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Like other liberal democracies, Canada and Quebec is facing important challenges raised by moral and religious diversity, such as the legitimacy of reasonable accommodations and the meaning of secularism in a pluralistic society. Focusing on these latter issues in the context of Quebec's recent history and political culture, with a particular emphasis on the 2007-08 Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, I intend to outline the current state of the debate in Quebec. First, I define the legal obligation to accommodate and specify what are its limits. Second, I pinpoint the meaning of secularism and defend a liberal and pluralist conception. Third, I discuss the main piece of legislation (Bill 94) that was drafted by the Government of Quebec in response to the recommendations of the aforementioned Commission.Published online: 11 December 2017

Der Verfasser unterscheidet zwei Hauptvarianten der Identitätsbildung: den "melancholischen Nationalismus" und den liberalen, kosmopolitischen Anti-Nationalismus. Er sieht Identitäten auf dem Fundament bereits bestehender Paradigmen entstehen, sie stellen somit keine creatio ex nihilo dar, sondern speisen sich aus tradierten Narrativen. Der "melancholische Nationalismus" dominiert bis zum Referendum 1980. Mit ihm wurde seit Anfang der 1960er Jahre eine Auseinandersetzung mit den kollektiven Traumata der quebecer Gesellschaft gesucht. Premier Trudeau und seine Anhänger um die Zeitschrift "Cité Libre" verneinten die Schicksalsschläge des frankofonen Québec zwar nicht, plädierten jedoch dafür, sich von der melancholischen Selbstbetrachtung nicht lähmen zu lassen, sondern sich auf liberalem, die Nation außen vor lassenden Wege der Modernisierung zuzuwenden. Diese Debatte zwischen "melancholischem Nationalismus" und liberalem Anti-Nationalismus wurde durch eine neue feministische und pluralistische Perspektive auf die Nation seit dem ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert deutlich geweitet. Dadurch konnten sich Gegenentwürfe nationaler Narrative aus gesellschaftlichen Minderheitengruppen zunehmend Gehör verschaffen. (ICE2)

According to several authors, the politics of recognition are at an impasse. The politicization of identity, they claim, relies on a hermetic and essentialist conception of culture. Although this critique hits the target in some specific circumstances, nevertheless it misrepresents the more general process of intercultural mediation triggered by the politics of recognition. That said, the emphasis on the end-state of substantive recognition does seem to lead to an impasse. The struggles for recognition, and the identities that underlie these struggles, are too plural, convoluted and fluid to be theorized as quests for definitive recognition. Thus, identity politics ought also to be seen as agonic games of mutual disclosure which participate in the ongoing reconfiguration of the norms of public recognition inherent in democratic politics.

"In this highly original book, Markus Gabriel presents 'Neo-Existentialism', an anti-naturalist view that holds that human mindedness consists in an open-ended proliferation of mentalistic vocabularies. Challenged by Charles Taylor, Andrea Kern and Jocelyn Benoist, Gabriel deftly refutes naturalism's metaphysical claim to epistemic exclusiveness"--

AbstractThe use of predictive machine learning algorithms is increasingly common to guide or even take decisions in both public and private settings. Their use is touted by some as a potentially useful method to avoid discriminatory decisions since they are, allegedly, neutral, objective, and can be evaluated in ways no human decisions can. By (fully or partly) outsourcing a decision process to an algorithm, it should allow human organizations to clearly define the parameters of the decision and to, in principle, remove human biases. Yet, in practice, the use of algorithms can still be the source of wrongful discriminatory decisions based on at least three of their features: the data-mining process and the categorizations they rely on can reconduct human biases, their automaticity and predictive design can lead them to rely on wrongful generalizations, and their opaque nature is at odds with democratic requirements. We highlight that the two latter aspects of algorithms and their significance for discrimination are too often overlooked in contemporary literature. Though these problems are not all insurmountable, we argue that it is necessary to clearly define the conditions under which a machine learning decision tool can be used. We identify and propose three main guidelines to properly constrain the deployment of machine learning algorithms in society: algorithms should be vetted to ensure that they do not unduly affect historically marginalized groups; they should not systematically override or replace human decision-making processes; and the decision reached using an algorithm should always be explainable and justifiable.