Communitarianism
In the 1980s communitarians displaced Marxists as the most prominent critics of liberal political theory. Communitarians share a belief that liberalism is excessively individualistic or atomistic, ignoring people's dependence on communal relationships. They differ in where they locate this flaw. Some criticize the liberal ideal of freedom of choice, arguing that people's ends in life are defined by their communal ties, not freely chosen (Sandel 1984). Others accept the ideal of freedom of choice, but criticize liberalism for ignoring its social and cultural preconditions (Taylor 1989). Still, others argue that moral reasoning is dependent on communal traditions, so that liberal claims to universal validity are illegitimate (Walzer 1983, MacIntyre 1981).
Commentators sometimes distinguish between backward-looking and forward-looking versions of communitarianism (Phillips 1993). The former asserts that healthy communal bonds existed in the past, lament the decline of community as a result of the increasing emphasis on individual choice and diverse ways of life (the "permissive society"), and seek to retrieve a conception of the common good. This sort of communitarianism is difficult to distinguish from traditional conservatism and is widely criticized for ignoring the ways that most communities historically excluded women, gays, or racial and religious minorities (Frazer 1999). By contrast, forward-looking communitarians disavow nostalgia for the past, accept that individual choice and cultural diversity are now permanent features of modern life, and acknowledge that earlier forms of community were too narrow and exclusive to be retrievable today. Hence, they seek to build new bonds of community that integrate diverse groups and lifestyles, for example, by promoting forms of patriotism, democratic citizenship, or civil society that encourage people from different backgrounds to work together. A more complex version of communitarianism is backward-looking at the local level, allowing ethnic or religious communities to uphold a traditional way of life even if it requires restricting individual freedom, while adopting a forward-looking model at the national level, where the multiplicity of different groups in society must cooperate.
In response to the communitarian critique many liberals attempt to show that they, too, are sensitive to the importance of community and culture and that they can accommodate at least the forward-looking dimensions of communitarianism. Hence, a proliferation of theories of liberal republicanism, liberal patriotism, liberal multiculturalism, and liberal civil society have been witnessed. All these are intended to show that a liberal society is not exclusively individualistic and can accommodate and support a rich array of collective identities and associations, without compromising the basic liberal commitment to the protection of individual civil and political rights.
Given these developments, the original liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s has given way to a number of new, more differentiated positions and issues. Instead of a stark choice between individualism and communitarianism, one now faces a range of debates about how to sustain bonds of moral solidarity and political community in an era of individual rights and cultural diversity: How to build a common national identity without suppressing ethnic and religious diversity? How to nurture feelings of trust and solidarity in mass societies where people share little in common? How to foster a vibrant public sphere that encourages civic participation and democratic dialogue? How to support family life without imposing traditional gender roles? How to educate children to be public-spirited citizens without inculcating a narrow chauvinism? Communitarianism does not provide a single perspective or framework for answering these questions, and there is a growing sense that the communitarian label obscures as much as it reveals about someone's position on them. Indeed, virtually all the major writers associated with the original communitarian critique express reservations about the label. Nonetheless, these are all questions that have been put on the agenda of political philosophy by the communitarian critique of liberalism. Communitarianism may be fading as a recognizable school of political philosophy, but communitarian concerns have come to dominate political philosophy at the start of the twenty-first century.
Liberalism.
Bibliography
Avineri, Shlomo, and Avner de-Shalit, ed. Communitarianism and Individualism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Frazer, Elizabeth. The Problems of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Lehman, Edward W., ed. Autonomy and Order: A Communitarian Anthology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
MacIntyre, Alisdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckwork, 1981.
Mulhall, Stephen, and Adam Swift. Liberals and Communitarians. 2nd ed. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1996.
Phillips, Derek L. Looking Backward: A Critical Appraisal of Communitarian Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Sandel, Michael J., ed. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New York University Press, 1984.
Taylor, Charles. "Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate." In Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum, 64–87. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
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