Liberalism and the Value of Community

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Liberalism and the Value of CommunityAuthor(s): Andrew MasonSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 215-239Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231818 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 215 Volume 23, Number 2, June 1993, pp. 215 - 240

Liberalism and the Value of Community1

ANDREW MASON

University of Hull Hull, England HU6 7RX

Over the past decade or so the term 'communitarianism' has been

applied to a wide range of positions with great variation between them.2 This is not in itself an objection to its continued use, for a concept may be coherent and illuminating even though it shelters considerable diver-

sity. What is troubling about the body of literature now labelled as communitarian is that it frequently appeals to images of community without giving the notion the analytical attention it deserves and that we have come to expect in relation to other central political concepts such as 'liberty' and 'justice.' What I propose to do in this paper is to focus on a particular understanding of community which I think has been ne-

glected in recent discussions, largely because it has not been sufficiently distinguished from others, and then to raise a question in the light of it which has been at the forefront of the debate: viz., can liberalism in its

1 This paper has gone through several versions and the writing of it has benefited from the comments that I have received from a number of people at various stages of its development. I would like to thank David Archard, Nick Bailey, G. A. Cohen, Roger Crisp, Andrew Moore, Noel O'Sullivan, Nick Wheeler, the referee, and an executive editor for their helpful criticisms. Participants in the Wolfson Philosophy Society at Oxford, the Philosophy Department Research Seminar at Hull, and the Political Theory Workshop at York also provided me with reasons to make a considerable number of revisions to it. Most of it was written during the tenure of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, and I would like to thank the Academy for its support.

2 The very different views espoused by Alasdair Maclntyre, Richard Rorty, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer are usually classified as communitarian.



216 Andrew Mason

currently dominant form truly respect the value and importance of community?3 Several writers have responded to the critiques of liberalism developed in the work of those such as Michael Sandel4 and Alasdair Maclntyre by arguing that the basic framework of liberal thought is fully compatible with a due appreciation of community.6 Joel Feinberg, for example, attempts to show that 'one can preserve one's allegiance to personal autonomy in the way that liberalism requires while fully acknowledging the central and indispensable importance of community in human lives.'7 1 shall register some doubts about whether liberalism can show proper respect for community when 'community' is understood in the way I describe.

I Community as a Moral Notion

The current debate between liberals and 'communitarians' runs the risk of obscuring from view a body of thought which interprets community as a moral notion, by understanding its main purpose to be the identification of features of the world which are relevant for moral appraisal.8

3 This is not the only issue that liberals and communitarians have addressed. See S.

Caney, 'Liberalism and Communitarianism: A Misconceived Debate/ Political Stud- ies 40 (1992) 273-89, for a useful summary and analysis of the different criticisms that communitarians have made of liberalism.

4 See M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982).

5 See A. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1981); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth

1988), esp. Ch. 17.

6 See, e.g., S.I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

1988), Ch. 12; A.E. Buchanan, 'Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberal- ism/ Ethics 99 (1989) 852-82; Caney, 'Liberalism and Communitarianism: A Miscon- ceived Debate'; W. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), Ch. 3; J. Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Vol. 4: Harmless Wrongdoing (New York: Oxford University Press 1988), Ch. 29 A; W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), esp. Ch. 4.

7 Feinberg, 81

8 For some more explanation of what it is for a concept to be a moral notion, see J. Kovesi, Moral Notions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1967); cf. also R. Plant,

Community and Ideology: An Essay in Applied Social Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1974), Ch. 2.



Liberalism and the Value of Community 217

This tradition contrasts community with mere society: 'community' picks out a morally valuable set of relationships between people, while 'society' is a purely descriptive term which refers to a much greater variety of them. A group of people who cooperate with each other simply in order to achieve their own personal goals more effectively (or even in order to further goals they share in common), but who are otherwise indifferent to each other, may be a society but is not a community. In order for a group of people to constitute a community, there must be some bond which unites them, whether it be religion, nationality, culture, family ties, location, ethnicity, or shared values. But a bond of one of these kinds, even when it is partially constitutive of the identities of those it unites, is not sufficient for a group of people to constitute a community in the moral sense, for they may (in principle at least) exploit each other or lack any concern for each other's welfare. In order to be a community in this sense, a group of people must also be mutually concerned and refrain from systematically exploiting each other.

In ordinary language, the term 'community' does not always desig- nate a moral notion of this kind. For example, when it is qualified by an adjective it often functions simply to pick out a group of people each of whom have something in common: members of the same linguistic community share a language; members of the same cultural community share a culture; members of the business community share the same occupation. Here there is no implication that these groups are made up of people who are mutually concerned. 'Community' can be used as a moral notion even when it is qualified by an adjective, however. Con- sider, for instance, the expression 'the neighborhood community.' How the term 'community' is to be understood in this expression - whether it merely implies that people share the property of living within the same locality, or whether it also implies that they are mutually concerned -

depends upon the context in which the expression is used and the intentions of its user. 'Community' also appears in sentences with no definite or indefinite article before it: we speak of one person being in community with another and about the value and importance of community. In locutions such as these 'community' usually does function as a moral notion, for it is being applied only to relationships which possess particular moral qualities: mutual concern and the absence of systematic exploitation. The use of the term 'community' to express a moral notion of this kind has been neglected in recent debates. Consider Alasdair Maclntyre's work as an example.

