Politics of Identity and Liberalism

Paul Gilbert‟s book Cultural Identity and Political Ethics represents one of the recent relevant challenges to the politics of identity, or politics based on cul-tural claims. Contrary to ambitions of supporters of identity or cultural poli-tics to show metaphysical depth in cultures or identities as the ground for strong political requirements, Gilbert sees in cultures mainly a political di-mension. Why do culturalists and identitists insist so much on metaphysical depth? The reason is that cultural features can be the basis for the require-ment of special treatment with the strength that identitists and culturalists remark only if they refer to something deeply constitutive of people‟s identi-ty, i.e. something which, if neglected, impairs the psychological functioning of individuals. However, Gilbert says, a proper discussion of the matter does not give any stable foundation for the strong claims of supporters of identity poli-tics. In particular, what follows from the discussion is that identity is adapta-ble, and, so, there is no ground for the requirement to secure it in its actual form, as it is often claimed. Gilbert‟s discussion leads to the conclusion that the account of cultural identity made by those who make political claims based on it depends on what purposively delimits the group. So, for example, in a particular context it is language that is taken as dominant (for example, in the requirement o