Reason and Community

Abstract

The political and social ideal of the Enlightenment can be usefully characterized in terms of the question of human rights. Against the dictates of traditional sources of authority, held to be grounded in superstition and untenable metaphysical doctrines, a person's freedom to make his or her own life choices was put forward as an inalienable right. Despite the unprecedented successes of this concep tion of society in territorial expansion since the ending of the Cold War, its theoretical foundations have come under increasing philosophical attack. Under the broad umbrella of Communitarianism, a number of important philosophers have challenged the viability of a theory based on individual rights.1 The general argument at the strictly political or social level is that individual rights are in some fashion fundamentally dependent on specific historical conditions and that the idea of a set of rights that transcends such conditions is a myth. Furthermore, such an emphasis destroys the very foundations of a strong, vibrant, and happy society. It has also been claimed that liberal political theories face a similar problem concerning the nature of reason and rational choice. The enlightenment claim for the political rights and freedoms of the individual was in great part grounded in a similar claim about the nature of reason and truth. For example, Descartes's understanding of the appropriate use of reason reinforces the notion that the individual is the final authority on questions of truth. It is the individual who can strip away the merely given, fallible, and historical character of material existence