Maclntyre believes that our identities are defined (at least in part) by the community or communities to which we belong. Not only does he hold that our se//-understanding is bound up with membership of various communities; he also maintains that our understanding of social reality can only be achieved within socially embodied traditions of



218 Andrew Mason

thought.9 It is these traditions which transmit the shared practices that are constitutive of communities. Maclntyre offers a distinctive account of what makes an activity a practice:

By a "practice" I ... mean any coherent and complex form of socially established

cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and

goods involved, are systematically extended.10

In striving to achieve the standards of excellence that govern practices, people are able to realize various goods and can exercise valuable

powers which would otherwise lie dormant. For example, a person can be a physicist, making advances and discoveries in a particular field, and

developing the particular skills relevant to it, only because there is a

cooperative human activity which we call science. In the absence of that

practice, individuals could not have complex goals, such as to discover the ultimate constituents of reality, for they would not be intelligible.11

For Maclntyre, the paradigms of community seem to include the

family, the neighborhood, the city, the tribe, and the nation.12 But these are not generally communities in the moral sense I have distinguished, for they do not usually embody mutual concern and often involve considerable exploitation of one group by another. As Marilyn Friedman

points out, they 'have harbored social roles and structures which have been highly oppressive for women/13 A family, city or nation can fall short of being a community in the moral sense: members of a community in this sense could not systematically exploit each other unlike (say) citizens of a particular nation.14 A subordinate group within a nation

might cooperate with their oppressors in pursuit of goods sustained by shared practices, exercising and developing valuable capacities in the

9 Maclntyre, After Virtue, 205-7

10 Maclntyre, After Virt we, 175

11 Cf. Joseph Raz's discussion of the way in which comprehensive goals presuppose the existence of social forms: The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), Ch. 12, section 5.

12 Maclntyre, After Virt ue, 205

13 M. Friedman, 'Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community/ Ethics 99 (1989), 277

14 Cf . J. Baker, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso 1987), Ch. 4.




process, but still be exploited. Maclntyre argues that the kind of cooperation involved in practices, and the proper application of the standards of excellence that regulate them, require 'fairness in judging oneself and others.'15 But this leaves open the possibility that the distribution of

power and money - what Maclntyre calls 'external goods'16 - through the institutions which structure and sustain these practices, may nevertheless be unjust by the standards of the most coherent tradition of

thought on this matter. Furthermore, a nation made up of a number of different practices might be exploitative if participation in those practices, and hence the possibility of realizing various goods and valuable

powers, was not genuinely open to all. There are conceptual limits to how oppressive a community in the

moral sense can be: a group of people can constitute a community only if no section of it exploits another, and only if the relations within it involve mutual concern. Perhaps there are few, if any, actual examples of fully fledged communities of this kind. This does not defeat the account, however, for we can regard 'community' as a label for a type of social relationship that is ideal in one respect, to which actual relation-

ships may approximate, and which have value (along this dimension) insofar as they approximate to the ideal. Even when community is understood in the way I describe, an uncritical celebration of it would be a mistake, for groups in which people have genuine mutual concern and do not exploit each other can nevertheless in practice be paternalis- tic, or stifling and intrusive rather than life enhancing.17 That is why respect for community needs to be tempered by a respect for personal autonomy, as many socialists and liberals have recognized.18 Even

though 'community' can be used to express a moral notion it does not follow that the social relationships to which it then properly refers are

beyond criticism or improvement along other dimensions.

15 Maclntyre, After Virtue, 180

16 Maclntyre, After Virtue, 181

17 Cf. S. Mendus, 'Strangers and Brothers: Liberalism, Socialism, and the Concept of

Autonomy/ in D.E. Milligan and W. Watts Miller, eds., Liberalism, Citizenship, and

Autonomy (Aldershot: Avebury 1992), esp. 10-13.

18 Reconciling community membership with the exercise of personal autonomy has been an important aspiration of many socialists, especially those impressed by Marx's critique of the romantic anti-capitalism which celebrates the rural communities that were torn apart by industrialization. See, e.g., Russell Keat, 'Individual- ism and Community in Socialist Thought/ in J. Mepham and D.-H. Ruben, eds., Issues in Marxist Philosophy, Vol. 4: Social and Political Philosophy (Brighton: Harvester 1981) 127-52.



220 Andrew Mason

In denying that a group of people who are indifferent to each other can be a community in the moral sense, I am implicitly appealing to a body of thought, largely socialist in inspiration. According to this tradition, community is the locus of mutual support or aid; members of a community have a sense of solidarity because each person's concern for its other members means that his or her well-being is at least partially dependent upon their flourishing. It would, of course, be a mistake to accept socialist ideas of solidarity uncritically. Insofar as the primary socialist model of solidarity has been fraternity, a relationship between men that excludes women, it is vulnerable to good feminist objections.19 Much socialist thought has also been concerned with a particular kind of solidarity: solidarity in the face of capitalist exploitation. Without wishing to deny the importance of mutual support between, e.g., work- ers in a particular industry who are struggling for better pay and conditions, my focus is much broader: viz., mutual concern between people who are united by some bond, whatever the nature of that tie.

Richard Rorty's conception of community seems to have some features in common with the one I have been describing. A community, for Rorty, is constituted by people who share enough of the same beliefs and values for each to be able to identify imaginatively with the other. Members of the same community can meaningfully attempt to resolve their disagreements because fruitful conversation between them is made possible by the understandings they share;20 each has a heightened sensitivity towards the pain and humiliation of other members because each regards these others as 'one of them.'21 Rorty's idea that community involves solidarity, and solidarity involves a sensitivity towards each other's pain and humiliation, is certainly related to the idea that communities embody mutual concern. But Rorty's account seems to leave open the possibility that a community, properly so called, might contain a dominating and a subordinated group each of whom included the other as part of something broader to which they both belonged because each believed that its relative position and status was justified by the values and commitments they both shared. Making sense of that possibility would not require presupposing the existence of a 'universal stand-

19 See A. Phillips, 'Fraternity/ in B. Pimlott, edv Fabian Essays in Socialist Thought (London: Heinemann 1984).

20 See, e.g., R. Rorty, 'Solidarity and Objectivity/ in his Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1:

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 30.

21 See R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989), Ch. 9, esp. 198.




point.' For Rorty, a sensitivity towards the pain and humiliation of another is a natural consequence of including her as 'one of us/ But the idea of regarding a person as 'one of us' is ambiguous and it is not obvious that on both readings of it a sensitivity towards her pain and humiliation is a natural consequence. It can mean, first, acknowledging that she has the same beliefs and values (whatever they happen to be) or, second, regarding her as an equal, proper respect for whom requires minimally that we do not subordinate or exploit her. The first interpretation is quite compatible with the dominant group systematically exploiting her and her kind (even if none of them would see their relations to one another in this light), and hence compatible with the absence of community in my sense. Rorty supposes that when we include a person as one of us we will naturally be concerned for her welfare, but it is unclear whether he is entitled to make that assumption unless he explic- itly endorses the moral reading of what it is to regard a person as one of us and as a result throws into question the idea that past and present families, tribes, and nations (for example) are genuine communities.

