The most popular defense of altruism has come from ethicists, mostly Western ethicists, who argue that for an action to hold any justification as it pertains to altruistic commitments, such an altruistic action must stem from the agent’s internal states such as beliefs, practical reasoning, desires, or deliberative attitudes. I refer to this as the internalist justification for altruism. On this internalist approach, the mere recognition of others—which I shall refer to as an externalist justification—albeit necessary for an agent who (...) wants to perform an altruistic act, is insufficient in accounting for the agent’s altruism. This paper offers an African model of communitarian ethics (ACE) under which the externalist justification for altruism is satisfied. I argue that at its core, ACE holds a normative conception of community and personhood that accounts for a sufficient externalist justification for altruism, which proponents of internal altruism have argued is insufficient. (shrink)

The book describes a new form of communitarian politics on the African continent, that is able to take seriously both individual entitlements and communitarian obligations. This is achieved by proposing a thin version of communitarianism that realizes the organic relationship between individuals and the community.

A MAJOR THESIS OF CONTEMPORARY LIBERAL PHILOSOPHY is that its theory of justice, which incorporates strong rights to negative liberty, must be prior to and independent of a theory of the good. This priority is necessary, according to liberal theorists, in view of the requirement that any adequate theory accommodate a plurality of contending views of the good, no one of which is capable of eliciting public assent to it. Recent critics of liberalism have disputed this thesis, maintaining instead that (...) there is indeed an objective good, rather than a plurality of contending goods, which at least seriously compromises and possibly undermines the negative liberty with which liberals traditionally associated their theories. Variously called communitarians, virtue theorists, or republicans, these critics have presented an important challenge to contemporary liberalism whether of the individualist or welfare state variety. (shrink)

Communitarian thinkers have argued that liberalism devalues community in modern societies. This essay assesses the three main strands of the contemporary debate betweeen communitarianism and liberalism: (1) the communitarian critique of the liberal universalism, (2) the communitarian critique of liberal individualism, and (3) the communitarian critique of liberal politics. In each case, it is argued that the debate has moved from fairly abstract philosophical controversies to more concrete engagement with political disputes in Western as well as (...) East Asian societies. (shrink)

Communitarians have alleged a connection between according specialrights to community groupings and preserving the indigenous cultureand the social cohesion of the original community. This paperconcentrates upon special group rights associated with land tenurenow maintained by Fijian Mataqali and traditional land owninggroups in Papua New Guinea. The first section of the paper assessesand compares the social consequences of each of these systems withspecial attention to the preservation of traditional culture.However, in the case of Fiji, it is undeniable that the mataqaliland tenure (...) system has given indigenous Fijians politicaladvantages over non-indigenous Fijians, most specifically theFijian Indians. Though special land rights can possibly bejustified on the grounds of cultural preservation, their existencedoes raise this further issue of fairness. Moral considerations basedupon the territorial sovereignty of indigenous nations, rather thancommunitarian arguments, may offer a more convincing justificationof the advantages of indigenous Fijians. (shrink)

I explore the possible meanings that the notion of the common morality can have in a contemporary communitarian approach to ethics and public policy. The common morality can be defined as the conditions for shared pursuit of the good or as the values, deliberations, traditions, and common construction of the narrative of a people. The former sense sees the common morality as the universal and invariant structures of morality while the second sense is much more contingent in nature. Nevertheless, (...) the communitarian sees both aspects as integral in devising solutions to public policy problems. I outline how both meanings follow from communitarian philosophical anthropology and illustrate how they work together when addressing a question such as that of providing universal health insurance in the United States. The common morality forms the basis of building an implicit consensus that is available to and reaffirmed by the shared reflections of the citizenry. (shrink)

seek to answer questions about work-based education (WBE) that have been rarely posed, ethical ones such as: Is there reason to believe that WBE would tend to make better people (as opposed to make people better off)? That is, can we reasonably expect characteristic WBE learners to exhibit good character to a greater degree relative to non-WBE ones? On a social level, would systematic use of WBE noticeably promote justice, say, by effecting the right sort of reparation to those who (...) have suffered from colonialism or exploitation? I begin to answer these questions first by presenting an overview of traditional black African societies, noting that WBE has been the dominant mode of learning in them. Then, to show that WBE has relevance for contemporary societies, I articulate a communitarian moral theory grounded in mores that have been salient among sub-Saharan peoples, differentiating it from the Western theories more familiar to international readers and motivating them to take it seriously as relevant to moral enquiry in today’s world. Next, I apply this Afro-communitarianism to WBE, enquiring into its prospects for fostering individual character and social justice, particularly in the Global South. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a need to move yet further than has already been suggested by some from the individual to the collective as a base for public health. A communitarian approach is one way to achieve this. This has the advantage of allowing not only the community’s voice to have a say in setting the values for public health but also more formally the development of a constitution on which public health might then be built. It (...) also sees public health as a social institution which can be valued in its own right. (shrink)

