“Communitarianism inherits the best of liberalism”
Social Sciences and Social Ethics Essay
M.Phil International Peace Studies
by: Matthew Wilburn King, PhD
Contents
Part I. Introduction: Approaching Liberalism & Communitarianism
Part II. Liberalism
Section I. A Brief History
Section II. Evolving Liberalism
Section III. Reiman’s Four Defenses of Individual Sovereignty
Section IV. What’s the Problem with Individualism?
Part III. Communitarianism
Section I. A Brief History
Section II. Protecting the Liberal Individual & Pursuing the Communitarian Community
Part IV. Conclusion
Part I. Introduction
Approaching Liberalism & Communitarianism
This essay will argue that liberalism and communitarianism are embedded in each other’s dilemma. The liberal dilemma rests in how a free and autonomous individual is able to socially commit to a community while at the same time protecting individual sovereignty. The communitarian dilemma rests in how a community can be established while facing the liberal idea of individual sovereignty. How can a community based on the free and autonomous individual create a committment to a value foundation that promotes communal ties? The argument is that liberalism can act as a strong foundation for communitarian objectives while communitarianism can fulfill and protect the theoretical goals of liberalism. This essay will only address the relationship between liberalism and communitarianism.
The assessment of the relationship between liberalism and communitarianism will begin with a brief history of liberalism. Part II, section I of the paper presents a brief history of liberalism. The history will only act as a background to establish the foundations of when and why the notion of individualism became extolled during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The argument briefly introduces different political theorists, groups, and their ideas to illustrate that liberalism was a reaction to the feudal relationships, ecclesiastical hierarchies, and monarchies that continually acted intolerantly and repressive toward the individual, as a member of the community or polity during that time.
The discussion will then proceed in part II, section II with the evolution of the liberal individual. Continuing to illustrate that liberalism’s primary objective is to allow individuals to commit and establish the order of their polity in a way that they see fit. Thus, legitimizing the community or polity in which they live. The argument will then examine the nature of the free and autonomous individual. Illustrating that liberalism helps to secure the individual, as a member of a community, from repressive and intolerant government. The discussion will also include arguments against the individualism that liberalism propagates.
In part II, section III Jeffrey Reiman’s four defenses of individual sovereignty will be presented to illustrate liberalism as a moral conception. The arguments presented are the 1) the antisubjugation defense, 2) the respect defense, 3) the universal interest defense, and 4) the mortality defense. Reiman’s four defenses are presented to establish a grounding for the reasons individual sovereignty must be protected. Lastly, this section will illustrate that through the protection of individual sovereignty that commitments to communities or the polity are legitimated on the basis that the entry into them is free and voluntary. This not only ensures the legitimacy of the polity but ultimately secures the individual’s freedom within the polity.
Part II, section IV presents an open critique of individual sovereignty to demonstrate the counter arguments to the liberal ideal of individualism. A general discussion of the arguments against liberalism and its emphasis on individual sovereignty will be presented. Counter arguments to the critiques of liberalism will ensue. Finally, this section will demonstrate how arguments against liberalism culminated into the communitarian critique of liberalism.
Part III, section I briefly presents a history of communitarianism. Again, this history is not complete but is established to provide the reader with a framework to understand communitarianism as a response to liberalism. Communitarianism opposes the emphasis placed on individual sovereignty. Communitarians feel that liberalism fails to recognize the interconnectedness of individuals and their role in society. Its primary goal is to reestablish a sense of community, holding at its center core values and virtues that members of the community can participate. The discussion of the communitarian critique of liberalism presents ideas that may protect liberalism and its theoretical goals while illustrating how liberalism may preclude communitarian objectives.
The argument in part III, section II is that while protecting the liberal individual we can also pursue the communitarian community. This will be demonstrated through an examination of liberalism’s failures and the communitarian response. Their dilemmas will be reiterated to illustrate how each may resolve the others. While communitarianism seeks to establish a community with core values liberalism seeks to protect the individual. If communitarian objectives are integrated and founded on the protection of individual sovereignty; the liberal individual can continually be protected and secured to pursue their ends. At the same time, where liberalism’s individual sovereignty fails to create a sense of responsibility to the community, communitarianism may create the possibility.