It is true, however, that the existence of mutual concern between members of a community may in practice be facilitated by the bond (nationality, religion, etc.) that serves to unite them, and which is in general partially constitutive of their identities.22 The existence of such a bond seems to rely on there being some shared practice or way of life which provides its basis. That practice or way of life need not be constituted by a shared commitment to a distinctive set of values or institutions, nor does it require that everyone live out their life in the same manner. Consider, for example, the idea that there is a British way of life. There may be such a way of life even though there does not seem to be a distinctive set of values shared by many or most British people.23 If there is a British way of life, it will be constituted by something like a shared set of understandings that have evolved historically, which govern, for example, how it is appropriate to behave in different contexts. These understandings may have a content that is specific to (say) class, gender, or ethnic group: how it is considered appropriate to behave in

22 Some have thought that liberals must deny that a person's identity is constituted by various communal attachments, on the grounds that this is incompatible with the fact that persons are (generally at least) capable of exercising autonomy. I consider this idea in my 'Personal Autonomy and Identification with a Community/ in

Milligan and Watts Miller, eds., Liberalism, Citizenship, and Autonomy.

23 Cf. Bhikhu Parekh, 'Britain and the Social Logic of Pluralism/ in B. Parekh, ed., Britain: A Plural Society (London: Commission for Racial Equality 1990), 74-5. This

paragraph owes much to conversations with him.



222 Andrew Mason

some specific context will often depend upon one's class, ethnic group, or gender and the respective categories to which those with whom one is interacting belong.

4 In consequence a person's national identity will depend upon membership of other socially significant groups: for instance, what it is to be British for a working class man will be different from what it is for a middle class woman. This does not invalidate the idea that there is a shared national identity or a British way of life: different modes of living and conditions of existence can co-exist with a shared national identity, based upon a shared way of life in the sense I have described. To the extent that the kind of shared understandings I have mentioned are not specific to British people, or are not genuinely shared by all, the existence of a national identity, and hence of a bond which might provide part of the basis for a community of British people, is thrown into question.

II Mutual Concern and the Value of Community

Michael Sandel briefly distinguishes three different conceptions of community: an instrumental conception, 'where individuals regard social arrangements as a necessary burden and cooperate only for the sake of pursuing their private ends'; a sentimental conception, which he attributes to Rawls, in which participants have shared final ends, regard cooperation as a good in itself, and experience ties of sentiment as a result; finally, a constitutive conception, according to which persons 'conceive their identity - the subject not just the object of their feelings and aspirations - as defined to some extent by the community of which they are a part.'25 The constitutive conception incorporates the sentimental conception, for it involves the idea that a 'sense of community would be manifest in the aims and values of the participants - as fraternal sentiments and fellow feeling, for example.' The sentimental conception may seem to bear some relation to the conception of community I have been describing, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that it is at best

24 Of course whether some piece of behavior is appropriate or acceptable in some

context, e.g., a man standing up for a woman on a crowded train, may be contested; even when it is contested, however, disagreement occurs against the background assumption that this conception of appropriateness is widely shared.

25 Sandel, 150-1 . Charles Taylor seems to endorse a variant of the constitutive conception: see C. Taylor, Sources of the Se//(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989), 27,36.




a very truncated version of it. 'Fraternal sentiments' and 'fellow-feeling' are vague and inadequate phrases to express the idea of mutual concern which is central to that conception of community since mutual concern is not simply a feeling or a sentiment. So what is it?

Concern is incompatible with indifference but does not require com-

plete altruism, that is, it does not demand the kind of self-sacrifice in which an individual is always prepared to subordinate her interests to those of others, for a person may have a concern for others but nevertheless sometimes (or indeed often) give priority to her own self-regarding interests. Concern admits of degree. But a person who has concern for others must give their interests genuine weight in her deliberations, rather than merely determine how her own self-regarding ends could be best achieved, or merely fulfil obligations she has to them that are

independent of membership of a shared community. In specific cases, what counts as concern will depend on the nature of

the relationship. Consider, for example, the (non-communal) relation-

ship between doctor and patient:26 whether a doctor is genuinely concerned for his patients depends upon (among other things) the attention he gives them, the care with which he considers different possible courses of action, and his willingness to give time when needed. In

professional roles such as these, concern can exist in the absence of any particular feelings: a doctor needn't even particularly like his patients. The context in which a relationship exists is also important when distin-

guishing concern from lack of it. A doctor who patches up a patient so that she will survive to be tortured again, and who does so without

regret, is not genuinely concerned for her. A slave-owner who treats his slaves well simply because he believes that by doing so he can exploit them more lacks genuine concern for them. A person may also believe that he is genuinely concerned for another but be mistaken, and the

judgment that someone lacks genuine concern may involve taking up a

perspective outside the relationship itself. The same is true when distin-

guishing genuine from bogus communities, for this requires discrimi-

nating between genuine and bogus mutual concern. When a group of people constitutes a genuine community in the moral

sense, one member is concerned for another simply because she is a member of the same community. A concern for others because they are members of the same community need not imply a failure to recognize obligations to them and to others that exist simply because they are moral

26 Naomi Scheman makes the following points in more detail in 'On Sympathy/ The Monist 62 (1979) 322.



224 Andrew Mason

subjects or sentient beings; indeed it is a concern which may exist in addition to a willingness to fulfil obligations to others that are independent of particular attachments. (Someone who acts altruistically towards others out of a concern for them because they are members of the same community does not, however, act from the motive of duty in any universal sense, so if Kant were correct, her actions would not have any moral worth.)