I examine communitarian social theory with an eye to suggesting that the form it most often takes contains resources insufficient to satisfy the aims of those who propose it. This is shown to be the case through an analysis of the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder , the first philosophically rigorous communitarian in the West. Herder's communitarianism, like that of so many of our contemporaries, combines a description of what he believes to be man's ineradicably communal nature with (...) a normative longing for an experience of community we have supposedly lost. But unlike today's communitarians, who usually propose ways for modern man to reattain primordial happiness in communal particularism, Herder became convinced that he could only satisfy his normative longing for community by supplementing his descriptive communitarianism with a radically universalistic theology that took the form of a providential philosophy of history. I conclude that Herder's attempt to fashion a new, humanistic religion as a means to making it possible for him to "live" his communitarianism has much to teach contemporary communitarians as well as their critics. (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic (...) value. (shrink)

There is a lack of writing on the issue of the education rights of people with disabilities by authors of any theoretical persuasion. While the deficiency of theory may be explained by a variety of historical, philosophical and practical considerations, it is a deficiency which must be addressed. Otherwise, any statement of rights rings out as hollow rhetoric unsupported by sound reason and moral rectitude. This paper attempts to address this deficiency in education rights theory by postulating a communitarian (...) theory of the education rights of people with disabilities. The theory is developed from communitarian writings on the role of education in democratic society. The communitarian school, like the community within which it nests, is inclusive. Schools both reflect and model the shape of communitarian society and have primary responsibility for teaching the knowledge and virtues which will allow citizens to belong to and function within society. Communitarians emphasise responsibilities, however, as the corollary of rights and may require the individual good to yield to the community good when the hard cases arise. The article not only explains the basis of the right to an inclusive education, therefore, but also engages with the difficult issue of when such a right may not be enforceable. (shrink)

Why do we have obligations to the community to which we happen to belong? For communitarians, membership does more than provide the context for asking this question. In fact, the simple fact of membership goes some way towards justifying our obligations. According to the strong version of the communitarian thesis, membership is the fundamental consideration justifying political obligation; but for the weaker version, membership is one consideration among others and at times may be the less weighty one. John Horton's (...) theory of associative obligations can be read as moving back and forth between strong and weak communitarianism. His communitarianism is strong when he rejects value pluralism, arguing that one consideration, membership, is fundamental. However, Horton also advances claims that are compatible with not only the weak version of the communitarian thesis but also value pluralism. They suggest that, if membership is one reason among others to justify obligations, it is not fundamental as it can be defeated by other considerations. (shrink)

The recent debate between liberals and their communitarian critics has reached a false plateau, with liberals conceding more than they should. After explicating the central communitarian thesis, the four ways that thesis could be understood, and the corresponding four senses of "independence," I argue that communitarians are right that liberalism requires a view of the self as 'unencumbered,' but I defend that view as superior to the alternatives. This allows me to defend true moral impartiality and universality as (...) well as the full normative primacy of the individual. I also present three variable factors of the 'inner citadel' model of the self and argue that communitarianism paradoxically presupposes a variant of that model which causes it internal contradictions. My discussion of these issues leads to a brief list of mandates for acceptable conceptions of personhood. After listing these, I briefly indicate implications of my analysis for the broader political and ethical realm. (shrink)

"This is an interesting and provocative reading of Durkheim that sheds new light on the contemporary relevance of his work and offers new and complex material for the debate over social theory. It is well written, and the style is lively.

Communitarian critics have derided case-based reasoning for ignoring the need to arrive at a shared hierarchy of goods prior to case.

This article accounts for the failure of the Dutch Government Committee on Choices in Health Care to develop useful criteria of necessary care by which to set health care priorities and ration resources. The Government Committee has been inspired by philosophers who think that allocation problems cannot be solved without placing broad moral questions about the good life, and about the place of health and illness in our lives on the public agenda. The fruitless attempts of the Committee to formulate (...) an effective notion of essential care, based upon a community-oriented perspective of health, shows why the communitarian approach is bound to fail. Questions about essential health care cannot be answered on a macro-level. The only way to get some reasonable control over day-to-day health care allocation decisions in hospitals and institutions is by trying to understand the history, laws, habits and contingencies of what is going on between doctors and patients. Such an understanding can be gained by developing a relational and biographical view on the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

In this paper, I survey liberal and communitarian defenses of privacy, paying particular attention to defenses of privacy in the workplace. I argue that liberalism cannot explain all our of intuitions about the wrongness of workplace invasions of privacy. Communitarianism, on the other hand, is able to account for these intuitions.

