• John Rawls believes that two

principles of Justice would

emerge from the
Hypothetical Contract. (Veil
of Ignorance)
• The first provides Equal Basic
Liberties for all Citizens.
• The principles take priority
over considerations of Social
Utility and General welfare.
• The second Principle
concerns Social and
Economic Equality.
• The liberal communitarian debate that has raised
among political philosophers in recent years
describe a range of issues.
• The debate is sometimes cast as an argument
between those who prize individual liberty and
those who think the values of community or the will
of the majority should always prevail.
• Or between those who believe in universal human
rights and those who insist there is no way to
criticize or judge the values that inform different
cultures and traditions.
• In so far as communitarians is another name of
majoritarianism, or for the idea that right should
rest on the value that predominate in any given
community at any given time.
• What is at stake in the debate between Rawl’s theory
Liberalism and Sandel’s Communateriasm is not
whether rights are important, but whether rights can
be identified and justified in a way that does not pre
suppose any particular conception of the good life.
• Issue is not whether individual or communal claim
should carry greater weight, but whether the principles
of Justice that governs the basic structure of society
can be neutral, with respect to the competing moral
and religious convictions, its citizens espouse.
• For Rawls, as per Kant, the priority
of the right over the good stands
for two claims and it is important to
distinguish them.
• The first is the Claim that certain
individual rights are so important
that even the general welfare can
not override them.
• The second is the claim, the
principles of Justice that specify our
rights do not depend for their
justification on any particular
conceptions of good life. As Rawls
has put it more recently, on any
‘comprehensive’ moral or religious
conception.
• The New Golden Rule ,published in 1996 ,attempted to provide a
systematic scholarly foundation to the responsive communitarian position
.
• Its main thesis is that, contrary to both philosophical liberal whose
normative commitments tend to privilege liberty and individual rights ,
and conservatives who tend to privilege social order and authority , the
design of a good society requires drawing on:

(a)multiple normative principles (b) principles that conflict with each

other at least in part and (c) a careful balancing of these principles (d)
whose point of equilibrium changes as the historical conditions change.
These conditions require some elaboration
• Libertarianism illustrates a philosophical commitment to a
single sort of normative values. It not merely privilege liberty
over all other considerations but treats alternative values as
negative hindrances that may have to be overcome or
tolerated.
• Thus , libertarianism are quick to deny that there is a
‘common good’- a good whose promotion might compete
with the imperative to respect individual rights .
• Generally this denial take the form of a two-step whose first
premise is that there can be a common good only if exists
some metaphysical entity who is the beneficiary of that good.
• The existence of such an entity is then denied with the entailed
conclusion being that there can be no such common good.
• For example – Robert Nozick argued that there is no social entity
with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There
are only individual people, different individual people, with their
own individual lives.

• Ayn Rand argues that there is no such entity as “ the tribe” or “the
public” ; the tribe( or the public or society ) is only a number of
individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such ‘good ‘
and ‘value’ pertain only to a living organism – to an individual living
organism –not to be disembodied aggregate of relationships.
• The communitarian response to this objection is to
deny the starting premise , namely that the existence
of common good depends upon the existence of
some collectively metaphysical entity who is
beneficiary of that good.
• One account of the common good is that is some
benefit done for the sake of helping others with no
regard for who those people in particular beyond their
membership in some community , including future
generation. That is, the person acting to further the
common good is unable to determine who will be
beneficiary of their actions. They do so because of
value of the particular good in its own right.

• The common good also includes developing and

nurturing and preserving goods that belong to the
community but no particular person.
Communitarianism
• Communitarianism, social and political
philosophy that emphasizes the importance
of community in the functioning of political
life, in the analysis and evaluation of political
institutions, and in understanding human
identity and well-being.

• It arose in the 1980s as a critique of two

prominent philosophical schools:
contemporary liberalism, which seeks to
protect and enhance personal autonomy and
individual rights in part through the activity
of government, and libertarianism, a form of
liberalism (sometimes called “classical
liberalism”) that aims to protect individual
rights—especially the rights to liberty and
property—through strict limits on
governmental power.
Varieties Of Communitarianism
• The term communitarian was coined in
1841 by John Goodwyn Barmby, a leader
of the British Chartist movement, who
used it to refer to utopian socialists and
others who experimented with unusual
communal lifestyles. It was rarely used in
the generations that followed.
• It was not until the 1980s that the term
gained currency through its association
with the work of a small group of mostly
American political philosophers who
argued for the importance of the common
good in opposition to contemporary
liberals and libertarians, who emphasized CHARLES TAYLOR
the good for individuals, particularly
including personal autonomy and
individual rights.

• The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor

and the American political theorist
Michael Sandel were among the most
prominent scholars of this brand of
communitarianism. MICHAEL SANDEL
• Michael Sandel, particularly ,was
associated with the communitarian
criticism of liberalism, the main
theme of which was that there
must be common formulations of
the good rather than leaving it to
be determined by each individual
by him or herself, for themselves.
Communitarianism hence holds
that state cannot be neutral.
The common good versus individual rights

• Whereas the classical liberalism of the

Enlightenment can be viewed as a reaction to
centuries of authoritarianism, oppressive
government, overbearing communities, and rigid
dogma.
• Modern communitarianism can be considered a
reaction to excessive individualism, understood by
communitarians as an undue emphasis on individual
rights, leading people to become selfish or
egocentric.
• The close relation between the individual
and the community was discussed on a
theoretical level by Sandel and Taylor,
among other academic communitarians, in
their criticisms of philosophical liberalism,
including especially the work of the
American liberal theorist John Rawls and
that of the German Enlightenment
philosopher Immanuel Kant.

• They argued that contemporary liberalism

and libertarianism presuppose an incoherent
notion of the individual as existing outside IMMANUEL KANT
and apart from society rather than
embedded within.
According to these
communitarians, there is no
point in attempting to found a
theory of justice on principles
that individuals would choose
in a hypothetical state of
ignorance of their social,
economic, and historical
circumstances (from behind a
Rawlsian “veil of ignorance”),
because such individuals cannot
exist, even in principle.