For over a decade, Chandran Kukathas has been a distinctive voice in the debate in political theory over what liberalism mandates with respect to multiculturalism and the political accommodation of cultural diversity. Many contemporary liberals defend cultural rights for cultural minorities while insisting that their practices conform to fundamental liberal values or demands of citizenship. Kukathas denies any warrant for cultural rights but grants great authority to cultural communities to live as they please. His arguments in support of this conclusion have developed over the years. This book represents the culmination of his inquiries, where the relation of his earlier arguments—especially regarding freedom of association, toleration, and freedom of conscience—is explained and set out within a general “theory of diversity and freedom.” It is a fitting culminating work for this most independent of thinkers—beautifully written; skeptical, systematic, even tenacious in argumentation; rich in examples and insights; and liberally spiced with wit. The thesis, however, remains as provocative as ever.

Kukathas poses a straightforward question: “[W]hat is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties?” (p. 4). His answer is that it is one that respects individuals' freedom of conscience to live according to their moral beliefs, upholds their freedom to associate and dissociate, and instantiates toleration as the first virtue of political life, where what is tolerated is dissent or different beliefs or social norms. A free society built on such principles is one in which political society has no special or overriding authority and unifying role. Rather, this free society would amount to an “association of associations”—an “archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions … operating in a sea of mutual toleration” (pp. 4, 22), much like international society.

To call this argument original would be to slight one of Kukathas's purposes, which is to retrieve what he takes to be the classical liberal understanding of toleration found in John Locke's Letter on Toleration (1689) and especially Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary (1686–87). There, toleration was conceived as a way of securing the peaceful coexistence of groups against a backdrop of religious conflict. Still, The Liberal Archipelago self-consciously cuts against the grain of most contemporary political theory. Instead of the standard concern with establishing what values, if any, state authority should pursue, Kukathas asks: Who should have authority in the first place? Instead of the idea, revived by John Rawls, that justice is the primary concern of politics, Kukathas assigns this status to toleration. Instead of the deep assumption that the good or free society requires social unity and a closed or bounded society (such as a nation-state), Kukathas avers that such boundedness scarcely describes actual societies and, in any case, assigns political society a privileged authority it does not deserve. And instead of the assumption—shared by many “liberal neutralists” and liberal nationalists alike—that liberal principles and institutions depend for their justification on respect for individual autonomy, he places center stage the unqualified importance of freedom of conscience. So, for example, while the right to exit associations is crucial, there is no need for individuals to be informed that they have such a right (p. 113).

To contemporary liberals, the liberal archipelago is likely to be suggestive of the illiberal gulag. Kukathas forthrightly acknowledges the latitude that his conception of liberalism grants to illiberal practices by and within communities, but he still insists that this “tyranny in a sea of indifference” (p. 137) is preferable to a liberal state that authoritatively seeks to impose a moral code on its citizens and constituent groups. This, of course, is an astonishing position to those accustomed to thinking of liberalism as standing minimally for a range of individual rights. A virtue of the book—which in large part is framed as a response to Will Kymlicka's influential liberal theory of minority rights—is the rigorous way in which Kukathas seeks to respond to Kymlicka's and others' criticisms of versions of the theory, thus anticipating many objections readers will have. Nevertheless, there are a number of problems with the argument, a few of which may be noted here.

Kukathas defends his account from the charge that it condones oppression of internal minorities by arguing that “the threat of oppression is as likely to come from outside the minority community as it is from within” (pp. 135–36), and he points to the murder of the Jews by the Nazis and the one-time policy of Australian governments to take Aboriginal children away from their families. This confuses what is permitted on principle with what occurs by abusing principle. On Kukathas's account of liberal toleration, oppression within minorities is allowed on principle. On the other hand, the kinds of state oppression to which he refers represent rather vivid violations of respect for the autonomy and rights of individuals. The answer to these kinds of abuses would seem to be more respect for autonomy, not less.

One need not, however, valorize autonomy in order to question Kukathas's toleration. He believes that the true test of a commitment to toleration is the capacity to tolerate even the grossest intolerance. Yet one might well argue that tolerating gross intolerance, as a matter of principle, only throws into doubt one's commitment to the principle of toleration. There is also raised here a question as to how, in the absence of social unity, overarching political authority, and shared institutions and values, and in the likely presence of myriad group tyrannies, the liberal archipelago transmits and reproduces the value on toleration.

But this may be to take the argument too seriously. Concluding the book, Kukathas considers whether his theory is plausible. It “might seem faintly naïve, if not entirely quixotic,” he writes, “to devote an entire work to imagining a world that can never be” (p. 269). The point of the exercise is rather to highlight that aspect of the “liberal inheritance” that best checks all politics of unity and suppression, namely, the possibility to dissent and break away. Some readers might wonder whether the author could afford to have the “courage of [his] doctrines” (p. 187) because there is no question of facing the doctrines of his courage. Nevertheless, in its more modest purpose and as an illuminating challenge to contemporary liberalisms, this book succeeds admirably.