Philosophers and psychologists have been vigorously examining the psychological capacities that realize our moral agency. Our purpose is to take some of this work and present its implications for moral education. To connect recent work with more long-standing debates in moral education, we frame this discussion with Helen Haste’s 1996 examination of liberal and communitarian positions on moral agency and education. We argue that contemporary research does not confirm the descriptive theory of moral agency offered by either liberal theorists (...) or communitarians, but nonetheless the prescriptive theory of liberal moral education can be vindicated. (shrink)

Amitai Etzioni has collected a sterling list of contributors who bring communitarian thinking to bear on such timely and contentious issues as abortion, ...

This article seeks to outline a viewpoint on the study of the legal, ethical and policy considerations raised by DNA tests and databases. It does not delve into the specifics involved. It outlines a way of thinking that has proven productive elsewhere1 and seems promising in dealing with DNA usages in the United States, but little more. Given that this essay is about a communitarian approach that draws on specific communitarian values, I turn next to briefly present the (...) approach here followed.Communitarianism is a social philosophy that maintains that society should articulate what is good, and asserts that such articulations are both necessary and legitimate. Communitarianism is often contrasted with classical liberalism, a philosophical position that holds that individuals should formulate their idea of good on their own. Communitarians examine the ways shared conceptions of the good are formed, transmitted, justified, and enforced. (shrink)

This quotation from the London Review of Books is an example of a turn—a different way of looking at things that involves a redefinition of the kind of thing higher education is and how it should be provided. It is a turn away from a public good perspective—the opposite, it might be said, of the kind of turn addressed in this article.

ABSTRACT It is widely supposed by both its proponents and critics that communitarianism is committed to the defence of lies of nationhood: the nation forms a surviving communal attachment in a world in which the individual is otherwise denuded of ties of community. I argue in this paper that this assumption is mistaken. It depends on a romantic image of the nation which was constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That image hides the recent historical origins of the nation (...) and its foundation in the suppression of older allegiances or their later privatisation; it continues to disguise the illusory nature of the national community. The nation is not a surviving pre‐modern community to which individuals are attached as a bulwark against the impersonality of public life in modern society. Rather the nation is one of the main vehicles for the construction of the modern unencumbered self. Communitarians need not be committed to the defence of the specifically modem forms of public irrationality and immorality that nationalism embodies. (shrink)

The standard argument in favor of the practice of voluntary physician-assisted death, by means of assisted suicide or active euthanasia, rests on liberal, individualistic grounds. It appeals to two moral considerations: (1) personal self-determination—the right to choose the circumstances and timing of death with medical assistance; and (2) individual well-being—relief of intolerable suffering in the face of terminal or incurable, severely debilitating illness. One of the strongest challenges to this argument has been advanced by Daniel Callahan. Callahan has vigorously attacked (...) the practice of physician-assisted death and the goal of legalization as deep affronts to values of community: “By assuming that the relief of suffering is a goal important enough to legitimate killing as a way of achieving it, we corrupt the idea of such relief as a social goal and duty. We cease helping to bear one another's suffering, but eliminate altogether the person who suffers. We thereby jeopardize both the future of self-determination and the kind of community that furthers its members' capacity to bear one another's suffering. Why bear what can be eliminated altogether?” In another passage Callahan remarks, “For there is a deep sense in which suicide and euthanasia are likely to represent, at least in part, a failure of the community, whether that of the intimate community of family and friends, or the larger civic community, to respond to the needs of another.”. (shrink)

This article adds to the discussion of the legitimation of stakeholding, by studying the implications of investing financial assets, years of labor, community resources, or other such scarce goods in a corporation. It attempts to respond to those who argue that it is not possible for all stakeholders to be effectively represented in corporate governance and that if they were, this would undermine the well-being of the corporation.