A communal relationship does not have to be 'face to face.' A person might have concern for the well being of her fellow citizens, many of whom she did not know personally. It is often thought that impersonal concern is insufficient for genuine community, however. Stanley Benn argues that communitarian ideals require 'sympathetic concern, a caring for the other 'as if it were oneself/ for some measure of identification with the fate of the other/27 For this reason, Benn believes that community is necessarily restricted to small groups.28 It is possible within 'relations of mutuality/ which are intimate face to face relations, and also perhaps within 'com- radeship' which extends beyond intimate relations to, e.g., 'a moderately large kibbutz, an extended family, or even a regiment/ but nevertheless cannot reach so far as the nation state.29 Benn gives us insufficient reason to accept that communitarian ideals require some measure of sympathetic identification, however. On my view, the concern that is necessary for a community need not amount to sympathetic identification (at least, not if that is understood to involve pangs of commiserative sorrow or feelings of supportive delight) and in large communities will fall short of this. What counts as concern, indeed, varies from one kind of relationship to another (and hence from one kind of communal relationship to another) : what it is to have concern for a friend is different from what it is to have concern for a member of a large community to which one also belongs and whom one does not know; in friendship, genuine concern may require one to experience another's feelings as if they were one's own but concern for the well being of a fellow citizen maybe genuine in the absence of such feeling. A whole society made up of individuals who have concern for each other,

27 Benn, 223

28 The view that community necessarily involves face to face relations is widespread. See I. Young, 'The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference/ in L. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/ Postmodernism (London: Routledge 1990), 312-13, for references to some others who hold this view. Because I do not suppose that

community relations are necessarily of this kind, many of Young's criticisms of

community as an ideal do not apply to the model I have defended.

29 Benn, 230-3




and who perhaps believe that they are entitled to that concern in virtue of their membership of a shared community, would not necessarily be conflict-free, but it would be a society in which people paid more attention to the interests of others in planning and pursuing their projects, and in which compromise in the face of conflicting interests was facilitated.

Mutual concern at the level of the nation state perhaps requires an intolerance of inequalities except when they are licensed by something similar to Rawls's difference principle: one person would be unwilling to be better off than others unless this somehow led to the others being made better off as a result. Mutual concern, however, seems to be incompatible with a general unwillingness to worker harder except for greater personal rewards, even when the wealth created by a system which provides material incentives for the talented to work harder would 'trickle down' and make others better off as well. So, pace Rawls, community in the moral sense appears to be incompatible with those inequalities justified by the difference principle on the grounds that they create incentives to work harder or innovate and as a result make the worst off group better off than they would be without these inequalities.30 Voluntary acceptance of the degree of equality required by even the difference principle, by those who would otherwise be better off, is facilitated in practice when citizens see themselves as related to each other not merely as moral subjects engaged in a cooperative venture, but also as bound together by a shared way of life with which they identify;31 it may not be enough in practice for them to acknowledge that they would choose the principle behind the veil of ignorance in the light of knowledge of its possible consequences.32

As I have already noted, the idea that members of a community are mutually concerned is to be found predominantly in the socialist tradition. David Archard has offered an interpretation of Marx's vision of commu- nism which allocates a central place to it. In his view, Marx's synthesis of community and individuality does not rest on the Utopian idea that communist society will function against a harmony of interests brought

30 Rawls endorses the idea that inequalities may be justified in accordance with the difference principle by incentive arguments of this kind: see J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971), 78. The idea that inequalities justified by incentives arguments are incompatible with community is argued at some length, and with more care, by G. A. Cohen in his Tanner Lectures, delivered at Stanford University in 1991.

31 Cf . D. Miller, 'In What Sense Must Socialists be Communitarians?' Social Philosophy and Policy 6 (1988), 58.

32 Cf. Rawls, section 29.



226 Andrew Mason

about by superabundance and / or universal altruism, in the way that some commentators have argued.33 Instead, it rests on the attractive idea that in communist society 'there is a willingness to settle, or try to settle, differences between individuals in ways that are fundamentally moral, that is fair and just.'34 (This idea does not warrant the conclusion that the state would be redundant in communist society and hence wither away, and does not entail the view that the concept of justice would have no role to play in such a society, but it is none the worse for that.)

A person who has special concern for other members of a community need not lack due concern for those outside it. It might be thought, however, that members of a community will tend to give less than due consideration to 'outsiders.' In the extreme case, a community may be united by opposition to a group that it views as an enemy: racism sometimes takes this form.35 In less extreme cases, communities can isolate themselves from other people in a society and develop their own characteristic forms of expression, thereby reducing the possibility of communication and understanding between themselves and others. But none of this need happen. Individuals may be members of more than one community, so different individuals may at a given time belong to the same community and to different communities (and as a result may have more than one constituent of their identities). Different communities may also recognize something of value in each other and members of them may thereby be motivated to show respect for each other. Indeed the relationship between communities that value each other could not amount to mere tolerance, for toleration is an attitude towards some-

thing which is at the same time an object of disapproval. Communities can enrich each other: the idea that different communities may learn

something from each other plays an important role in the justification for multi-culturalism amongst those who see this as an ideal to be realized rather than as a mere description of a predicament which is faced by societies containing ethnic minorities which have not yet been assimilated by the dominant culture.36

33 See, e.g., A.E. Buchanan, Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism (London: Methuen 1982); S. Lukes, Marx and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985).

34 D. Archard, 'The Marxist Ethic of Self-Realization: Individuality and Community/ in J.D.G. Evans, ed., Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Problems (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press 1987), 31

35 Cf. Young, 311.

36 For an interesting discussion of multi-culturalism and how it differs from assimila- tionism, see Parekh, 'Britain and the Social Logic of Pluralism/




Marx would not have been sympathetic to the idea that subsections of

society may constitute communities for he seems to think that in gen uine

community people relate to each other as human beings and their interactions are not mediated by group identifications. In its extreme form, the idea that people in genuine communities relate to each other

solely as human beings implies that the only real community would be one forged at the global level.37 (This view must either deny that we have a need to identify with smaller groupings, as some communitarians would have it, or must regard such a need as a weakness.) A defense of it would have to rest on the belief that there is something imperfect about a state of affairs in which people see themselves as related to each other

primarily as, e.g., citizens of a particular nation, inhabitants of a particular locality, or participants in some shared practice. To justify this belief, I think Marx would have to claim that people who identify with different communities will be alienated from each other to at least some extent. In

response I would again argue that even though it is possible for people to be alienated from each other if each identifies with different communities, this is not a necessary consequence, since each can regard the other communities as valuable.

