shared identity that an abstract justification of moral principles alone cannot generate. Taylor has been defending such an argument for a long time, although from his point of view legitimacy, rather than stability, is the crucial issue relative to identification; see for example his ‘Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity and Alienation in Late Twentieth Century Canada,’ in Cairns, Alan and Williams, Cynthia, eds., Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985)Google Scholar. The problem of the interplay between abstract moral principles and the embeddedness of their signification in concrete settings would be a fruitful way of assessing the relationships between liberalism and nationalism from the point of view of moral psychology.