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates (...) between individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

A communitarian approach to bioethics adds a core value to a field that is often more concerned with considerations of individual autonomy. Some interpretations of liberalism put the needs of the patient over those of the community; authoritarian communitarianism privileges the needs of society over those of the patient. Responsive communitarianism's main starting point is that we face two conflicting core values, autonomy and the common good, and that neither should be a priori privileged and that we have principles (...) and procedure that can be used to work out this conflict but not to eliminate it. Additionally, it favours changing behaviour mainly through the creation of norms and by drawing on informal social control rather than by coercion. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is an interpretation of the social and political thought of the Solidarity movement in the light of the political philosophy of communitarianism. In the first part of the paper, the controversies between liberalism and communitarianism are characterized in order to outline the communitarian response toward the authoritarian/totalitarian challenge. In the second part, the programme of a self-governing republic created by Solidarity is interpreted in the spirit of communitarianism. I reconstruct the ideal vision of human (...) being expressed in of ficial trade union’s documents and essays of Solidarity’s advisers e.g., Stefan Kurowski and Jozef Tischner, and the efforts of the movement for telling the truth about history and its vision of Polish history. Also, I interpret the programme of Self-Governing Republic adopted during the First National Convention of Delegates of Solidarity. In these programmatic documents of Solidarity, one may find ideas characteristic both of the communitarian and liberal political philosophy. However, the liberal ones—including, primarily, the guarantee of human and citizens’ rights, and of individual liberties—were subordinated to the postulate of reconstructing the national and social community. In the course of transformation after 1989, these communitarian elements of Solidarity programme, incompatible with liberal ideological agenda, have been erased. (shrink)

All stakeholders agree publicly that innovation and governance of emerging technologies should be done responsibly. However, the international debate on who should do what to contribute to this lofty goal is nowhere near a solution. The starting point of this paper is the issue of how and for which reason to engage stakeholders in addition to governments in the international governance of nanotechnology. This article examines the mainly North-American communitarian criticism of political liberalism and the related concept of subsidiarity (...) in order to shed new light on this discussion. The central research question is: Can a communitarian-subsidiarity perspective on the roles of governments, companies and civil society actors that hold a stake in emerging technologies clarify the grounds on which each actor should be expected to contribute to responsible research and innovation at the international level? After selecting some relevant aspects of a communitarian-subsidiarity model for a dialogue society, an analytical framework is proposed. This framework is then applied to the recent international dialogue on responsible governance of nanotechnology. The outcomes of the analysis are compared to the OECD planning guide on public engagement and outreach in nanotechnology, and indicators for monitoring progress in responsible global innovation are suggested. The main contribution of the selected communitarian-subsidiarity perspective is that it offers philosophical grounds for a return of citizens to the driving seat in cooperative international responsible innovation. (shrink)

Both communitarianism and casuistry have sought to restore ethics as a practical science—the former by incorporating various traditions into a shared definition of the common good, the latter by considering the circumstances of each situation through critical reasoning. Mark G. Kuczewski analyzes the origins and methods of these two approaches and forges from them a new unified approach. This approach takes the communitarian notion of the person as its starting point but also relies upon the narrative and analogical tools (...) of case-based reasoning. He separates out the rhetoric that is incongruent with the Aristotelian aspirations of each method to show that the two are complementary, and that consensus can emerge from fragmentation. He then applies his resulting method to three major problems in bioethics: the difficulties that the issue of personal identity poses for advance directives, the role of the family in medical decision making, and the refusal of treatment because of religious beliefs. He analyzes the need to assume a communitarian notion of the person as a starting point for the application of casuistic insights. Combining theoretical, practical, and scholarly insights, this book will be of interest to philosophers, political and social scientists, and bioethicists. (shrink)