Part II: Liberalism
(Section I) A Brief History:
The foundations of liberalism as a political ideology began to emerge during the seventeenth century but the actual term ‘liberalism’ arrived in Britain from Spain and France in the 1830s. The ideal of liberalism connotes freedom, independence, liberty, and virtue; refuting feudalism, aristocracy, intolerance and repression. The theoretical disposition of liberalism began to be “given clear expression during the Civil War period of the 1640s” and quickly evolved through the works of classical political theorists such as John Locke in his “Second Treatise of Government” and Thomas Hobbes in his rather complex “Leviathan.” These theorists and others, during this period, began to vehemently question feudal relationships, ecclesiastical hierarchies, property rights, and the suppression of individual expression. Since that time liberals have been at the forefront of movements to emancipate individuals from political, religious, economic, and other constraints on their activities, and they have persistently campaigned for a society that is more open, tolerant and diversified, less paternalist and authoritarian, than one which entrenches privilege and illegitimate authority.
John Locke argued that individuals, through reason, should agree on basic institutional structures that determine how people will participate in ‘civil society’. The agreement to enter into these structures should be through the will of individuals to secure their right to property. Locke defined property as ‘life, liberty, and estate.’ The agreement each individual would enter is called the ‘social contract.’ The concept of the ‘social contract’ “is used to explain, justify or deduce the positive rights and obligations which naturally autonomous persons have in relation to each other within a society and/or state.” Through entering the ‘social contract’ the individual agrees to collectively participate to secure order and protect the citizen’s positive rights to ‘life, liberty, and possessions.’ The individual’s will to create a stable and ordered society through the ‘social contract’ ensures each citizen’s greatest potential for felicity. Since the “authority results from the consent of the ruled the people would have the right, as a last resort, to overthrow a ruler who violates these conditions.” Ultimately ensuring that the rights handed over by the individual would not be abused by the authority. The ‘social contract’ grounds legitimate political authority in the acceptance of individuals.
Hobbes founded the polity to be based on authority rather than reason. Hobbes unlike Locke believed that instead of basing the state on reason it must be based on the understanding that individuals will disagree on the nature of the state. He felt that the individual must vest authority in a sovereign whose decisions on matters of law and public business, including public doctrine, would be taken as final. Although Hobbes wanted power to be vested in authority he understood that it may become corrupt or illegitimate. If the polity is not accepted by the people who have vested the power in that authority it becomes illegitimate. If this is the case, citizens have the right to restructure, reconstitute, or even revolt against the authority. Hobbes made it clear how illegitimate political authority might be avoided. He stated that “the secret of the dynamism of modern liberal states lies in a continuing dialogue between a legislating government and a responding citizenry guided by a set of abstract rules.” This would ultimately prevent authority from being abused, allowing it to perpetually be legitimated.
Hobbes and Locke’s ideas were shared by many others and it did not take long for liberalism to increase in momentum by the eighteenth century. During the Civil War period, Britain’s political activists and groups began to emerge. These groups were the forefathers of the struggle for natural and equal rights in the pursuit for freedom. The “Levellers, a group that formed in 1646, had an extensive program of political reform” that surrounded these concepts. A key leader, John Lilburne, expressed “the view pivotal to natural rights doctrine, that no form of authority is legitimate unless grounded in the consent of those affected by it.” The expression of this idea is grounded in the principal of individuals being able to freely consent to authority through their freewill and accord. The ideas or concepts which surround power, authority, and jurisdiction must be legitimated by the individuals who are being ruled. When the power and authority are not legitimated by the people, power and authority becomes cruel, arbitrary, and capricious.
