Living According to Conscience
Living According to Conscience

Summary/Abstract: We discuss the proposal of Chandran Kukathas engaged in one of the goals of liberal theories: the protection of freedom of conscience. Kukathas proposes the metaphor of a liberal archipelago where different communities are sovereign in enforcing their worldview on their territory. We share Kukathas’s intention to strongly protect freedom of conscience, but we think that Kukathas’s theory fails to adequately protect it. In Kukathas’s view, freedom of conscience is protected through freedom of association and the related freedom to exit an association. But freedom of exit, intended only as a right not to be coerced when one wants to leave, is insufficient. It must be sustained by the provision of capabilities to leave that one can exercise, as well as by capabilities to evaluate her condition. We discuss, then, a more promising proposal of an egalitarian libertarian archipelago proposed by Michael Otsuka. After explaining why this system isn’t sufficiently stable, we conclude that the constitutional egalitarian liberal state is a better candidate.

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