Australian writer Carmel Bird writes fiction that, while being highly individual and varied, settles within the Australian traditions of both Peter Carey’s fabulism and Thea Astley’s humane wit. As William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews state, Bird is a “witty writer with a wide but always highly original tonal range”, who “raises what is often potentially sinister or horrific to something approaching comedy. Disease, deaths and violence are staples in her fictional world, which has similarities with Barbara Hanrahan’s (...) Gothic sensuality and feminist irony, although Bird’s deadpan humour is a distinctive, determining element”. The present interview focuses on an unexplored area in Bird—Andalusia, Spain—which, paradoxically, becomes the backcloth of some of her fiction—like the recent Child of the Twilight —and a prolific source of inspiration. The following pages explore Bird’s Andalusian/Spanish visions as regards nationalistic, religious, and cultural constructions. To that end, the theoretical communitarian discussion of figures like Ernest Gellner, Ferdinand Tönnies, Benedict Anderson, Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot will prove useful in the structural framework of this interview. Bird herself clarifies that her contribution is not offered from an academic perspective; she speaks about herself as a writer largely unaffected by academic bias. However, communitarian theorisation will prove useful in clarifying her depiction of nationalistic and religious values, while, in the process, she sheds some light on the slippery concept of “Australian writing” and the construction of Spanish cultural values from the perspective of an Australian writer. This interview offers a fresh rendition marked by the humorous, spontaneous and truthful tone that characterises Bird’s fiction. A pesar de la idiosincrasia de la narrativa de Carmel Bird, su producción se enmarca dentro de las tradiciones australianas del fabulismo de Peter Carey y la sabiduría humana de Thea Astley. Como afirman William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton y Barry Andrews, Bird consigue combinar el lado más siniestro con la comedia. La enfermedad, la muerte y la violencia son centrales en su ficción conectándola con la sensualidad gótica y la ironía feminista de Barbara Hanrahan, aunque el humor socarrón es un elemento distintivo y determinante en Bird. La presente entrevista cubre un aspecto inexplorado en la autora que, paradójicamente, se convierte en el telón de fondo de algunas de sus novelas y en una prolífica fuente de inspiración. Las siguientes páginas exploran el imaginario andaluz/español en su construcción nacionalista, religiosa y cultural. Con tal fin, las discusiones comunitarias de figuras como Ernest Gellner, Ferdinand Tönnies, Benedict Anderson, Jean-Luc Nancy y Maurice Blanchot serán el eje teórico vertebrador de esta entrevista. La propia Bird aclara que su contribución no parte de una perspectiva académica puesto que habla de sí misma como una escritora que escapa del sesgo académico. Sin embargo, la teorización comunitaria demostrará ser de vital importancia para aclarar su aproximación literaria a los valores nacionalistas y religiosos, a la par que, en el proceso, la autora arroja luz sobre el escurridizo concepto de «literatura australiana» y la construcción de los valores culturales españoles desde la perspectiva australiana de esta escritora. Esta entrevista ofrece un fresco retrato de la autora marcado por el tono humorístico, espontáneo y sincero que caracteriza su ficción a la par que el marco teórico comunitario garantiza el academicismo del documento. (shrink)

Theories regarding the nature and achievement of personhood in a communitarian context appear to differ in significant respects in the writings of several contemporary African philosophers. Ifeanyi Menkiti seems to regard ethnic differences as sufficient to warrant a national accommodation of multiculturalism with respect to moralities and attendant beliefs. Kwasi Wiredu argues that there is a substantive universal moral principle that undercuts such apparent and relatively superficial diversity. Communitarianism also seems to provide a better framework for explaining how a (...) human being becomes a person than classical liberal theory as enunciated by someone like John Rawls. (shrink)

Studies of non-standard, project-based forms of work prevalent in the creative industries have typically theorized the relational dynamics of work as a competitive process of social capital accumulation involving an individualistic, self-enterprising, zero-sum, and winner-takes-all struggle for favourable social network-positioning. Problematizing this prevailing conceptualization, our empirical case study draws on fifty in-depth interviews and two focus groups with creative workers in Ghana to show how relations of mutual aid, including elaborate efforts to live harmoniously with others, are intricately intertwined with (...) economic practices of getting by and getting ahead. Our analysis abductively mobilizes insights from Afro-communitarian ethics to theorize the mutual aid we observed as a complex socio-economic practice of relational resource redistribution contingent on degrees of social proximity. In applying “a theory from the South” to foreground the role of moral obligations, social harmony, and hands-on practices of mutual aid in non-standard forms of work, we contribute a “decolonial critique” of relationality of relevance to scholars of creative work and business ethicists. (shrink)

The thirteen essays in this volume approach the liberal-communitarian debate from a variety of perspectives. Some discuss disagreements between liberals and communitarians over the nature of moral agency and the proper functions of government. Some examine alternative ways of conceiving liberalism or community, or challenge widely held beliefs about the harmful effects of capitalism on community, or about the value of traditional practices as guides to judicial reasoning. Other essays seek to determine whether it makes sense to think of (...) societies as having and pursuing a common good, or whether culturally diverse societies can ever hope to achieve social unity. Still others examine the role of states in promoting citizens' civic education and their participation in the voluntary associations and institutions of civil society. (shrink)

A communitarian approach to bioethics adds a core value to a field that is often more concerned with considerations of individual autonomy. Some interpretations of liberalism put the needs of the patient over those of the community; authoritarian communitarianism privileges the needs of society over those of the patient. Responsive communitarianism’s main starting point is that we face two conflicting core values, autonomy and the common good, and that neither should be a priori privileged, and that we have principles (...) and procedures that can be used to work out this conflict but not to eliminate it. This discussion uses the debate in the US over funding for entitlements as a case study to apply the values of communitarian bioethics. (shrink)