The Levellers were committed to the Protestant ethic. This ethic was embodied by “private discretions (which included conscience, the family and opinion) which governments (or the church) should not invade.” The Levellers surrounded and advocated the abolition of the monarchy. They were exponents of possessive individualism or economic self-interest, objected aristocratic privilege, proposed to disperse property ownership, and they believed that everyone must be equally educated because “a community of educated and masterless individuals would consist of virtuous citizens.” Essentially, through the expression of these ideas, the Levellers were advocating less government, a government which corresponded to the will of the people, and a level of individual social responsibility that acted as and contributed to a communal environment.
Eventually the ideas advocated by the Levellers had to transcend the eighteenth century ideology of the Whigs. The Whigs were the British reforming constitutional party in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were eventually succeeded by the Liberals. The Whigs embraced some of the Levellers ideas, but fought to protect wealth and rank because many of them were “beneficiaries of government patronage. They were disinclined either to oppose the established order or to advocate democracy, which they equated with rule by the rabble.” They were also uninterested in opposing the status quo, but did pursue the concepts of limited government and religious toleration, fundamental components of liberalism. On one side of the Whig tradition lain Edmund Burke who represented the conservatism of the Whigs at that time. Burke advocated “conformity to tradition rather than natural rights as the measure of a fair and just polity.” Although their was deference among the Whigs they were bound by the “ideal of a community of self-reliant and politically responsible individuals.”
The struggle for the autonomous citizen and the fight for equal possession of natural rights continued to thrive throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John Stuart Mill became the next prominent political theorist to advocate liberal ideology. Mill believed that “a sound polity emanates from a virtuous citizenry and proposed to construct a community in which autonomous individuals cooperate in the pursuit of shared objectives.” Although Mill understood the importance of the autonomous individual, he also understood that ordinary people may have a difficult time making responsible decisions. In turn, he felt that autonomy might effect a societies shared objectives. Mill did not let this idea undermine the importance of the autonomy to choose.
Like the Levellers, however, he believed that the laboring classes had been inhibited from practicing the art of self -government because of their subordination to a propertied minority. His strategy, also like that of the Levellers, was for a society in which everyone had both the incentive and opportunity to be autonomous in a socially responsible manner.
The evolution of virtue, good, and citizenship prospered as others like T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse, and J.A. Hobson advocated economic liberty, the equality of rights, and higher forms of morality. Eventually these ideas quickly evolved into modern conceptions. They were embraced by people and implemented through institutions, not only in Britain where these ideas first began, throughout the world. Early on, America enshrined classical liberal ideology in the Declaration of Independence with Locke’s Second Treatise of Government as the leitmotif, embracing the values of life, liberty, and property, core values of liberalism. These values were codified in America as a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
(Section II) Evolving Liberalism:
The ideas constituting liberalism were conceptualized to refute and oppose feudal and aristocratic intolerance. “Its inception sought to free individuals from the constraints of absolute rulers who used the powers of government to decree how we should lead our lives.” Liberalism fought to hand the powers back to the individuals who constitute society. The ideology rapidly evolved pushing forward the ideas of individual and natural rights. The plight of the individual and rights continued to evolve and the demand for more autonomy quickly enveloped the original foundations of liberal ideology. In its’ earliest form liberalism promoted “the release of an individual’s desires from many of the restraints of the traditional order.” By so doing, individual desires could be expressed and government designed to correspond to the will of the people. Providing freedom and autonomy to individuals was essential to creating a value of social responsibility, ultimately contributing to a strong community and polity. Through freedom and autonomy individuals would cooperate to pursue their own objectives, becoming shared objectives. In the pursuit of these shared objectives a virtuous citizenry would naturally arise as a sound polity, creating a strong community; a community ruled by the people, free from the feudal, aristocratic, intolerant, and repressive regimes that had been dominant for so long.
