In his essay, Charles Taylor addresses one of the pressing contemporary issues of liberal democracies: the equal treatment of individuals while respecting cultural and ethnic identities. He analyzes the precarious dialectic of universalism and particularism, which is also echoed in the term "multicultural society," from both an intellectual historical and a political-practical perspective in contemporary Western societies. He describes the shift in values, the self-assertion desires of minorities, and the legal contradictions in the autonomy aspirations of ethnic groups. Taylor's analysis is a stroke of luck, and the book, along with comments from leading social philosophers, is one of the most important contributions to the discussion on "multiculturalism.".