A Study Of Communitarian Thought Of Community

Community is one of the theoretical hotspots in the western humanistic and social scientific thought circle in recent years which has also formed many academic schools so far.Among them,Liberalism is well-deserved as the theoretical hegemony.As the basic philosophy of the western modern society,contemporary Liberalism represented by John Rawls leads the western society to break out in three major crisis — the spread of extreme individualism,the deficiency of morality and the weakening of state functions — which stimulates three representative figures of Communitarianism — Michael Sandel,Alasdair Macintyre,Charles Taylor — to carry out comprehensive and profound criticism of it in three aspects of philosophy,ethics and politics.It could be said that the occurrence and development of Communitarianism reflects the limitations and blind spots inherent in the theory of Liberalism.The criticism of the philosophical basis of contemporary Liberalism from Sandel is very sharp.In his view,Rawls' Liberalism has serious problems in metaphysics,epistemology and theoretical logic.Sandel considers that moral agency should be"constituted self ' who carries out communicative practice,accepts and approves the aims of community,but Rawls' self is transcendental as well as antecedently individuated subject from ontology.Sandel criticizes Rawls' deontological Liberalism which believes the priority of the right over the good is arbitrary,because Sandel believes that principles of justice depend on their justification on the moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve.From the history of America,Sandel demonstrates that Americans' understanding of liberty has changed from collective direction to individual direction which leads to procedural republic named by him.Sandel thinks that a good democratic regime needs public participation based on individual citizens' trust on nation and community.Therefore,the public life can be revived and the public welfare politics can be realized.To achieve these goals,the community must be constructive,while the state must never be neutral.Thus,the bond of citizenship between individual and collective can be formed and stabilized.Macintyre's Communitarianism is based on Aristotelianism criticizes the liberal moral philosophy on subjective,axiological and normative theory.He believes that,first of all,the subjective theory of liberal moral philosophy which does not define itself with the community but the individual leads to the individualization of the moral subject.Secondly,liberal moral philosophy looks good as personal preferences and accepts the different views of good from different individuals which makes good itself be privatized and then leads to three serious consequences of axiology: the separation of moral rules and good,the neutrality of the state and the separation of public and private domains.Finally,in the field of normative theory,the mistake of liberal moral philosophy lies in the marginalization of virtue.And then Mc Intyre clarifies the characteristics of his ideal virtue community which is different from modern country and family and bears many classical features.Firstly,it is small,endemic and self-contained;secondly,it is similar to a kind of religious group,which takes religious emotion among the members of it as its link;thirdly,it takes political participation in the public life in republicanism as the standard and basic political attribution with the target to equally pursue community good;in the end,it establishes a public forum for debate through civic education to cultivate consciousness of public morality for citizens and respect for tradition,therefore,the republican ideals and political attributes of the virtue community could be continued.Taylor's version of communitarianism emphasizes the criticism of the political ideas and institutional arrangements of liberalism.Taylor believes that the liberal neutralism exacerbate the internal exclusion of democracy and leads to a political identity crisis expressed as political fragmentation.Taylor considers that as a self-explanatory existence,man can be strongly evaluated.Therefore,in the face of cultural pluralism,the problem of "identity" and "recognition" is bound to arise.Taylor points out that individual identity in the private sphere comes in fact from the recognition of the others,so that "the politics of recognition" can become the “third path” out of the way of the universalistic politics of dignity and the particularized politics of difference which is inseparable with modern social imagination.According to Taylor's view,the essential approach to clear up the malaises about modernity is to erect civil society which 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.There are two important mechanism of adjustment: market economy and public sphere,within which the plural discussions by plural mediums come to public opinion,becoming gradually but irresistibly a principle of legitimacy.In this civil society,religion is still important.Taylor's view of religion in secular times triangulates among exclusive humanism,immanent counter-Enlightment and a capacious theism.In the religion,people can find a comfortable resting place for souls and strive for a new source for political identity.The theoretical core of the liberal thought of community is that the right should be prior to the good,supported by the principle of individualism and universalism.Ccommunitarianists criticize both the two.In the view of Communitarianists,the concept of right,justice and common good must be understood historically and concretely,but not abstractly.They believe that the right depends on good,and the good depends on the community,so their theoretical logic of the thought of community is the community-the common good-the right.Communitarianists' critique of the liberal thought of community is profound and forceful,which has prompted liberalism to revise its theory that promots the development of the western theory of community.However,Communitarian thought of community also has its weakness,the fuzziness of its theoretical concepts weaken its constructional functions and makes it be Utopian which makes it just have the ablitity to amend and supplement but no power to replace Liberalism completely or become the mainstream and programme of action of the related western theories.Nevertheless,to the Chinese people who are constructing a harmonious civil society,the thought of community from communitarianism could still provide important theoretical enlightenment.