Critics of liberalism felt that as individuals became freed from oppressive regimes social bonds would become more and more fragile. And, social obligations and commitments would soon be abandoned in the name of individual uniqueness, choice, and originality. Critics opposed self-reliance and the cultivation of privacy because it could destroy the social and moral fabric of society. Alexis de Tocqueville described the birth of individualism as: a new expression to which a new idea has given birth . . . a deliberate and peaceful sentiment which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends’, abandoning ‘the wider society to itself’, first sapping ‘the virtues of public life’, then attacking and destroying all others, eventually being ‘absorbed into pure egoism’
A harsh conception of individualism, many opponents of liberalism held this view. Perceived negatively by some, liberals continued to stress the importance of the individual. Liberals hold that individual desires are the core of modern civil association. The individual is the essence of liberalism. Individuals are the beginning in them self and constitute the means to their ends, acquired through rational discourse. Being highly rational the individual is made responsible for their individual actions. Thus, individuals will rationally choose to do that which is best for themselves and, in turn, that which is best for their community or society.
“Critics of liberalism often charge it with being false to social and political reality.” “And the individualist emphasis of (Locke’s) social contract theory is often attacked as a form of atomism.” Atomism holds that individuals act for their own ends and that there are no common actions or meanings that define what is socially good for the part or the whole of society. Social goods are merely a collection of individual goods. This is usually a misconception on the part of liberalism’s critics. “In fact, liberal theory has no difficulty recognizing social relations, and one of the most striking features of liberal societies is the flexible and fluent creativity of their social cooperation.” Liberals would argue that this flexibility and fluent creativity promotes and inspires people to become virtuous citizens; in the sense that each person is enabled to shape their lives according to their preferences. Each of their preferences molds and diversifies society allowing it to become more open and tolerant, increasing its’ creativity and productivity. The freedom of the individual is a core liberal value and “its adherents have endorsed the right of citizens to engage in a mutual endeavor to sustain a just polity.”
(Section III) Reiman’s Four Defenses of Individual Sovereignty:
In the article ‘Liberalism and Its Critics,” Jeffrey Reiman defends the idea of individual sovereignty and presents four defenses. He pursues the idea of individual sovereignty in an attempt to illustrate liberalism as a ‘moral conception.’ For Reiman, liberalism has an advantage over other moral doctrines. He believes that “the validity of moral requirements . . . must be shown to bind individuals . . . against their wills.” Reiman states that liberalism may meet this requirement better than other moral doctrines giving it a distinct advantage. Reiman also believes that “since liberalism governs the moral requirements it (may act as a) protective outer boundary within which other ideals, (like caring or community,) can be pursued voluntarily” by individuals.
The version of liberalism that Reiman defends, he calls the ideal of individual sovereignty. It holds that the only things that can rightly be required of human beings . . . are those forms of conduct that are necessary to maximizing the scope of everyone’s freedom to control his or her life according to his or her own judgments.
To express the point it is not necessary to thoroughly detail Reiman’s four defenses of individual sovereignty. A clear summarization of his ideas should prove to be adequate. His four defenses are (1) the anti-subjugation defense, (2) the respect defense, (3) the universal interest defense, and (4) the mortality defense. First, the anti-subjugation defense rests on the premise that to show a moral requirement “it is necessary to refute the suspicion of subjugation” or that one’s will has prevailed over another without justification. Reiman presents two possibilities and his point is straightforward. He states:
any moral requirement must be a matter of right not might. To establish this, we must show . . . that the requirement is true beyond a reasonable doubt, or that it is needed to restrict to a minimum the role of might in human affairs. Unless and until one of those others can be proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, only the liberal ideal can satisfactorily rebut the suspicion of subjugation. It is the only one that can withstand the charge of being might not right.
Secondly, the respect defense rests on the premise that “human beings will be worthy of respect to the extent that their actions are the outcomes of their own judgments.” If an individual’s actions are not authentically motivated and distinctly separate from their judgment, or consensual judgment, then their actions may not be respected. Respect is determined on the basis that judgment, being the outcome of the action, was neither persuaded, nor forced upon the individual to act. An action that is a result of an individual’s sovereign-will to freely choose must be respected, unless the action is an imposition on the will of another. Thirdly, the universal interest defense rests on the premise that there is universal reason for moral action that is of universal interest because people continually live according to how they think they should live. Although our conception of how we should live is different, we do have reason for living in ways that we conceive as being moral. This is what is considered to be of universal interest. Since how we choose to live is vulnerable to how others think we should live we have a general interest to ensure that we “maximize each one’s ability to act according to his or her own judgments as far as this is compatible with a like ability for everyone else. Thus, everyone has an interest in the ideal of individual sovereignty.” If people do not have a reason or feel compelled to correspond to this ideal, because there are no means to require them to do so, then they are simply acting according to the principles of how they choose to live. “If the existence of such a reason is a necessary condition for holding something to be a duty, then we can say that only the ideal of individual sovereignty satisfies the necessary condition for being a universal human duty.” If moral duties exist at all they must first be equal to the ideal of individual sovereignty. Finally, the fourth defense presented by Reiman is the mortality defense.
