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Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Patrick Neal  and
David Paris
Patrick Neal
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
David Paris
Affiliation:
Hamilton College
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Abstract

During the last decade a good deal of discussion of the “communitarian critique” of liberalism has occurred. The debate is perplexing for a number of reasons. The competing positions are often difficult to characterize (or, sometimes, even to distinguish) and it is often unclear what would be the thèoretical or practical significance of affirming one position over the other. In this “guide for the perplexed” the authors discuss two ambiguities and two problems which they believe are central to the debate. Examining these problems and ambiguities suggests some distinctions and confusions, strengths and weaknesses, characteristic of both communitarian and liberal arguments.

Résumé

Pendant les 10 dernières années on a longuement discuté de la « critique communautaire » du libéralisme. Le débat plonge dans la perplexité pour un bon nombre de raisons. On a souvent du mal à caractériser, voire à distinguer, les points de vue qui s'affrontent, et la raison théorique ou pratique de favoriser un point de vue plutôt que l'autre est souvent difficile à percevoir. Dans ce « guide pour les perplexes » les auteurs discutent deux aspects ambigus et deux problèmes du débat qui y jouent à leurs sens un rôle central. Une analyse de ces problèmes et de ces aspects ambigus dégage des clarifications et des confusions, des avantages et des inconvénients propres à la fois à l'argument communautaire et à l'argument libéral.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 419 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1990

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References

1 Macintyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981Google Scholar); Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982Google Scholar); Taylor, Charles, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979Google Scholar); Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swidler, Ann and Tipton, Steven M., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1986Google Scholar); and Barber, Benjamin, Strong Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984Google Scholar). Michael Walzer is sometimes categorized as a communitarian, but does not clearly fit the designation; see Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983Google Scholar).

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9 For example, Sandel states, “But we cannot regard ourselves as independent in this way without great cost to those loyalties and convictions whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are—as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this republic. Allegiances such as these are more than values I happen to have or aims I ‘espouse at any given time'” (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 179).

10 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 32.

11 Ibid., 67.

12 Galston, William, “Liberal Virtues,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988), 1277–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similar analyses are also offered by Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Clarendon: Oxford Press, 1986Google Scholar), and Shklar, Judith, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984Google Scholar).

13 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 246.

14 Spragens, “Liberalism, Republicanism, and Rational Practice,” 4.

15 Barber, Strong Democracy, chaps. 7, 9, and MacIntyre, After Virtue, chap. 15.

16 Jeffrey Stout points out that the self-understanding of individuals in liberal society is perhaps not as individualistic as communitarians, especially Bellah et al., contend. See Stout, Jeffrey, “Liberal Society and the Language of Morals,” Soundings 69 (1986), 32–59.Google Scholar

17 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 66–75, and Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 54–65, 147–64, 175–83.

18 Rawls claims that his conception of justice “deliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking,” meaning that it is independent of “disputed philosophical, as well as disputed moral and religious questions.” He seeks to avoid these questions because, “Philosophy as the search for truth about an independent metaphysical and moral order cannot, I believe, provide a workable and shared basis for a political conception of justice in a democratic society” (“Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 230).

19 Thigpen and Downing, “Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique,” 645.

20 Barber, Strong Democracy, xi.

21 Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 161–62.

22 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 324.

23 Lasch, Christopher, “A Response to Joel Feinberg,” Tikkun 3 (1987), 41–42.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 41.

25 Gutmann, “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism,” 319.

26 Stout, “Liberal Society and the Languages of Morals,” 45.

27 See Holden, Barry, The Nature of Democracy (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974Google Scholar), chap. 9, and Pennock, J. Roland, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979Google Scholar), chap. 9.