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17 september 2019
A first impression after reading this book was one of confusion and disbelief. The approach seemed so very distant from reality by focusing on the concept of Global Egalitarian Justice based on a global English speaking Demos that I was afraid that philosophy, by definition, was and had to be irrelevant for the world of today. Especially the clear intention of setting back nations to an instrumental level was unsettling although it should not have come as a surprise ; it only confirmed that liberals struggle to give a place to nation-building (what I already knew).
Fortunately I was subsequently also able to read critiques on this book in another book with the title “Linguistic Justice” which gave me the clear impression that I was not the only one who struggled with the somewhat unwordly approach. Especially the comments by Rainer Baubock came much closer to my own mindset in which national self-determination is essential and whereby this is based on an element which according to me should be central to a Theory of Linguistic Justice, namely that an individual should have the right to be governed, administered, taxed, educated and judged in his or her own language.
Now some more detailed critique :
1) Nations should be instrumentalized to realize Linguistic Justice, according to PvP. Let’s assume we agree with this (quod non). Then there is hopefully an agreement that we need nations/states as instruments given that the world is too big to be governed in one state. How will we draw borders ? I hope that we will quickly agree that the best way to organize these administrations will be according to a principle of linguistic territoriality based on the fact that people should be governed in their own language. And then we will be close to the situation as this currently is in Europe, with the same places of contention as is currently the case ? Outside Europe the question is if we provide justice by organizing education in English or in the local/native language. I tend to believe it should be in local/ native language.
2) imposing English as the language of government, also at the European level, and not providing any translations in the local languages is a very bad idea for two importanr reasons :
– it creates two classes in Europe ; the ones who speak English and govern, next to the ones who do not govern and should apparently not know the rules ;
– linked to the previous : it further distances the citizens from Europe, which is exactly what we currently do not need.