In this paper, the charateristics of contemporary commanitarianism are investigated. Commanitarianism is a trend of thought which admits the constitutive value of community and systematizes the theory justifying it. This communitarianism, represented ...
In this paper, the charateristics of contemporary commanitarianism are investigated. Commanitarianism is a trend of thought which admits the constitutive value of community and systematizes the theory justifying it. This communitarianism, represented by the writers such as Michael Sandel. Alasdair Maclntyre and Charles Taylor, describes community as a body of persons maintaining their identity through the shared self0understanding.
Communitarians have systematized their theory in the process of the critique of liberal individualism connected with the moral anarchy of contemporary society and tried to revitalize the civic republican tradition in the West. They claim that 'the right of man' should be substituted by 'the common good'. And they emphasize the values of civic virtue, commumity and public participation. But their theory does not yet seem to possess the clarity as an idea because it does not explicitly explain the scale of commanity and the relation between community and politics.
In the metaphysical·metaethical aspects, the communitarian view that liberalism's emphasis on the rights of man has become one of the main elements promoting the moral disorder, seems to be persuasive. However, we can find that the communitarian refutation about the theory of the rights of man itself is insufficent. And in the descriptive aspects. communitarians overemphasize the social and cultural influence on the identity of the individuals.
Although the communitarian critique of the moral limits of liberalim is partly acknowledged, the adpotion of communitarian alternatives has to be accessed cautiously. For communitarians, it is necessary to especially develop the theories which can remove the authoritative and totalitarian possibility derived from the collective disposition of communitanianism.