The account of the value of community to which I have drawn attention attributes both moral and prudential value to community. It attributes moral value to community insofar as it claims that a group of people who have concern for each other, and do not exploit each other, has moral worth. It attributes prudential value to community insofar as it claims that the lives of individual members of a community go better because of the fact that they experience concern for38 and from others.39

(Community in the moral sense is no doubt valuable for other reasons as well: if we have a need to feel that we belong, as some maintain, then this need can be met by it.) The claim that community, when understood in the way I have proposed, is prudentially valuable has a weak and a

37 Cf. G.A. Cohen, History, Labor, and Freedom: Themes from Marx (Oxford: Oxford

University Press 1988), 145-6. Some would argue that the very idea of a global community is unintelligible: see Miller, 'In What Sense Must Socialists Be Commu- nitarians?' (67-8).

38 The claim that a person's life goes better through experiencing concern for others would rest on the (in my view, plausible) idea that concern for others enriches a

person's life.

39 My account is agnostic on the issue of whether the moral value of a community is reducible to the prudential value it has for its individual members. Hence it is not committed to what Amartya Sen calls 'welfarism,' although it is compatible with it: see A. Sen, 'Utilitarianism and Welfarism,' Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 471.



228 Andrew Mason

strong variant, however. The strong version maintains that a person cannot flourish (i.e., cannot lead a good life) unless she is a member of some community because this is an essential ingredient of the good life. (This version could be combined with the claim that even though a person cannot flourish unless she is a member of some community, a person may nevertheless lead an adequate or satisfactory life in the absence of community.) The weak version maintains that membership of a community is a potential ingredient of the good life because it holds that a person's life goes better, other things being equal, by being a member of one, but allows that she may lead a good life and therefore flourish even if she is not.40 Let me stipulate that someone who makes the stronger claim is a radical communitarian and that someone who makes the weaker claim only is a moderate communitarian.

Ill Can Liberals be Communitarians?

With these distinctions in mind, and understanding community in the way I have proposed, it is possible to address the question: 'Can liberals be communitarian?' The answer to it at least partly turns on what we should understand by 'liberalism.' Those who have tried to show that liberals can show due respect for community have started from a mini- mal understanding of what being a liberal involves. Joel Feinberg interprets liberalism broadly as 'a thesis about the proper scope of the criminal law': briefly, that criminal prohibitions are justified only if they prevent harm or serious offense to others.41 Allen Buchanan defines liberalism as the thesis that 'the state is to enforce the basic individual civil and political rights' including 'the rights to freedom of religion, expression, thought and association, the right to political participation ... and the right of due legal process.'42 Will Kymlicka gives an account of the political morality of liberalism in terms of the idea that the state should give equal concern and respect to each person's interest in leading a life that is in fact good.43

40 I assume that something may be an ingredient of the good life either because it is

instrumentally valuable or because it is intrinsically valuable (or both).

41 Feinberg, 81

42 Buchanan, 'Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism/ 854

43 Kymlicka, 13




Working with such broad characterizations of liberalism, it is unsur- prising that these writers have arrived at the conclusion that liberalism has no problems with answering the kind of communitarian critiques developed in the writings of those such as Maclntyre, Sandel, and Taylor. Their definitions succeed in contrasting liberalism with totalitarianism but are not helpful in distinguishing liberalism from, say, a conservatism which allows that individual rights and entitlements can be properly understood as grounded by the traditions, customs and practices of constitutional democracies, nor are they helpful in distinguishing liberalism from many forms of socialism. Market socialism, for example, may accept the same package of rights Buchanan lists, and put the same limits on the criminal law that Feinberg argues for, but is nevertheless socialist. It is socialist in virtue of its commitment to abolishing private ownership of the means of production, and to establishing a market in which co-operatives, which lease the means of production from the state, compete against each other.44 In response, it might be said that there is no necessary incompatibility between socialism and liberalism: socialism can be just another form of liberalism.45 More polemically, it might be argued that market socialism has greater success in realizing the values that liberals cherish, and that this is what makes it a variety of liberalism.

Without wishing to deny that the two traditions have borrowed and learned from each other, I think nothing is gained by characterizing liberalism so broadly that many different theories, including market socialism, become subsumed within it. Admittedly it would be unfair to saddle the contemporary liberal with 'traditional theories that are now clearly inadequate or absurd - classical liberal theories of human nature and motivation and outdated accounts of the nature of society and relations between social groups';46 constructing an account of liberalism on these foundations and then demolishing it settles nothing. (Like others such as Feinberg and Kymlicka, I am unsympathetic to criticisms of liberalism which attribute to it the implausible f oundational thesis that

44 See, e.g., J. Le Grand and S. Estrin, eds., Market Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989); D. Miller, Market, State, and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989); and, indeed, Ch. 4 of Buchanan's own book Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985).

45 Cf. Kymlicka, 91. Kymlicka goes on to say that he thinks that the abstract charac- terization of liberalism he gives (see above) commits liberals to a politics of neutral concern, which makes his account of liberalism specific enough for me to have no

quarrel with it on this score (see ibid., p. 97).

46 Feinberg, 81-2



230 Andrew Mason

individuals are essentially pre-social, rationally self-interested beings.47) But I think that it is equally misguided to define liberalism so widely that its main point of contrast is with totalitarianism. That would be too easy a way of making us all liberals.

I do not intend to offer my own definition of 'liberalism/ mainly because I do not think it possible to give a strict definition that is fruitful. It is surely a term whose proper use cannot be adequately captured by an exhaustive list of necessary and sufficient conditions.48 This is at least

partly because liberalism has evolved, and continues to evolve, by encountering internal and external criticism and responding to it. It is neither monolithic nor static. Insofar as we aim to determine whether

contemporary liberalism can truly respect the value of community, interpreted in accordance with the moral sense I have distinguished, we are entitled to focus on views that are central, although perhaps not

strictly indispensable, to it. I propose to focus on three views that I think we should regard as core

liberal commitments today even though a theory that was recognizably liberal might perhaps survive without any of them. These commitments are present in the writings of many contemporary Anglo-American liberals. The first of them is that the exercise of autonomy is valuable and that the capacity for it should be respected. Autonomy is (very roughly) a capacity for self-direction; it is nurtured by, and can be exercised

properly only under, specific social conditions.49 Some writers we would

ordinarily regard as liberals rarely use the term 'autonomy': Mill, Dworkin, and Nozick spring to mind. But even these writers can be

plausibly interpreted as giving a central role to autonomy. John Gray has defended a reading of Mill which attributes to him the central belief that

exercising autonomy is intrinsically valuable.50 Dworkin argues that the state should treat people as equals, that we have an underivative right

47 See, e.g., A. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester 1983), Ch. 3 for such an attribution.

48 Wittgenstein's remarks on family resemblance are clearly relevant here: see Philo-

sophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell 1953), sections 66-7.

