Democratic Politics And Its Recognition Of The Foundation

The dispute between communitarianism and liberalism has been a long while.As a protagonist of communitarianism,Taylor's ideas and thoughts are expatiated on during criticizing the liberalism.In Taylor's view,to make the communitarianism's criticism more explicit and powerful,one must clarify it and fix on the focus of criticism.The key of the clarifying is to discriminate the difference between ontological issues and advocacy issues,and then come to see that the essential difference between communitarianism and liberalism is the difference between holism and atomism.Taylor explains his claim on holism and criticizes the liberalism's atomism through three angles of view,viz.self and language community, self and moral space,self and social imaginaries.First,everyone can only be a self in certain language community and can only make self-interpretation by certain language.Every individual can't be his/her own self,because he/she must be in webs of interlocution.Second,moral space is another inescapable framework for a self,in which the strong evaluation or the qualitative distinctions offer the rules for choosing individual's action.Third,a self also is in certain social imaginaries,which are the common understanding that gives sense to certain people's practices and makes them possible.The criticism on liberalism inevitably involves criticizing the individualism of liberalism.Taylor affirms there are two individualism with quite different sense, namely,expressive individualism and atomic individualism.The criterion for differentiating them is the ethics of authenticity,which had grown during the coming of west modernity.The expressive individualism displays the ethics of authenticity, while the atomic individualism deserts the core of it.The narrowing and flattening of individual's life,the loss of meaning and the fading of moral horizons which are made by the atomic individualism,the eclipse of ends which is induced by the rampant instrumental reason,and the loss of liberty which is brought about by reason of the foregoing effect,constitute the three important malaises about west modernity. The existence of malaises,especially the loss of liberty,challenges the legitimacy of the west democracies.According to Taylor's view,the essential approach to clear up the malaises about modernity is to erect civil society.Taylor believes that the coming of modern civil society relies on the coming of the vision of modern moral order.The modern civil society should be convergence of the L-stream derived from Locke and the M-stream derived from Montesquieu and should be such a civil society which combines individual liberty with political liberty and combines negative liberty with positive liberty.There are two important mechanism of adjustment.One of them is market economy,where people come to reciprocal agreements by negotiation;the other is the public sphere,which is metatopical,radical secular,extrapolitical and with normative status,within which the plural discussions by plural mediums come to public opinion, becoming gradually but irresistibly a principle of legitimacy.Taylor confirms that the legitimate crisis of west modern democratic politics is not only brought about by the malaises about west modernity,but also is related with the actualization of the temptation to exclusion,inherent in the political identity.The democratic politics need political identity with strong cohesion,without which the inclusion would fade away.But in west modern democracy,the strong cohesion and the highly mutual trust which it needs are bringing about the breakage of the principle of inclusion,and then are resulting in the societal exclusion realistically in political practice,which leads to the interpretative predicament in the democratic theories and the wreck of realistic identity.To make west democracy break away from the predicament should be to get rid of the exclusion.The procedural liberalism doesn't cast the democratic exclusion off but motivate it to expand and extend.In the view of Taylor,the crucial approach of casting off the democratic exclusion is to reinvent political identity.In the age of multiculture,the hinge of reinventing is the equal recognition among plural cultures in democratic states.The equal recognition isn't only localized within them,but also is a principle of multicultural coexistence.Through the intercourse based on the equal recognition, certain groups with different identity reinvent the political identity,which meets the patriotism that democracy needs.The patriotism must accord with the republican thesis,namely,the patriotism must relate with liberty.In modern democratic society, the genuine citizen dignity is to participate in self-rule.To participate in self-rule itself is one common good and conduces to fostering and improving gradually citizen virtues.By studying Taylor's political philosophy systematically,we can understand more deeply that the communitarianism's criticism and liberalism's anti- criticism is in the course of mutually drawing on the other side's opinions and disputing endlessly. The position based on communitarianism not only doesn't cast off the liberalism's plight,but also doesn't break away from its own predicament.Only Marxism,relying on the historical methodology based on materialism can transcend the methodological predicament in which communitarianism and liberalism are immersed.