Suchergebnisse

TAYLOR, SANDEL, WALZER, AND MACINTYRE WAVER BETWEEN GRANTING THE COMMUNITY AUTHORITY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL AND LIMITING THIS AUTHORITY SO SEVERELY THAT COMMUNITARIANISM BECOMES A DEAD LETTER. THE REASON FOR THIS VACILLATION CAN BE FOUND IN THE ASPIRATION OF EACH THEORIST TO BASE LIBERAL VALUES EQUALITY AND LIBERTY - ON PARTICULARISM. COMMUNITARIANS COMPOUND LIBERAL FORMALISM BY ADDING TO THE LIBERAL GOAL, INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY, THE EQUALLY ABSTRACT AIM OF GROUNDING AUTONOMY IN A COMMUNALLY SHARED IDENTITY. FAR FROM RETURNING POLITICAL THEORY TO SUBSTANTIVE CONSIDERATIONS OF THE GOOD, COMMUNITARIANISM LEGITIMIZES REALLY EXISTING LIBERAL POLITICS - THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE.

Abstract
The article distinguishes metaphysical from practical communitarianism. Metaphysical communitarianism is alleged to involve a concealed ideological element, which leads its adherents to stereotypes when trying to capture the essence of the modern self. The claim is examined that minorities, or other ethnic and cultural groups have collective rights, either moral or legal in nature. Justifications of collective rights resorting to the value of cultural identity are said to be in need of explaining why the proper way of protecting such value is through rights. It is argued that practical communitarianism's case for collective rights needs embracing meta-normative and normative relativism, whose application to political action yields consequences at odds with widespread ethical intuitions.

In classical African communitarianism, individual rights have
tended to be accorded a secondary status to the good of the community.
What is prioritised are the duties and obligations the individual has to
the whole as opposed to the entitlements one can expect to derive from
a community qua individual. I seek to show that this view, by its own
standards and assumptions, is erroneous in framing rights as secondary
to the good of the community. I attempt to show that individual rights
are an inherent component of classical African communitarian accounts.
Further, I seek to argue for a non-communalist view of African communitarianism
which takes into full account the multiple factors that constitute
modern African communities. Such a view, I suggest, will avoid the
unnecessary dichotomisation of rights which has become synonymous
with the classical African communitarian account.