Communitarianism

The claim

Persons are constituted by attachments they did not choose — family, language, community, tradition. A theory of justice built on a self stripped of all that is describing nobody.

What it held

The target is Rawls, and specifically the original position — deciding principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance that hides your talents, class and conception of the good. Sandel's objection is that a self capable of standing back from all its attachments and choosing among them is not a thicker or thinner version of a person; it is not a person.

MacIntyre's argument is historical and more radical. After Virtue claims that modern moral language consists of fragments of older traditions, torn from the contexts that made them intelligible — which is why moral arguments are interminable, with each side invoking premises the other has no reason to accept. His remedy is a return to a tradition-based account of the virtues, with practices, narrative and community supplying what rules cannot.

Taylor works on the self, arguing that identity requires a horizon of significance you did not invent, and that the modern ideal of authenticity collapses without one.

Walzer's version is the most political: justice is not one principle but different distributive standards proper to different goods, worked out within a community's shared understandings.

How it argued

Immanent critique of liberal theory's assumptions, plus historical argument about how modern moral vocabulary was formed.

What it was arguing against

Rawlsian liberalism, the unencumbered self, and the assumption that principles of justice can be derived independently of any conception of the good.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether it is a conservative position. Its proponents mostly deny it, and MacIntyre, Taylor and Walzer are on the left by most measures. Whether tradition-based ethics can criticise its own tradition.

Common misconceptions

That it advocates conformity or majority rule. The argument is about where values come from, not about who should enforce them, and most of these writers are explicit that traditions must be internally contestable.

How it began

The reaction to A Theory of Justice, which reorganised political philosophy in 1971 and provoked the most serious objections within a decade.

What became of it

Living, though most of the participants disliked the label. Its arguments are now absorbed into political theory rather than held as a school.

Lasting influence

Virtue ethics' revival. Debates about multiculturalism and recognition. Political rhetoric on both left and right, usually without the philosophy.

Why it still matters

The question of whether liberal neutrality is possible or coherent is central to current arguments about identity, religion and the state.

Put another way

A person asked to choose their values from nowhere, who finds they are already standing somewhere.

Where to start

After Virtue, chapters 1 to 3. The diagnosis of why moral arguments never end is worth the price alone.

The surprising bit

MacIntyre had been a Marxist, became a Thomist, and describes After Virtue as the work of a man who had concluded that both the Enlightenment and its Marxist heirs had failed for the same reason.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Classical Utilitarianism

Opposed by

Objectivism, Classical Utilitarianism

Parallel to

Ubuntu Philosophy

The verdict

The most effective critique of liberal political philosophy, made largely by people who consider themselves liberals.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy