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Álvares, C. (2018). On cultural plurality in the public sphere: choosing between freedom and equality as criteria of judgement. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication. 9 (1), 25-40

M. C. Álvares,  "On cultural plurality in the public sphere: choosing between freedom and equality as criteria of judgement", in Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 25-40, 2018

@article{álvares2018_1714108599018,
	author = "Álvares, C.",
	title = "On cultural plurality in the public sphere: choosing between freedom and equality as criteria of judgement",
	journal = "Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication",
	year = "2018",
	volume = "9",
	number = "1",
	doi = "10.1386/ejpc.9.1.25_1",
	pages = "25-40",
	url = "http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/ejpc/2018/00000009/00000001/art00003"
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - On cultural plurality in the public sphere: choosing between freedom and equality as criteria of judgement
T2  - Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication
VL  - 9
IS  - 1
AU  - Álvares, C.
PY  - 2018
SP  - 25-40
SN  - 1757-1952
DO  - 10.1386/ejpc.9.1.25_1
UR  - http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/ejpc/2018/00000009/00000001/art00003
AB  - In an age of postmodern suspicion of master narratives, the egalitarianism and universality inherent in a normative system of rights defended by liberalism is countered by disbelief in the idealized conceptions of a ‘public subject’, divorced from the particularity of both individual and historical communal narratives, as well as an impartial collective good. Simultaneously, the excessive fragmentation of opposed and contradictory aspirations of counterpublics, privileged by a communitarian approach, runs the risk of giving priority to individual rights over social well-being. This article explores the liberal and communitarian approaches to rights, inquiring into whether freedom or equality offer the best criteria of judgement to preserve the space of cultural plurality within the public sphere. While Habermasian discourse ethics subordinates the particularistic to the general will, the communitarian perspective on justice, represented by Paul Piccone and Charles Taylor, argues that the law is not universal in scope and cannot be separated from particularistic conceptions of the ‘good life’. The article ultimately claims that freedom is the criterion that allows cultural pluralities to both stand on their own, resisting assimilation within any master discourse, and establish dialogue among themselves. In this perspective, the public sphere promotes complex modes of interaction, among modernity’s differentiated spheres. This view of the public sphere is in tune with Jencks’ description of postmodernism as preserving the ‘fragmental holism’ (1996: 478) of plural lifeworlds.
ER  -