Review: Toward an I & We Paradigm Reviewed Work(s): After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. by Alasdair MacIntyre; Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. by Michael J. Sandel; Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. by ; Interpretation and Social Criticism. by Michael Walzer; Strong : Participatory Politics for a New Age. by Benjamin Barber Review by: Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar., 1989), pp. 171-176 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2074045 Accessed: 25-07-2019 15:07 UTC

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This content downloaded from 141.201.159.190 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:07:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Featured Essay

Toward an I & We Paradigm

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, by ALASDAIR MACINTYRE. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984. 286 pp. $9.95 paper.

Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, by MICHAEL J. SANDEL. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 190 pp. $10.95 paper.

Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, by MICHAEL WALZER. : Basic Books, 1983. 345 pp. $13.95 paper.

Interpretation and Social Criticism, by MICHAEL WALZER. Cambridge, MA: Press, 1987. 96 pp. $12.50 cloth.

Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, by BENJAMIN BARBER. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 320 pp. $10.95 paper.

AMITAI ETZIONI Harvard University and George Washington University

A recent movement within social philoso- "fuller expression to the claims of citizenship phy known as has signifi- and community than [philosophical] liberal- cance for sociology for several reasons: it ism allows" (1984, p. 5). MacIntyre charges provides an opportunity for sociologists to that the "notion of the political community as contribute to another discipline; it concerns a common project is alien to the modem issues that we as sociologists have not settled liberal individualist world" (1984, p. 156). among ourselves; and finally, the movement CLP's neglect of the commons can be affects both public policy and contemporary traced to their basic purpose: to provide moral ideology. Among the most influential commu- anchoring for personal autonomy, for the nitarian philosophers-typically, far from full individual's right to choose his or her own agreement with one another-are Michael way of life. Claims upon a person in the name Sandel, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, of community are thus considered a violation and Benjamin Barber. Communitarians also of the individual. Nozick, for instance, argues flourish in other disciplines-for example, that a citizen should not be compelled to George Lodge in business administration, defend his or her country; in fact, he sees Roberto Unger in law, and our own Philip community itself as a "burden." Rawls is less Selznick. emphatic, allowing for positive, procommun- ity sentiments-by individuals. In A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls seeks Progress Toward the I & We to develop moral criteria that establish a just (or "fair") society. Rawls constructs his notion of The recent communitarian movement has justice by considering what persons in a mod- risen largely in response to contemporary em reformulation of the state of nature-the liberal philosophers (CLP), particularly John "original position" -would choose as just prin- Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Robert Nozick. ciples. Individuals in the "original position" While communitarians challenge liberalism are rational agents stripped of all particular at- on many points, one issue dominates the tributes as social beings; they debate behind a agenda and provides the school with its name: "veil of ignorance" that prevents them from concern about the neglect of community and knowing their position in society. Because they common good (moral values, shared under- are unsure of where they will "end up," they standings, public interest). Communitarians cannot but rationally choose a just order.* In decry the "presence of moral chaos and the absence of common purposes" (Thigpen and * Critics have portrayed Rawls' book as more liberal, Downing 1987, p. 638) in contemporary or, alternatively, more communitarian, than here inter- society. Sandel calls for philosophy to give preted. We suggest that in essence his position is