The mortality defense is rather complicated. Reiman considers it to be the most speculative but the most important of the four. This defense rests on the premise that because humans are confronted by their own mortality, or the realization that they only have one life to live, they will ultimately choose to live in a way that they deem it to be worthy. What each individual determines to be worthy in the face of ‘nonbeing’ is internal and subjective. Only the person living their life can determine what they believe to be worthy. The most important aspect of this defense is the ability to allow people to live in the way that they consider worthwhile. “And this implies a moral standard that insists that everyone have the maximum possibility of finding what that life is and then living it – in short, the ideal of individual sovereignty.” The true nature of people is to pursue their own interest first because no other end can be served unless first served through their own ends. At the same time it is important that individuals recognize this truth for others. This means people must “leave room for everyone’s equal possibility of living the life that he or she judges to be the worthwhile one.” “This amounts to showing that the ideal of individual sovereignty is a requirement of reason.”
Once individual sovereignty is established each person is free to pursue their ends in the manner that they see fit. With this conception of individual sovereignty legitimacy of institutions may be claimed. Once “this strategy is recognized the indifferent equality of a plurality of dominant selves” becomes apparent. “The liberal strategy has as its primary aim to safeguard and promote – not happiness or virtue so much – as the liberty of the differential individual.” As individuals are at liberty to pursue the life that they deem to be worthwhile they too are able to pursue and establish institutions, governments, or societies that are legitimated through their will.
The establishment of government or institutions with this basis of legitimacy allows individuals to extend their self-interest to encompass the interest of others. Individuals associate the commonalties of their individual interests to create a society constitutive of their ideas. The diversity of each of their ideas being constituted and represented as a structure expresses the plurality of their dominant selves. And the institutions to which individuals “subscribe are in principle their own product and derive their legitimacy in some way through the consent ” of their dominant selves. As individuals seek their commonalties they look to establish a social life. “The term ‘commonality’ now looks to the community as an integral part of what it means to be an individual.” The individual is then released and enabled to transcend their individuality for others, in turn, able to commit voluntarily to community.
(Section IV) What’s the Problem with Individualism?
The critics of liberalism consider individualism to be the primary problem of the ideology. They believe that even though liberals attempt to explain the foundations of community through individual freewill and choice that this inherently disassociates the individual from the true nature of community. Liberalism expresses the importance of allowing individual choices of morality to be self-chosen, following their own life plans without regard for community. The argument is that liberalism places so much importance on the individual that there is an innate distinction and separation of individuals that will not allow them to cooperate communally because they will constantly strive toward their own self-interest. Individualism causes deep fault lines in the nature of our interconnectedness and “without a sense of connectedness, of communal duty and belonging, our lives lose meaning and society degenerates into a battleground of competing interests.” By pursuing their own ends, individuals neglect their sense of being tied by stronger commitments to values, constructing their own moral codes and eventually severing the ties that bind them.
Since liberalism concentrates so vehemently on the civil liberties of individuals it provides no means “to argue that we should act virtuously, in support of our community.” Liberals would argue that by allowing individuals to choose the values and moral codes that they will live by ensures that the nature of community can remain pure so long as it is first established through the will of individuals. Critics of liberalism believe that individuals freely choosing the values and moral codes by which they will live is the root of fragmentation in modern liberal society, specifically America. They continually lash out at the idea that individual sovereignty presupposes communal ties.
