Living According to Conscience

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