Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism

Abstract

As liberal political regimes have been the dominant form of political organization in the West, so liberalism has prevailed in Anglo-American political philosophy. In the past few years, however, a vigorous challenge to liberal political philosophy-and by implication to the political institutions it attempts to legitimize-has arisen under the banner of "communitarianism." The communitarian challenge achieves its most powerful expression in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel.' My task here is to articulate some of the most central elements of the communitarian critique of liberalism and then to assess their merits by seeing whether liberalism has the resources to respond to them effectively. There are perhaps almost as many communitarian positions as there are communitarian writers. Nevertheless, some common threads run through most of the important communitarian works.2 The fundamental communitarian criticisms seem to be these: i) Liberalism devalues, neglects, and/or undermines community, and community is a fundamental and irreplaceable ingredient in the good life for human beings. ii) Liberalism undervalues political life-viewing political association as a merely instrumental good, it is blind to the fundamental importance of full participation in political community for the good life for human beings.