Critics argue: that liberalism is a narrowly individualistic creed which legitimates the maximization of private satisfactions without regard to the public good. The argument is that, in emphasizing the sanctity of individual rights, liberals have an impoverished sense of community as well as the requirements of citizenship.
This impoverished sense of community and this ‘so called’ lack of regard for the public good have given rise to an emphasis on communal thinking. Numerous present day thinkers have taken on the ideas that have evolved through criticism of liberalism’s conception of the individual. They have collectively challenged the ideal of individual sovereignty by propagating a new line of thinking; it is called communitarianism. Although it directly challenges liberalism with the arguments presented, it also seeks to resolve some of the inherent problems of liberalism.
Part III. Communitarianism
(Section I) A Brief History:
For obvious reasons liberalism has been depicted as an individualistic doctrine. In response to the liberal emphasis on the individual is the communitarian critique of liberalism, of which there have been many expressions since the early 1980s. Writers like Alasdair MacIntyre began to express their disdain for liberal individualism. In After Virtue, MacIntyre called for a recommitment to communal virtue, denouncing the importance that has been placed on the liberal individual. Since MacIntyre’s publication the debate has evolved with Michael Sandel’s Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice, and Charles Taylor’s writings on “atomism.”
The liberal/communitarian debate came to a head when communitarianism’s biggest proponent, Amitai Etzioni, invited fifteen ethicists, social philosophers, and social scientists to meet in Washinton D.C. in 1990. In 1993 Etzioni published The Spirit of Community, outlining the communitarian agenda, essentially set by those who were included in the original meeting in 1990. Etzioni states that they “adopted the name Communitarian to emphasize that the time had come to attend to our responsibilities to the conditions and elements we all share, to the community.” Through Etzioni’s publications, appearances on talk shows, acting as editor for the academic journal, The Responsive Community, and his public relations organization, communitarianism has become recognized.
Etzioni, since The Spirit of Community, has published The New Golden Rule, and is the editor of New Communitarian Thinking that includes articles by Thomas Spragens Jr., Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, Robert Booth Fowler, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Philip Selznick, and others. Although communitarian ideas primarily began to evolve during the early 1980s it wasn’t until the 1990s that the communitarian debate became an arena for a vast amount of intellectual dialogue on the nature of the individual and community. In his book, The New Golden Rule, Etzioni asks two key questions regarding the communitarian agenda. He asks “what constitutes a good society: Does it shy away from collective conceptions of virtue and instead nourish individualism and pluralism as the mainsprings of freedom? Or does a good society, following the model of several in Asia, build on tightly knit social webs to ensure respect for virtues that make the society good? Are there ways to combine these two approaches?” The communitarian/liberal debate presents two opposing arguments to these questions. The liberal ideal has been presented. The focus of the argument will now concentrate on communitarianism.
Communitarians do not deny the importance of individual sovereignty. However, they do attempt to seek a balance between the demand of individuality and a well-established moral order that enhances individual growth. Communitarians “value individual choice and initiative but recognize that any society, even one dedicated to individuality, requires some minimum amount of selfless service from its citizens.” Communitarians do not detest liberal autonomy. They detest the liberal ideal that individual sovereignty can promote and encourage a coherent definition of virtue. They feel that “because it focuses so much on the individual, that liberalism provides no grounds on which to argue that we should act virtuously, in support of our community.” Creating a strong sense of virtue is necessary because once “we lose our commitment to and our knowledge of virtue we commence lives of selfishness, irresponsibility, and even crime.” A lack of virtue and the commencement of our lives in these ways destroy the moral fabric that binds us. This decays the core of humanity, rotting it from the inside out, separating us so distantly that we can no longer reach for each other to solve the moral dilemmas that plague our lives.