49 I allow the possibility that institutions (such as the capitalist market) favored by liberals who profess to value the exercise of autonomy are in fact incapable of

providing the conditions necessary for individuals to develop and exercise their

autonomy properly and adequately. Note also that the core liberal commitment identified does not entail the view that individuals are essentially pre-social or

rationally self-interested.

50 See J. Gray, Mill On Liberty: A Defense (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1983).




to equal concern and respect. The right to equal respect seems to amount to the requirement that each person's capacity to form and act on a

conception of the good - roughly, each person's autonomy - should be respected equally.51 Nozick holds that it is a fundamental moral fact that persons have rights which place side constraints on what one person (or group) can legitimately do to others. He seems to think that these constraints are justified by respect for a person's ability to shape her life in accordance with an overall plan, i.e., respect for her autonomy on one

conception of what autonomy involves.52 The second core liberal commitment is that the exercise of autonomy

should always take priority when it conflicts with other values, or at least that it should take priority unless that would require a very considerable sacrifice of them. Liberals treasure the exercise of autonomy: they value it so highly that some are willing to sanction restricting autonomy in one context only for the sake of greater overall autonomy. Not all liberals hold this view but enough hold it to merit regarding it as a core liberal commitment: Raz,53 Feinberg,54 Dworkin, and Nozick all seem to accept it. Consider these last two. Dworkin thinks that the right to equal respect, which amounts to a right for each person's autonomy to be respected equally, places a constraint on the state - the constraint that it should be neutral between different conceptions of the good - which should not be overridden by the consideration that other values would be

promoted or protected by non-neutral policies.55 Nozick grounds rights in respect for autonomy and contends that they are side constraints, i.e., should not be violated in pursuit of other values except, perhaps, to avoid moral catastrophe.56

The third core liberal commitment is best seen as a cast of mind which consists in a reluctance to regard some specific good or other as an

51 See, e.g., R. Dworkin, 'Liberalism' reprinted in his A Matter of Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985) 181-204.

52 See R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell 1974), Ch. 3, esp. 48-9.

53 See Raz, 419.

54 Buchanan argues that in Feinberg's view once an individual's behavior meets the standard of 'substantial voluntariness,' the value of autonomy should always be

given priority (Buchanan, 'Assessing the Communitarian Critique,' 880). Congruent with this interpretation, Feinberg says it is his tentative thesis that in cases of irreconcilable conflict between community and autonomy, autonomy should be

given priority (Feinberg, 82).

55 See Dworkin.

56 See Nozick, Ch. 3.



232 Andrew Mason

essential ingredient of the good life for everyone. Contemporary liberals want to allow that there is a variety of ways of life in which different

people may flourish, and possibly a variety of ways of life in which each individual may flourish. They generally accept that many different activities and states of affairs have value, and that various things are

necessary conditions for the good life, e.g., food, shelter, cultural mem-

bership, self-respect, but are skeptical when it is claimed that something specific has value and is an essential ingredient of the good life for

everyone.57 They are willing to concede that some general views about what constitutes the good life for everyone may be true - for instance, that we have to exercise significant and varied skills if we are to flourish - and perhaps leave open the possibility that more specific views of this sort may be true, but believe that these require considerable defense before they are acceptable given the apparent evidence that individuals can flourish in a variety of life-styles.

Do these core commitments prevent liberals from truly respecting the value of community, when community is understood in the way I have

proposed? Liberals would have to be wary of radical communitarianism, for that involves the claim that a person who is not a member of a

community cannot flourish because community membership is an essential ingredient of the good life. I think that the rejection of radical communitarianism of this kind is probably justified, however, at least when 'community' is interpreted in accordance with its moral sense.

Although it is perhaps plausible to regard mutual concern as partially constitutive of the good life for everyone, that concern exists in friend-

ship and does not require membership of a community. It is difficult to see how the view that community membership is an essential ingredient of the good life can be defended, unless the meaning of community is stretched so far that it includes friendship.58

A different conception of community might yield the conclusion that a person cannot flourish outside of a community, or some particular community, however. Will Kymlicka, for example, makes a strong case for thinking that the cultural community to which a person belongs is

57 Note that liberals might provide us with a relatively full theory of prudential value, i.e., a detailed account of what kind of things make a person's life go better, without

making claims about what are essential ingredients of the good life for everyone.

58 There are good reasons for resisting this extension: friendship relates one person to another as a particular, concrete individual, whereas in communities (on my under-

standing) persons relate to one another as members of the same group. For an elaboration of this point in relation to friendship, see P. Gilbert, Human Relationships: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell 1991), 103-4.




valuable for her because without the structure of choice it provides she would be incapable of leading her life 'from the inside/ i.e., in accordance with beliefs and values she endorses.59 What a person can find meaning- ful depends to a large extent on her cultural identity, so the destruction of the context of choice provided by membership of a particular cultural community would make it impossible in practice for her to flourish. Community, on the conception I have described, need not coincide with the boundaries of a cultural community, however: a particular cultural community in Kymlicka's sense may extend over a number of communities in my sense; the bond which unites people together in the latter need not be a shared culture. It is only when some community in my sense coincides with the boundaries of a cultural community that continued membership of the former is likely to be necessary in order to flourish. So (in general at least) radical communitarianism cannot be sustained when community is understood in its moral sense. The situ- ation with moderate communitarianism is different, however, and a commitment to it seems both plausible and compatible with the core elements of liberalism which I have identified. Moderate, like radical, communitarianism attributes value to community but makes no claim that community membership is a necessary ingredient of the good life for everyone.

