Communitarianism

Communitarianism is a political philosophy which unites community values with the democratic values of personal freedom and equality; the idea behind it is to form a democratic community (cf. Daly xiii). It can only develop within a liberal culture in which community values decline, Communitarianism aims at making the welfare of the community topic of political discourse (cf. ibid.), thereby stopping the decline of “a distinctive quality of social relationship that members of a community form with one another” (ibid. xv).

One point of criticism is that liberalism does not focus on “the importance of community for personal identity, moral and political thinking, and judgements about the well-being in our contemporary world” (Bell 4). Furthermore it sees the “centring on the self and away from communities” as the reason for “unshackled greed, rootlessness, alienation from the political process, rises in the rate of divorce and [many] other [similar] phenomena” (ibid. 1). Instead of focusing on such values as individual interests, autonomy and neutrality, Communitarianism is concerned with the common good, solidarity and social responsibility (cf. Daly xvii).

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Sources

Bell, Daniel. Communitarianism and its Critics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

Daly, Mark (Ed.). Communitarianism. A New Public Ethics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.