Are Liberals committed to views which communitarians reject?

If so, whose side are

you on?

Approach of essay must be to investigate the core tenets and principles of Liberalism and
Communitarianism in order to establish the extent to which they are distinct, and the areas in
which they agree. At this point, one will be able to make a judgement regarding whether
Liberals are committed to views rejected by Communitarianism. In the process of
comparison, I shall seek to address the extent to which some differences are merely cosmetic,
whilst others are more fundamental. In conclusion, I shall state the side of the argument upon
which I fall, and how clear or straightforward the decision was. It is important to note,
however, that Liberalism and Communitarianism are not clear cut opposing forces, each of
them are constituted by a series of individual theorists, each holding slightly different views.
More importantly, Communitarianism is widely noted to contain a desperate collection of
approaches and ideas, with many thinkers rejecting the label. For example, Walzer is
concerned with questions of social justice and distribution whereas Sandel and Taylor
consider the issue of subject formation and ethics. Nonetheless there is some thematic
coherence in the communitarian response to Liberalism. The most straight forward approach
for this essay would be to focus on the traditional objections Communitarian thinkers have
made to Liberalism, and then through those objections, establishing the extent to which they
have arisen over fundamental differences or are mistaken. The four main objections which
shall be investigated are as follows: 1. That Liberalism is commitment to a ‘antecedently
individuated’1notion of personhood, which is incoherent; 2. That Liberalism underestimates
the importance of communal life to identity and the integrity of the Individual; 3 Liberalism’s
commitment to the Neutral state is either a. not as neutral as it claims between competing
conceptions of the good life, or is b. misplaced.

The most fundamental clash between Communitarians and Liberalism concerns competing
conceptions of the person. The four main Communitarian thinkers’ conceptions are united
around a conception of human beings as integrally related to the communities of culture and
language that they create, maintain and inhabit. Taylor’s fundamental view is that human
beings are self-interpreting animals in linguistic communities, and shares many similarities to
the neo-Aristotelian view that human beings can only make sense of themselves as persons
and moral agents through the concepts and standards left to them by practices and traditions
espoused by MacIntyre. Despite Walzer’s preoccupation with social justice and distribution,
his views depend upon a view that human beings are essentially culture producing and
culture-inhabiting creatures. Sandel’s commitment to constitutive attachments highlights the
degree to which he sees the identity of human beings as being bound up with their
inhabitation of and identification with the smaller and larger communities of which they are
members. This conception places itself as diametrically opposed to the supposed Liberal view
that selves are antecedently individuated. If this were to be the case, then the possibility of
developing constitutive attachments to the community is excluded and the idea that the
maintenance, creation and inhabitance of communal framework might be integral to
personhood, cannot be acknowledged.