IV Can Liberals Justify Giving Priority to Autonomy when it Conflicts with Community?

So liberals can be communitarians in my sense: they can be moderate communitarians and moderate communitarians are genuine communitarians. But they do not seem to have the same degree of commitment to community that is displayed by others (e.g., socialists of various kinds), for when community conflicts with the exercise of autonomy, they give priority to autonomy. Conflicts between community and the exercise of autonomy occur when permitting individuals to make their own choices undermines, or threatens to undermine, the bonds that facilitate the growth of mutual concern between people in a group. Uncontentious examples are hard to come by, but consider one possibility. Suppose that a religion which not all members of a community practice is portrayed as stupid and corrupt. This might, under certain conditions, severely undermine the respect that practitioners and non-practitioners have for

59 Kymlicka, esp. Ch. 8



234 Andrew Mason

each other, thereby weakening the bonds necessary for mutual concern, and making it hard to preserve the community (perhaps the nation) which serves to unite both groups. There seems to be a conflict here between the exercise of autonomy and the protection of community.

Conflicts between the exercise of autonomy and the protection of community may also occur when a community neither values nor facilitates the growth of personal autonomy. If the socialization of individuals within a particular community encourages unreflective obedience to some authority, or blind conformity to tradition, then (on most conceptions at least)60 this community does not show proper respect for personal autonomy, for it does not nurture their capacities for critical reflection. How should a state respond to a community like this which lies within its jurisdiction if the community demands its own schools and to be allowed to educate its children in ways that stunt rather than develop the capacities necessary for them to exercise autonomy? The issue here is especially troubling if the very survival of the community in question relies upon the suppression or non-en- couragement of choice for its members. Should the state pursue what would in effect be a policy of assimilation by refusing to allow the community its own schools? Of course questions such as this one cannot be answered properly unless we are given more details: we need to know more about the relevant community, its relation to the rest of society, and the range of possible policies the state might adopt. My point is simply that in cases like these, whatever their particular specification, liberals will be inclined to resolve the conflict by giving priority to autonomy because they believe that autonomy should not be sacrificed for other goods except in extreme circumstances. But if community has value of the kind I have described, then it seems implausible to think that liberals could be justified in always giving priority to autonomy when it comes into conflict with community. Even when actual groups within society, or actual nations, are not fully fledged communities in the moral sense, they nevertheless have value of this kind to the extent that they approximate to the ideal. So the problem of how to resolve conflicts between community in the moral

60 But not on all conceptions. Gerald Dworkin, for example, argues for a purely formal

conception of autonomy, according to which a person could be autonomous even if she unreflectively obeys some authority, provided that she came to lead this way of life in the right way: see G. Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), Ch. 2. 1 distinguish a number of different conceptions of autonomy in my 'Autonomy, Liberalism, and State Neu-

trality/ The Philosophical Quarterly 40 (1990), section I.




sense and autonomy cannot be avoided simply by saying that there are no such conflicts in practice because there are no such communities.

What conception of the value of exercising autonomy might justify giving it absolute, or near absolute, priority when it conflicts with other values? Amongst those who believe that leading an autonomous life61 is valuable, some may argue that it is impossible for people to flourish unless they lead such a life because the exercise of autonomy is an essential ingredient of the good life; others may allow that a person can flourish if she leads a heteronomous life, but claim that the exercise of autonomy is a potential ingredient of the good life because her life would go better, other things being equal, if she lived autonomously. We might call the former 'radical individualists' and the latter 'moderate individualists/ in line with the earlier distinction between radical and moderate communitarians. Which of these accounts of the kind of value possessed by an autonomous life is required in order to defend the view that autonomy has priority over other values? It seems to me that liberals would be justified in giving absolute (or near absolute) priority to the exercise of autonomy only if radical individualism can be defended, for it is hard to see how a practice of always giving the exercise of autonomy priority over other values when it conflicts with them could be explained and justified without an appeal to radical individualism.

In order to provide some support for this suggestion, consider the form of moderate individualism which would seem to have the best prospect of providing a justification for always giving priority to the exercise of autonomy: the idea that we have a reason not only to promote the exercise of autonomy, but also to permit a person to do what she has autonomously chosen, and that reasons of the second kind are not reducible to reasons of the first kind.62 This is a standard form that deontological theories take. But even if there is always a reason not to prevent a person doing what she has autonomously chosen, it surely does not provide an absolute constraint against intervention. Couldn't a murderer or an arsonist be acting autonomously? Wouldn't we be permitted to prevent them from carrying out their projects, perhaps even

61 Here I assume that it is the autonomous life which is of primary importance in this context. Many writers regard the notion of an autonomous choice as more basic than that of an autonomous life. There need be no conflict here, however, since an autonomous life can be regarded as one which is, in its broad outlines, chosen

autonomously, even though not every action within it need be the result of an autonomous choice.

62 Cf . Benn's distinction between reasons of respect and reasons of concern in A Theory of Freedom, Ch. 1.



236 Andrew Mason

in the name of maximizing autonomy? If respect for autonomy does not

provide an absolute constraint against intervention, then we need some account of how strong a constraint it imposes and it is unclear why it should be sufficiently strong to warrant the conclusion that we should sacrifice community whenever its protection will involve the curtailment of autonomy on balance. Similar considerations suggest it is unlikely that liberals could justify the priority they give to autonomy by appealing to the idea that autonomy is valuable because a person who leads an autonomous life is more likely to fulfil herself or find self-realization. That would credit the autonomous life with weak instrumental value, and would not by itself justify giving the exercise of autonomy absolute

priority when it conflicts with other values. If the practice of always giving priority to the exercise of autonomy

does require a justification of radical individualism for its defense, two further questions arise: first, can radical individualism be justified? Second, if it can be defended, is it sufficient to justify that practice? I shall

argue that there may be some truth in radical individualism but the truth it contains is insufficient to justify always giving priority to the exercise of autonomy.