Communitarians do not completely reject the importance of the individual but the primacy of the individual. They believe that our goals must transcend the self if we are to achieve a higher good. By emphasizing the primacy of the individual, liberalism fails to recognize the imperative reality that we live in a world composed of institutions, associations, and relationships. If we strive to meet individual goals and desires it must be through the structure of our society. Goals inherently beyond the will of a single individual must be achieved through the institutions, associations, and relationships that we are continually bound. The goal for both liberals and communitarians is “personal fulfillment, which communitarians believe requires both a sense that one belongs to a community and the ability to choose one’s own lifestyle and life plan.” If individuals rely solely on themselves, the goals that they truly wish to achieve will never be met. The human experience is one that involves each of us collectively working to pursue our own ends through the means of each other. The means to our ends is in recognizing the invaluable nature of the human experience. Furthermore, “we are socially embedded beings whom achieve personal fulfillment through service to those with whom we share significant values.” Those values are located in the shared meanings, understandings, and goals that we all have. To attain them they have to be based on something more than ourselves. And, we must pursue them together before we achieve anything individually.
The communitarian endeavor is to find an equilibrium between the liberal emphasis on individual sovereignty and the pursuit of the communitarian community. The argument is “deeply concerned with the balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, individuality and community, and autonomy and social order.”
The main point relevant to the discussion here is that while libertarians and liberal individualists do not ignore the need for social order, they not only champion a thin order but seek to limit the social order to one that is derived from and legitimated by individuals acting as free agents. In contrast communitarians see a need for a social order that contains a set of shared values, to which individuals are taught they are obligated. Individuals may later question, challenge, rebel against, or even transform a given social order, but their starting point is a shared set of definitions of what is right versus what is wrong.
By creating a set of shared definitions communitarians feel that they will create a common vision and a set of shared values for individuals to strive toward. In turn, this will allow each individual to pursue their own ends with a common theme always uttering the words of social responsibility in the background. “The communitarian paradigm recognizes the need to nourish social attachments as part of the effort to maintain social order while ensuring that such attachments will not suppress all autonomous expressions.” Individuals should accept that their choices are never completely free from cultural and social factors. Cultural and social factors play an integral role in promoting individual choices and autonomous expression, ensuring that the bridge of equilibrium can be built between the liberal individual and the community that communitarians aspire.
(Section II)
Protecting the Liberal Individual & Pursuing the Communitarian Community:
If we truly desire to build a bridge between the liberal individual and the communitarian community we must respect the ends that their theoretical goals laud. We know that liberals seek to protect individual sovereignty and that communitarians wish to create solidarity around core values that will bind individuals to act socially responsible.
Liberalism Communitarianism
Chief
Value: Liberty Respect/Mutual Aid
Endorses: Political Individualism Community/Social Responsibility
Based On: Foundationalism in the form Favors a version of immanent
of contractarianism critique
Upon seeking to create community, communitarians must realize that for a community to meet the expectations of the liberal individual it must be a voluntary community. It must be voluntary to protect the freewill and choice of individuals to create the necessary values that will bind them in a socially responsible way. If it is not voluntary the values will not be based upon consensus. If the values are not based upon consensus then the values cannot be shared values that the members of a community accept. Values that are voluntarily entered into are legitimated upon the implicit or explicit consensus that surrounds them.
The liberal individual is not actually opposed to community. Liberal individualism is actually a precondition to it. “To be real, community must be voluntary, it must be a free expression of shared commitment. But to be free, it must arise in just the space that liberalism protects.” Liberalism opposes the requirement of community and values that surround the requirement of it. If a community does not accept the primacy of the individual as constituting the community it will fail to protect the rights of individuals. Community must not act to violate or interfere with the rights of its’ members. Communities must first protect the individual so that the individual may contribute willingly to it. If the community imposes on individual sovereignty then the individual will be less inclined to contribute voluntarily. “For those who recognize that real community is voluntary and who do not insist on communitarian values as a means to forcing conformity on people against their will, liberalism is the foundation of communitarianism.”
The world in which we live allows us to become what we will, to pursue what we believe, and to create what we imagine. In this world no person is separated from another. In the pursuit of our individual goals we must rely on others to achieve them. We become engaged and disengaged in relationships and support structures, institutions, and associations in an attempt to claim the ends that we pursue. And, “in the end and from the beginning, our individuality is situated in what is neither wholly mine nor wholly yours, but ours.” And we should act toward ends constituted on that basis. “We are none of us self-made, and we owe ‘debts’ that by the nature of time we often cannot directly pay, but are called upon to repay to society and to others than those to whom we are directly indebted.”