The core thesis of liberalism, that is the primacy of justice, does imply a certain conception of
the self, whose essential nature consists in the capacity to make choices . The relation
between this capacity and the aims chosen is purely accidental; the aims chosen are not
constituent parts of the self. Sandel calls this the unencumbered self, and argues that it is a
position which is fundamentally flawed. Sandel's criticisms of liberalism are echoed by other
communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. The view of the self in
question is that it consists solely in the capacity to make choices. The aims and ends which
1 Sandel, Liberalism and the limits of Justice.
are the result of the choices, however, do not constitute an integral part of the self. For if we
take them as parts of the self, then the self will undergo change whenever they change.
Furthermore, the self is detached from the conditions in which it is situated, so that it is
ahistorical and asocial . In short, the Rawlsian self is a radically disembodied entity which is
independent of both history and society. How can a radically disembodied self be related to
its aims and ends? The answer is, by possessing. The appropriate way to understand the
relation between the self and its aims is that it has those aims, but it will always be wrong to
identify the self with its aims. Rawls describes this self vividly when he says, "the self is prior
to the ends which are affirmed by it, even a dominant end must be chosen from among
numerous possibilities.2" If the self is always detached from its ends, then no matter how
strongly one feels about them, they will never constitute an integral part of the self's identity.
At most, the self can possess them, and this relation of possession between the self and its
ends will create two difficulties . First, no matter how whole-heartedly one embraces a cause,
he is nevertheless distanced from it because there exists an unbridgeable gap between the self
and its cause. If this indeed characterizes the relationship between a person and his
commitment, then it becomes dubious whether the commitment is genuine. I think, in this
case, it is more appropriate to say that he has made no commitment at all because he is not
capable of doing so. But we will describe a person who is not capable of making commitment
as a person without depth. The radically disembodied self is a self which has no depth.
Furthermore, the self consists solely in its capacity to choose, but on what basis does it make
choices? The self is nothing but a capacity, it is unable to supply any criterion as to judge
what decision it has to make; therefore, any choice it makes will be arbitrary . The
consequences of this notion of independence is that only certain forms of community can
develop. It allows voluntary associations with others, and thus protects community in the co-
operative sense. What is denied, however, to the unencumbered self is the possibility of
membership in any community bound by moral ties antecedent to choice, he cannot belong to
any community where the self itself could be at stake, as such a constitutive community
would engage the identity as well as the interests of the participants, and thus implicate its
members in a citizenship more thoroughgoing than the unencumbered self can know.
Sandel’s view being that our lives go better not by having the conditions needed to select and
revise our projects, but by having the conditions needed to come to an awareness of these
shared constitutive ends. A politics of the common good, by expressing these shared
constitutive ends, enables us to come to know a good in common, that we cannot know alone3
. Sandel believes that if the self is prior to its ends, wthen when introspecting we should be
able to see through our particular ends to the unencumbered self, but we do not note
ourselves as being unencumbered - rawls thin notion seems at odds with the more familiar
notion of ouirselves as being thick with particular traits4. Sandel argues that our deepest self-
perceptions always include some motivations, which shows that some ends are constitutive of
the self.

This form of existence can easily lead to the existentialist view that we should wake up each
mronign and decide anew what sort of person we should be. This is perverse, because a
valuable life is a life filled with commitments and relationshsips which give our life depth
and character. What makes things commitments is precisely that they are not the sort of thing
that we question every day. Freedom of choice in and of itself is not intrinsically valuable –
those who exercise their capacity for choice more often are not seen to be more free.
Furthermore, saying that freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable suggess that the value we
seek in our actions is freedom, not the value internal to the activity itself. This presents a
false view of our motivatons. If we are to understand the value p0eople see in their projects
2 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, page 560
3 Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pg 183
4 Ibid pg 100
we have to look at the ends which are internal to them -Whilst freedom of choice is central to
a valuable life, it is not the value which is centrally pursued in such a life5. The main debate,
however, concerns how these values come about. Communitarians p- such as Taylor- argue
that communal values act as authoritative horizons which set goals for us6. Liberals,
however, argue not that we do not derive values from our communities, but that we have an
ability to detatch ourselves from any particular social practice. No particular practice has
authority that is beyond individual judgement and possible rejection The individual should
acquire tasks through freely made personal judgements about the cultural structure, the
matrix of udnerstandinds and laternatives passed down by previous generations, which offer
us the possibilitites we can either affidm or reject – nothing being set or authoritative before
our judgement of its value. The main distinction between Liberalism and Communitarianism
in this regard, is that Communitarians believe that the aikms and tasks of individuals are set
by their communities, some of which individuals are unable to opt out of. Not all obligations
and relations are voluntary. Furthermore, the social conditioning which takes place, ensures
that much habitual is set by the community and is never second guessed – here there is no
real choice. Liberals, such as Kymlicka, believe that whilst the individual self may be
influenced by the community in which they life, and may influence the choices made , no
choice is forced upon them – the self is authoritative, and can reject any course of action, a
judgement being made on the value of each action prior to it being taken. Sandel himself,
however, says that the boundaries of the self, although constituted by its ends, are flexible
and can be redrawn, incorporating new ends and excluding others. The subject after al, can
make choices about its identity. This admission here weakens Sandel’s point considerably,
for as long as Sandel admits that the person can re-examine her ends, then he as failed to
justify communitarian politics, he has failed to show why individuals should not be given the
conditions appropriate to re-examining of their ends, as the best possible life. The strong
claim he makes that self-discovery replaces judgement is implausible and the weak claim,
which allows a self constituted by its ends to be nonetheless reconstitutes, fails to truly
distinguish him form liberal views.