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This content downloaded from 141.201.159.190 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:07:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 172 FEATURED ESSAY later writings, Rawls has somewhat modified therefore presuppose a crucial distinction be- his position, giving greater recognition to the tween what any particular individual at any par- role of community. Rawls' 1985 essay, "Justice ticular time takes to be good for him and what as Fairness," concedes that the basic values of is really good for him as a man" (p. 150). the representative moral agent-now called the MacIntyre has been criticized for advanc- "citizen" -derive not from intuitions formed ing too "strong" or emphatic a communita- apart from social reality but from "an 'overlap- rian vision, for he provides no moral anchor ping consensus' that undergirds the modem for individual autonomy and rights. He writes state" (Wallach 1987, p. 584). Further, Rawls that "[n]atural or human rights . . . are contextualizes his theory, acknowledging so- fictions" (p. 70). There are, he insists, "no cial and historical particulars (specifically, the such [universal] rights . . . every attempt to democratic society reflected in contemporary, give good reasons for believing that there are advanced, Western, industrialized nations such rights has failed" (p. 69). In his project, (Rawls 1985, p. 224). In kind, Dworkin now social roles completely absorb the person, considers his fundamental liberal concept of leaving no adequate basis for a critical stance "equal concern and respect" to be historically against society. True, MacIntyre insists that and politically embedded (Dworkin 1977, p. [t]he fact that the self has to find its 201; 1978, p. 116 n.1). moral identity in and through its member- Communitarians challenge the liberal project ship in communities . . . does not entail on both sociological and moral grounds. that the self has to accept the moral Sociologically, they move that individuals limitations. (p. 221) cannot exist outside of the social realm, without community. In Sandel's view, Rawls' But as Thigpen and Downing (1987, p. 643) hypothetical individuals are "wholly without observe, "MacIntyre does not identify aspects character, without moral depth" (1982, p. of the self that transcend social roles": a 172). Persons as we know them, Sandel claim that moral limitations need not be maintains, are always "situated" or "em- accepted cannot be advanced without making bedded" in a social context; they are clear how this transcendence can occur. "encumbered" by ties of community: "we Walzer offers a partial corrective to Mac- cannot conceive of our personhood without Intyre's collectivistic tendencies. Like Mac- reference to our roles as citizens, and as Intyre, he challenges the CLP notion of abstract participants in a common life" (1984, p. 5). persons and he declares community "con- The moral counterclaim for community is ceivably the most important good" (1983, p. made most forcefully, perhaps too forcefully, 29). However, unlike MacIntyre, who calls ap- by MacIntyre, who argues that the Aristotelian parently for a unified community (he refers to tradition of civic virtue can restore moral co- "the pluralism which threatens to submerge us herence to the community. In this "classical all" [1984, p. 226]), Walzer advocates multiple moral tradition," persons are understood to have spheres of justice-and by implication, multi- an end or highest aim-a telos-which they ple subcommunities-each sphere relevant to achieve through exercising virtues (particular the meanings of particular "social" goods (e.g., "acquired human qualities") to achieve the in- money, political power, prestige, education). trinsic goods of "practices": complex and co- The result is a pluralism of moral foundations. herent, "socially established," human activities However, Walzer does not indicate whether the (1984, pp. 187, 191). The range of practices is individual is free to choose among these foun- wide: "arts, sciences, games, politics in the dations, nor does he provide in Spheres of Jus- Aristotelian sense, the making and sustaining tice a plausible critical basis for individuals to of family life, all fall under the concept" (p. stand apart from consensual social meanings 188). Individuals in such a community do not and, hence, existing values, whatever they may (as liberals would have it) choose their own be. (Fishkin [1987] correctly calls him a moral good; they find a common good as members of relativist: Walzer believes the community de- a distinct moral order. MacIntyre writes that termines a person's moral stance.) "[a]n Aristotelian theory of the virtues does Recently, the trend toward a synthetic position has continued. For example, Walzer individualistic, and that he has become somewhat more has addressed more directly the need to concerned with community in recent works (see below). accommodate the critical individual. In Inter-

This content downloaded from 141.201.159.190 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:07:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms FEATURED ESSAY 173 pretation and Social Criticism (1987), Walzer the efforts to establish a principled basis for maintains that the critic shares the moral individual rights and a critical stance within values of the community; yet Walzer makes the communitarian camp. We refer to the room for individual moral positions by resulting sociological-moral paradigm, an claiming that such argument is largely the extension of Buber's I-Thou, as the I & We "interpretation," rather than the "discovery" paradigm. (For additional discussion, see or "invention," of shared values. He defends Etzioni 1988.) this posture "against the charge that it binds Having explicated this basic synthesis of us irrevocably to the status quo -since we can the liberal and communitarian views, I wish only interpret what already exists-and so to raise an important remaining issue, evident undercuts the possibility of social criticism" both in the philosophic debate itself and in the (1987, p. 3). Walzer asserts that for the critic sociology literature, particularly in Wrong's who is adequately distanced from the loci of (1961) profound article on the oversocialized power, "there are [critical] standards avail- person and in the dialogue about conformism. able . . . that are internal to the practices and This question concerns the scope and nature understandings of his own society" (p. 40). He explains that moral standards can be of the individual elements not captured by interpreted "in both apologetic and critical roles. Thigpen and Downing, objecting to the ways," and that it is not the case that "the strong communitarian view in which socially apologetic interpretations are the 'natural' prescribed roles may fully absorb the individ- ones" (p. 48). ual, write that persons "cannot be totally Considering the dialogue as a whole, one constituted by their social (and natural) can argue that the CLP, criticized for environment" (1987, p. 645). However, this neglecting the community both as a sociolog- objection is far from sufficient, for it treats ical reality and as a moral claim, have individuality merely as a residue: whatever is attempted somewhat to provide for both. "left over" after socialization. Some sociolo- In turn, the communitarians, attacked for gists have fallen into a similar trap: if they do neglecting individual actors, rights, and a not neglect individual differences, they see critical stance against the community, can be them as a result of conflicting cultures or seen as seeking a principled basis for these incomplete socialization. What must be for- claims. mulated-and perhaps it can be found in the For Parsonian, Chicago, and many other psychological literature-is a fuller model of sociologists, the answer that social philoso- individual development (as distinct from phers find so elusive lies in what might be deviance) that allows a person to transcend called "the human arch." An arch is his or her background and social foundations. composed of bricks and cannot exist without The studies of innovation and entrepreneur- them, but the bricks without the arch are ship, critical intellectuals and leadership, merely a pile of rubble. The human arch is have not crystallized into a fully coherent and thus comprised partly of community and powerful corrective to the sociologic, em- partly of individuals situated within the arch. phatic communitarian position. In this view, it is not possible to conceive of Sociologists seem to have settled for community without individuals, or individu- themselves certain issues still confronting als outside the social realm. (An individual social philosophers, by recognizing both that may escape a particular community, but not the relationship between individuals and all communities.) community values are often strained and that The debate among social philosophers this strain can be creative rather than points to a moral position not entailed in the necessarily dysfunctional. Conservative social sociological fact of the human arch but quite philosophers still tend to assume harmony, or readily supported by it: both individuals and the need for it. As Nancy Rosenblum (1984, the community have a basic moral claim, and p. 586) writes of the communitarian view, any position that omits one of these two intertwined foundations leads to positions that [i]n a community, the notion of "be- even their respective advocates find hard to longing" has meaning and place, for there defend. Hence the CLP's scramble to deter- is no conflict between obligation and mine a place for communal obligation, and personal inclination. . . . In community it

