DAVID SIDORSKY
553
The philosophical anthropologist Ernest Gellner had speculated on
the possibility that the number of members of the United Nations would
eventually rise from the current
180
toward
8000,
the number of iden–
tifiable language groups of the world. Gellner's assumption is that lan–
guage provides a basis for asserting a right to national self-definition.
With the acceptance of a third concept of liberty, national self-determi–
nation could be claimed for an even greater number since historical and
religious factors, as well as linguistic ones, could provide the basis for a
group's choice for self-definition.
Less abstractly, the third concept of liberty provides a basis for oppo–
sition to the obligations of identification with historically established
states. In accordance with it, such obligations can be construed as acts
of coercion by the ruling powers against the right of groups to assert
their free choice of self-definition. This has led to the generation of con–
tinuing political conflict.
In a small number of cases, such conflict will be resolved by the emer–
gence of new sovereign states. In others, the cultural assimilation of the
minority to the majority will provide the resolution of the conflict. For
the largest number of cases, the political arrangement will involve the
recognition of plural ethnicities and cultures within the historical State.
Consequently, the third concept of liberty finds its expression not only
in nationalist movements for self-determination, but in the rights of
groups to seek linguistic or cultural autonomy. The force of such a rein–
terpretation of freedom is to justify cultural autonomy for minority
groups to the point of suggesting the reformulation of the terms of the
social contract within traditional unitary nation-states.
(3) The Third Concept of Liberty and Multiculturalism
Apart from the issues involved in the rise of new or "constructed
nationalism" with their accompanying political controversies over the
legitimacy of secession and of reconstituted State boundaries, the third
concept of liberty has had a significant role in the cultural domain of
single nation-states. An interpretation of liberty which stresses the right
to create or choose the self without the constraints of a given tradition
can justify an extension of cultural pluralism within the framework of a
historical nation-state.
The three different patterns that have been noted in the politics of
gender and in new forms of nationalism can also be exhibited in the
sphere of contemporary cultural politics. According to the first pattern,
the sovereign state asserted a claim of neutrality regarding the sphere of