The most fundamental question is whether individuals can reject constituted ends entirely or
whether they can only interpret the meaning of these constitutive attachements. On one
reading of Communitarianism it is not possible to reject such attachements. On such a view
we neither choose nor rejct these attachements, rather we find ourselves in them, Our goals
come not by choice by by self discovery. The question of the good in my life can only be a
question of how best to interpret their meaning. It makes no sense to say that they have no
value for me, for in this view, there is no prior self to these constitutive attachements. It is
difficult to see how many Communitarians truly endorse this view. However, once we agree
that individuals are capable of questioning and rejecting the value of the communities way of
life, then the attempt to discourage such questioning through a ‘politics’ of the common good
seems an un-justified restriction on people’s self determination. The Liberal response, is
therefore, that selves are constituted by their ends and people take their ends from their social
context, but that persons have a capacity to revise their ends, e.g., when one conflicts with
another. It is false to see people as necessarily ‘encumbered’ with specific ends. State
neutrality is valuable in this sense because it gives people freedom to revise their ends based
on their own judgements of what their ends should be.

A second major Communitarian criticism of Liberalism is the supposed underestimation of

the importance of communal life to the identity of the individual. To understand human
society as characterized by the circumstances of justice is the same as to view society as a
cooperative venture among mutually disinterested individuals . The reason for them to
5 Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, an Introduction, pg 223.
6 Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society, pg 157-59
cooperate is merely to advance their own interests . Of course, under certain conditions, their
interests may overlap, and this is the main basis for cooperation . But the major feature of the
circumstances of justice has to be the separateness and even the conflict of interests . The
possible coincidence of interest is just a happy accident. The plurality and separateness are
the essential aspects of this kind of society which only has instrumental value for its members
. To conceive society as having only instrumental value implies that individuals are endowed
with their own aims and interests prior to their entering the society . This picture of the self
and its relation to the society squares well with Rawls' contractarian view. In this view,
society is the result of an agreement among pre-existing individuals whose individual
identities are formed before they enter society . And society does not in any way form or alter
their identities. As Mulhall and Swift point out, what this view of the self amounts to is that
"metaphysically speaking, we are distinct individuals first and only later do we form
relationships with others and engaged in cooperative activity; so those relationship cannot be
integral to our constitution as selves7". From the above analysis, we may draw the following
conclusion: To consider the society as characterized by the circumstances of justice will lead
us to the view that individual exists prior to the society, and that individual identity is formed
prior to one's entering into the society . This is what individualism asserts when we
understand it as "the doctrine that the fundamental aims and interests of individuals are
determined independently from particular social forms; society and the state are regarded as
institutional arrangements that answer to these antecedent individual ends and purposes, as
specified by a fixed and invariant human psychology"8.

This criticism of Liberalism focuses on the supposed undervaluation of shared values and the
importance of a common identity. That conceptions of good that are communal in content,
recognising that social bonds are intrinsically valuable, are downgraded. However,
Liberalism provides the framework in which citizens can enageg with one another, even if it
were ture that Liberal individualism conceived political activity and the state in ourely
instrumental terms, it would still leave people plenty of room to pursue communal values, in
their private spheres. Liberals do not believe that the state should prevent people from living
a religious life, a life in an artistic commune, or one in which extended families play a crucial
role. Nor does it deny that any of these ar evaluable ways to live alife. Liberalism is
concerned with ensuring citizens are free to live lives they believe in. These lives may be
communal in content. Furthermore, it is not necessary for Liberals to conceive political
activity or the state in purely individualistic instrumental terms, a liberal state itself may be
thought to represent a particular understanding of political community. Citizens of a liberal
state may share a common aim – the aim of creating and sustaining a set of social and
political institutions that treat citizens justly. Liberal justice in and of itself can constitute a
common good, it is a common good when it is shared by citizens and pursued by them
together. The liberal state thus can become a community of communities, an overarching
community founded upon respect for the individual, which allows its citizens to engage in
communal activity in pursuit of the more parituclar ends that they share with others.
Liberalks permit individuals to poursue communal conceptions of the good within the
framework of justice provided by the state. People are, however, expected to be sufficiently
constituted by their identity as citizen that, when the demands of that identity cinflict with the
demands of their other identities, the role of citizen takes priority. In this sense, Liberals do
recognise the importance of a common, shared identity.

