Among the many interesting problems considered in this book, I will center my commentary on two issues: on the role of narrative reconstructions as an alternative to objectivist accounts of culture; on the implications of her proposed reformulation of discourse ethics as interactive universalism for the dilemmas of multiculturalism. On the question of the dialogical-narrative reconstructions of identity, a combination of perspectives of participants as well as of external observers is suggested, instead of a shift from the latter to the (...) former. On the more difficult question of the political, legal and moral implications for democratic theory of forms of rational accommodation of cultural differences, I will consider the problem of justification of morality under conditions not only of radical cultural differences but of asymmetries in power and resources among the participants, which seem to present a problem for a model that presupposes a cooperative engagement and free uncoerced consent from all involved. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism has been understood as a postnational identity. This conflates the distinction between nation and nationalism. Most accounts of cosmopolitanism emphasise its legal form or its cultural dimension or its political. This paper argues for a civic dimension to cosmopolitanism, conceived of in terms of discourses of self, other and world. This is tied to a notion of nations without nationalism.