Through the pursuit of our self-interest we must contribute to the communities in which we live because without the support of that which constitutes us, we will neither progress nor achieve the ends of individualism. We are undoubtedly engaged in a community whether we choose to be or not. With our support community may be enhanced and progress in a way that allows the self to truly meet its eternal goal. That goal is to become whole and complete, to maximize our individual potential, and evolve in form and thought to transcend the barriers which indiscriminately separate and sever the ties that bind our individuality. Communitarians and liberals alike share a common belief in community but communitarians seek to maintain a balance between the demands of individuality and the requirements of society, such as ours, that fosters individual growth. They value individual choice and initiative but recognize that any society, even one dedicated to individuality, requires some minimum amount of selfless service from its citizens.
Communitarians do not wish to eliminate the ideals of liberalism. They wish to reinvigorate the individuals who constitute society providing them with the means to achieve their ends. “They, like traditional liberals, seek to further our individual attempts to find fulfillment in the pursuits and attachments of our own choice.” It is now our obligation to find a bridge between the pursuits and attachments of our choice and the communities that we are undoubtedly intricately associated with.
Part IV. Conclusion
While our commitment to community allows us to find fulfillment in the pursuits and attachments of our own choice; liberalism protects the fundamental component that constitutes our communities. It protects us because it leaves adequate room for us to decide how we will function and participate in our communities. It ensures that communities will provide us with the necessary freedom to choose the values and commitments we will establish and the virtues that we will live according to.
What the individual constituting community determines to be of value is a question that they can only answer within themselves. Once that question is answered the individual must choose whether or not they believe it can contribute to the community in a way that will allow them to continually pursue their ends. If that value contributes something to their community, while enhancing their capacity to pursue their goals, people must trust that individuals will be socially responsible for contributing that value to the greater community. If one chooses to abstain from giving that value we must protect their right to freely choose how they will or will not participate in their community. This will continually ensure that community is voluntary and based on consensus rather than being forced through coercion.
It is important to remember why liberalism emerged as an ideology. With its’ inception liberalism acted as the answer to years of hierarchical, intolerant, and repressive rule. Liberalism sought to free all people from obtrusive rule. It fought to give individuals the ability to freely commit to a society constructed through their will. Liberalism fought for the legitimate polity, a polity based on consensus. A consensus that would ensure that the legitimacy of the authority would always be based on people’s will. Early liberals, like the Levellers, felt that the release of the individual would reinvigorate a level of individual social responsibility that would act and contribute to a communal environment. Like the Whigs, liberals fought for the ideal of a community of self-reliant and politically responsible individuals. Mill attempted to cement these ideas; truly believing that a community constructed on the consensus of autonomous individuals would allow people to cooperate in the pursuit of shared objectives. For the liberal, the pursuit of shared objectives would naturally create a virtuous citizenry, creating a strong sense of community. But, individuals would first have to be released and enabled to transcend the intolerant and traditional order, transcend their individuality, and finally commit voluntarily to community.
With its’ inception liberalism acted as an answer to the circumstances of intolerant and repressive rule. Communitarianism is now proposing a solution to the extremities of liberalism. In a sense, it is fighting for the same free and autonomous polity that liberalism originally desired. But, communitarians ask us to recognize the importance that has been placed on the liberal individual and how it has separated us from acting responsibly in our communities. Communitarianism emphasizes that the time has now arisen to attend to our responsibilities to the conditions and elements we all share to the community. Communitarians wish to provide a balance between the structured, hierarchical, and repressive orders and the adamant liberal demand for individual sovereignty. It attempts to encourage balance between autonomy and order without imposing its’ theoretical goals on the individual. Communitarianism attempts to provide a space where liberalism’s ultimate goals may be reached. If we continue to protect the liberal individual and pursue communitarian objectives we may be able to bridge the gap between liberal individualism and the communitarian community.