The final criticism of Communitarians is that the Liberal state is not as neutral as it is made
out to be. The basic doctrine of liberalism is the well-known neutrality thesis. According to
this thesis, society, being a joint venture undertaken by persons each with his own aims, ends,
7 Mulhall and swift, Liberals and Communitarians, pg 49
8 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, pg 547
and conceptions of the good, is best organized when it is governed by principles which do not
presuppose any conception of the good . The justification of the principles does not lie in
their capability to maximize social welfare, but in their rightness which is a moral category
prior to and independent of the good. This is tantamount to saying that the principles of
justice enjoy a privileged status vis-a-vis conceptions of the good. It can easily be seen how
the neutrality thesis and pluralism are closely connected . Since there is no objective criterion
for judging which conception of the good is correct, the most impartial way to arrange society
is to presuppose none of them. But if the concept of the good is unavailable in organizing
society, then what else can take its place? The liberals think that the concept of right will do
the job. The primacy of justice is an instance of the more general thesis that the right is prior
to the good. The primacy of justice has two meanings. First, morally, justice is inestimably
more valuable than other political and moral ideals . When there is a conflict between justice
and other values, the former will always take precedence ; and second, epistemologically,
justice is derived independently of the concept of the good. If justice is not prior to the
concept of the good in the moral sense, and if unjust actions or institutions can promote social
welfare more effectively, we have no reason not to accept them. And if justice is not prior to
the good epistemologically, then we have to ground justice on certain conceptions of the
good (since some conceptions of the good are incompatible with others, we can't ground
justice on all of them), and this leads to the coercive imposition of certain conceptions of the
good on holders of other conceptions. In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls argues that
citizens have a moral duty (‘duty of civility’) to base public justification of laws and policies
on a ‘political’ conception of justice rather than on a ‘comprehensive’ ethical doctrine. He
advocates the division of morality – civic and comprehensive. The two basic ideas behind the
case for state neutrality:
(1) In a democracy, the relationship between citizens - should be one of reasoned
compliance, in which the citizen can accept the laws that she is required to obey
because she can appreciate the rationale for them. The liberal principle of legitimacy
(Rawlsian): The state should make its laws on the basis of reasons that all reasonable
citizens can accept
(2) It is very difficult to satisfy this requirement if we allow laws to be made on the basis
of arguments that are internal to specific religious traditions, because people
reasonably disagree about the validity of religious premises (due to the ‘burdens of
judgment’). Instead, justification should appeal to notions of justice which can
command an ‘overlapping consensus’ amongst reasonable citizens.