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is crucial for the regime to appear "lovely" capital mobility and sudden industrial change," to its members. and suggesting that communitarians would be "more likely than liberals to allow a town to Oppressed minorities and classes often ban pornographic bookstores, on the grounds agitate against claims of "the community" that pornography offends its way of life and because these claims are used to quell dissent the values that sustain it" (p. 6). Yet Sandel in the name of loyalty to country and national does not outline explicitly the criteria by unity. And Robert Reich (1988) points out which a local residential area or a municipal that in the 1980s, a certain kind of community government constitutes a community, beyond has begun to flourish for all the wrong suggesting that a community shares "a reasons: concern for money and social status. common vocabulary of discourse . . . and There is one thing Americans do have in implicit practices" (1982, p. 172). Walzer common with our neighbors. . . . It is our writes that in the real world, "independent income. . . . [A] passionate interest in states"-entire nations-approximate most maintaining or upgrading property values closely his notion of community: "The . . .is responsible for much of what has political community is probably the closest brought neighbors together in recent years. we can come to a world of common (1988, p. 22) meanings" (1983, p. 28). Somewhat like Sandel, Walzer distinguishes a community by He contends that "Reagan's communitarian- its "shared understandings and intuitions," ism" has legitimized these "exclusive eco- but insists that "we have only dim percep- nomic enclaves." Barbara Ehrenreich seconds tions" of the community (p. 35). Sociolo- Reich's assessment, remarking that "[n]o gists who have studied the ways in which community can span Donald Trump and New communities are formed from social bonds, York's homeless" (1988, p. 21). The conclu- shared values, and institutions could make a sion: the community may have a justifiable significant contribution to the debate, clarify- voice, but the claims of any specific commu- ing the boundaries of community. nity need to be evaluated rather than simply In addition to the issues of boundary and deemed legitimate. One important criterion scale, there is confusion about how the for assessing them can be derived from the "voice" of the community reaches its individ- concept of community: the more equally ual members. The more liberal a philosopher responsive the community is to all of its is, the more the philosopher tends to confuse members, the more genuine or authentic a the community with the state. The "strong" community it is. The more hierarchical, liberal will label the community's voice domineering, and exclusive it is, the less of a "coercive" whether it actually imposes community-the more of an empire-it is, laws (say, against abortion) or exerts psycho- and the less legitimate its claim (Etzioni, logical pressure (which is viewed as forceful 1968). and hence akin to coercion). Jean Bethke Elshtain (1984, p. 19) writes that libertarians, who represent the "strongest" form of liberalism, Which Community? cannot get beyond a picture of isolated individuals, bound up in their rights and Social philosophers are surprisingly ambig- their "freedom from," going through the uous when (if at all) they discuss in concrete world en garde against possible constraints terms the concept about which they argue so from concerned and potentially "re- fiercely. Both the community's scale-local, pressive" communities. societal, or international?-and its sub- stance-e.g., enforced codes or invisible moral college?-remain undeveloped in the On the other hand, the more communitarian a dialogue. Sandel (1984, p. 6) implies a philosopher is, the more inclined the philoso- concern for local community in several of his pher is to see community values as readily writings: for example, espousing "laws regu- internalized and conformity as spontaneous lating plant closings, to protect . . and willing. Witness MacIntyre's conclusion communities from the disruptive effects of that "what is good for me has to be the good