An acceptance of radical individualism is potentially at odds with the third core liberal commitment I identified in section III, for it makes the claim that the exercise of autonomy is an essential ingredient of the good life for everyone.63 There may nevertheless be overwhelming reasons for liberals to endorse it. Joseph Raz maintains that if a person lives in an

autonomy-supporting culture, i.e. one that provides the background conditions necessary for leading an autonomous life, she cannot flourish unless to some degree or other she exercises autonomy: '[f]or those who live in an autonomy-supporting environment there is no choice but to be autonomous: there is no other way to prosper in such a society/64 So Raz seems to believe that the thesis of radical individualism is true in relation to an autonomy supporting culture. It is unclear whether this idea could justify giving priority to autonomy whenever it conflicts with

community, however, without begging the question. For the state of affairs which would then make the thesis of radical individualism true

63 Whether radical individualism really is incompatible with this core liberal commitment depends upon whether the notion of an autonomous life is sufficiently general that it involves no specific manner of living. Some argue in favor of a purely formal notion of autonomy (see note 60 above); radical individualism interpreted in terms of such a notion might not be in tension with a suspicion of claims which supposedly identify some specific good as an essential ingredient of the good life for everyone.

64 Raz, 391




would be one in which priority has already been given to autonomy and the autonomous life by providing an environment that uniformly sup- ports autonomous life-styles and discourages non-autonomous ones. If such an environment is created by, amongst other things, a compulsory state educational system which encourages critical reflectiveness, then if that system threatens communities the existence of which relies on their members having contrary dispositions and character traits, priority has already been given to autonomy over community in the design of public institutions.

Let us, however, put aside the worry that Raz's thesis cannot provide non-circular support for the practice of giving priority to autonomy and assess it in its own right. In Raz's view, those who deny the idea that people in autonomy supporting cultures cannot flourish unless they lead autonomous lives are likely to be assuming that an autonomy-supporting culture simply provides more options than one which isn't, whereas in reality the very nature of the options available is different in an autonomy supporting culture. He points out, for example, that

even though the skills and technology involved in certain crafts and professions may be identical in two societies, the significance of pursuing any of them differs

greatly in a society in which everyone follows in his parents' footsteps from one in which there is free mobility of labor. Attitudes to work, expectations from it, and

conceptions of its role in one's life generally are inescapably bound up with whether the different occupations are freely chosen or not. Therefore the very nature and value of these occupations depends on whether they exist in an autonomy-supporting environment or not.65

Without wishing to deny Raz's insight that autonomy supporting cultures cannot simply be conceived as adding more options to the menu available, I think that it does not warrant the conclusion that a person in one who does not lead an autonomous life cannot flourish. Within a society that provides an autonomy supporting environment, there may be groups which have traditions and customs that suppress autonomy. These groups may place their own meanings on the 'options' that are provided by the dominant culture. In Britain, for example, the meaning of marriage is different for those who have a tradition of arranged marriage compared to the majority who regard marriage as an expression of personal choice, yet both can have the same legal status. It would be presumptuous to deny that individuals in a minority culture who

65 Raz,393



238 Andrew Mason

simply conform to its traditions, and whose marriages have been arranged, cannot flourish.

Even when the nature and value of some option is the same for everyone within a particular autonomy-supporting culture, it does not follow that its value is in any way diminished for the person who, for example, takes that option simply because his parents expect him to do so, i.e., who chooses it non-autonomously . In response it might be argued that there are a number of things which have value only if they are chosen and hence only if they are part of a life which is autonomous to some extent at least.66 But even if there are some things which have value only if they are chosen, many others have independent value. Goods may be given and received unquestioningly - non-autonomously - without being deprived of value. Even where manipulation is involved, there need be no loss of value. Someone who is cajoled by well-meaning friends into learning the piano or 'getting an education' may benefit from doing so even if they resent the pressure that was put upon them, and could not properly be said to have chosen this way of spending their time. (Of course, it does not follow that a person's lot would in general be improved overall if some particular good were forced on them since coercing a person is a more serious violation of her autonomy than cajoling or manipulating her, and detracts more severely from her well- being.)

It is no doubt true that in an autonomy supporting culture which, say, contains a state educational system that uniformly encourages critical reflectiveness, many individuals who come through it will not be able to lead non-autonomous lives, since they will have developed character traits which make it impossible for them uncritically and unquestioningly to lead some particular life. This suggests that there is some truth in radical individualism: in an autonomy-supporting environment many individuals (including some who have grown up in families who do not value autonomy and suppress it) will be unable to flourish unless they lead lives that are to some extent autonomous because they will be dissatisfied unless they exercise significant autonomy.

The truth involved in radical individualism, however, is insufficient to justify giving priority to autonomy whenever it conflicts with community. A person can lead a life that is autonomous to a large extent, even when some options are ruled out for him because allowing indi-

66 John Gray claims that J.S. Mill was what I have called a radical individualist - he

says that for Mill 'choice-making is a necessary ingredient of the good life for any man7 (Gray, 81) - and suggests that Mill might have held this position because he believed that many goods are such only if they are chosen.




viduals to choose them would threaten to undermine communal relations. Someone who is prevented from ridiculing a religion that other members of the same community practice need not be prevented from

leading a life that is autonomous in its broad outlines; so even if radical individualism is true, it does not provide sufficient reason always to trade off threats to community in favor of protecting and promoting the exercise of autonomy. Hence even if radical individualism can be defended, it does not provide sufficient reason to endorse the second core liberal commitment identified in section III, viz. that autonomy should take priority over other values except in extreme circumstances: there is insufficient reason to support a practice of always (or nearly always) giving priority to the exercise of autonomy when it conflicts with other values such as community. A proper respect for community, when

community is interpreted in the way I have proposed, surely requires a

recognition that the protection and enhancement of communities may often take priority over the protection and promotion of the exercise of

autonomy.67 Respect for autonomy does not require that we should never restrict the exercise of autonomy except to promote it on balance; nor does it require that the exercise of autonomy should never be interfered with except when a greater interference is threatened.

Received: September, 1991 Revised: August, 1992

67 Cf. Buchanan, 'Assessing the Communitarian Critique/ 878-82. (Buchanan arrives at conclusions related to mine via a different route.)



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Liberalism and the Value of Community

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