To what extent may a liberal state seek to shape the virtue or character of its citizens? Some
philosophers have argued that the commitment to state neutrality precludes the liberal state
from being able to take an active interest in the virtue or character of its citizens. According
to Sandel liberalism is committed, via its doctrine of neutrality, to the ideal of ‘procedural
republic’, under which the role of the state is simply to define and enforce individual rights
and adopt a totally laissez-faire attitude to the ways of life and kinds of character that emerge.
But this actually makes liberalism flawed as a public philosophy for a democratic society, for
democratic societies function well, for the public benefit, only if citizens do have certain
virtues. The state must have some form of formative role on the values of its citizens if it is
to become self sustainable – the issues raised by the procedural republic9. This ‘republican’
objection to state neutrality is that Liberalism is impoverished as a political theory for a
democratic society because its commitment to state neutrality prevents the liberal state from
taking action to promote the virtues/character supportive of citizenship in a democratic state
(including the sentiment of patriotism). Communitarianism, through its value of the
community, and belief in the positive role of a state in promoting the good life, will be able to
address this deficit, by ensuring that through participation citizens are provided with the
9 Communitsarianism and Individualism, pg 12-29
necessarily political capital to ensure democratic continuity. The objection, however, rests on
a failure to properly distinguish the ideas of neutrality of effect/impact and neutrality of
justification. State promotion of patriotism, or other civic virtues, might well be non-neutral
in effect/impact. But whether it violates neutrality of justification depends on the rationale for
the policy of promotion. Imagine that the state makes the following kind of argument for the
policy: ‘We take no view of whether a patriotic life is better in and of itself than an
unpatriotic life. But we have good empirical evidence which shows that societies which have
a high degree of patriotism do better at achieving social justice than societies which have
little or no patriotism. For the sake of justice, therefore, we have decided to promote
patriotism. We do not promote patriotism because we think it is inherently good, but because
we think it is instrumental to social justice.’ This type of argument is compatible with
neutrality of justification as defined above. The extent to which the Liberal state can be non-
neutral in terms of impact and effect, but the rationale for its actions must not be based on a
conception of the good life, but on empirical facts. In this sense, the Liberal neutral state is
free to promote self sustaining values, which have empirically be proven to assist in
democratic continuity. Liberals who support state neutrality certainly oppose the state acting
to promote the good life. But this does not mean they must oppose any and all state action to
shape citizen character. They can support such action if the purpose is to promote the virtues
of good (liberal) citizenship - such as toleration, mutual respect, maybe solidarity with the
vulnerable, perhaps patriotism - which, in turn, help to promote justice.

An individualist society may at first seem a contradiction in terms – they are mutually
restrictive. It does, however, imply that both concepts, that of the individual and the society
must be compromised in order to coexist. The communitarian critique of Rawlsian liberalism
did a great service by focusing attention on dimensions of moral and political life that recent
academic liberal theory had neglected. This was a genuine achievement. "Rights talk" is now
balanced by attention to responsibility and duty; leading liberal thinkers find themselves
preoccupied with the content of character; and concern for the dignity and well-being of
individuals has been complemented by consideration of the role that communities play in
forming individuals who are capable not only of caring for themselves and cooperating for
mutual advantage, but also of developing enduring friendships, sustaining marriages, and
rearing children. Few communitarian critics are eager to say farewell to fundamental liberal
principles. And liberal theorists have increasingly come to recognize that the practice of
limited constitutional government, the protection of basic individual rights, and the
promotion of virtues such as toleration depend in part on citizens who are experienced in the
art of association. The communitarian critique of liberalism at its best is a "communitarian
correction" of liberalism, that is, a form of criticism generated by and especially pertinent
within a liberal framework. The serious question is how well contemporary liberalism can be
taught to care for what in the recent past it has been inclined to neglect--the responsibilities of
citizenship, the cultivation of moral virtue, and the art of civic association--but which
political theory and historical experience suggest it ignores at its peril. This debate has
suggested that whilst there appears to be initial differences in the doctrines, when debated and
compared, differences melt and similarities emerge. My sympathies lie with the Liberal side,
in the conception of an individual who is formed by his interactions with his society, but with
the ability to reject and to judge traditions and identities, not merely embarking on a process
of ‘self discovery’ with all values set at conception. Identity is a complex and dynamic
process, but one in which individual choice plays a vital role. Community is of vitgal
importance, but its value does not override that of the individual, and the common good
cannot be used an an excuse to sacrifice the rights of the individual. The Liberal state as a
community of communities will ensure that individuals have the choice to live in a
community of their choice, with freedom protected. Finally, the neutral liberal state, is best
suited to protect and promote individual choice and freedom.