This content downloaded from 141.201.159.190 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:07:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms FEATURED ESSAY 175 for one who inhabits these roles" (1984, p. Barber (1984) critiques this CLP stand from 220). the communitarian perspective, charging that The evolving I & We paradigm would ben- liberal or "thin" democracy serves "exclu- efit from continuing to recognize that the term sively individualistic and private ends" (p. "community" has a wide range of meanings, 4). From the "precarious foundation" of this but it can constructively adopt the concept of a democracy, concerned to "promote individual responsive community, one that draws either liberty" and "advance interests . . . no firm on appeals to values that members already pos- theory of citizenship, participation, public sess ("Give a hoot, don't pollute!") or encour- goods or civic virtue can be expected to ages them to internalize values they currently arise" (p. 4). Such individuals, Barber do not hold (before an appeal not to litter is contends, are "not really free at all" (p. 146), made, individuals are urged to become sensi- because persons are by nature socially tized to the environment). These types of vol- dependent. They can only be free within a untary moral affirmation provide a foundation collectivity: "The road to autonomy leads for the noncoercive community. When people through not around commonality" (p. 217). act to express a value they have truly acquired Barber's antidote is a "strong" democracy- (internalized rather than accepted as a social universal, direct political participation. Partic- pressure to which they had "better" conform) ipation is for Barber a panacea: he believes, within a pluralistic community (in which there for example, that through participation and is latitude for more than one moral position), "public talk" (p. 162), the political commu- people are not, nor do they feel, coerced, even nity "transform[s] . . . partial and private in a pychological sense. Rather, they feel af- interests into public goods" (p. 151). To firmed when they uphold their values. There is participate is to create a community that nothing morally objectionable about such an governs itself, and to create a self-governing act; on the contrary, without the expression of community is to participate (p. 135; Barber's internalized values, there would be no moral italics). Sociologists have much to say about coherence or community-or, for that matter, the structural conditions and dangers of individuals, as functioning persons. direct, as opposed to representative, democ- racy, in complex societies. Little of this extensive knowledge has been absorbed by contemporary social philosophers. Aggregation Other Literature Cited Some of the bonds between individuals and the community are interpersonal and intrapsy- chic: bonds of friendship that tie individuals, Dworkin, Ronald. 1978. "Liberalism." Pp. 113-43 in or a personality that is composed of multiple Public and Private Morality, edited by Stuart Hamp- selves, yet has a theme, structure, or profile. shire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Some such bonds are institutional: political . 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge:, MA: Harvard University Press. sociology and much of the political science Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1988. "Another Communitarian- literature examine the relationship between ism." The New Republic 198:21. individuals (and subgroups) and the commu- Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1984. "The New Porn Wars: The nity they share (sometimes referred to as Indecent Choice Between Censorship and Civil Libertarianism." The New Republic 190:15-20. "aggregation," but this assumes an upward Etzioni, Amitai. 1968. The Active Society. New York: process, from the Is to the We; in fact, the McGraw-Hill. process works both ways). Further, much . 1988. The Moral Dimension. New York: Free political theory seeks to legitimize or defend Press. Fishkin, James S. 1984. "Defending Equality: A View one particular institutional format. from the Cave." Michigan Law Review 82:755-60. Communitarians have addressed this issue, Lodge, George C. 1987. "Ideology and Country charging that the CLP position focuses merely Analysis." Pp. 1-28 in Ideology and National on process. Individuals, CLP maintain, are to Competitiveness: An Analysis of Nine Countries, make the choices; hence, institutions and the edited by George C. Lodge and Ezra F. Vogel. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. community are not legitimate sources of Rawls, John. 1985. "Justice as Fairness: Political Not shared positions or policies, but must be Metaphysical." Philosophy and Public Affairs worked out from what individuals choose. 14:223-51.

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. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Thigpen, Robert B. and Lyle A. Downing. 1987. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. "Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique." Amer- Reich, Robert. 1988. "A Question of Geography." The ican Journal of Political Science 31:637-55. New Republic 198:22-23. Wallach, John R. 1987. "Liberals, Communitarians, and Rosenblum, Nancy L. 1984. "Moral Membership in a the Tasks of Political Theory." Political Theory Postliberal State." World Politics 36:581-96. 15:581-611. Sandel, Michael J., ed. 1984. Liberalism and Its Critics. New York: New York University Press. Wrong, Dennis. 1961. "The Oversocialized Conception Selznick, Philip. 1987. "The Idea of a Communitarian of Man in Modem Sociology." American Sociological Morality." California Law Review 75:445-63. Review 26:183-93.

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