Liberals and Communitarians

This is a scholarly examination of the communitarian challenge to liberal political philosophy. The authors start with John Rawls' positions in A Theory of Justice as a canonical starting point. They sketch out a number of themes; the conception of the person, asocial individualism, universalism, subjectivism or objectivism, and anti-perfectionism vs neutrality that they judge recur in the communitarian critiques. This section is followed by discussions of four strains of communitarian thought - Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. These sections are quite well done; good summaries of the works of these individuals with discussions of how their work (explicitly in the case of Sandel and Walzer, implicitly in the case of MacIntyre and Taylor) stands as a critique of Rawls and contemporary strains of liberalism. There is a detailed analysis of Rawls' Political Liberalism, construed here as partly a response to the communitarian critique, again using the identified themes. The authors conclude with 3 chapters looking at alternative liberal political visions, those of Richard Rorty, Ronald Dworkin, and Jonathan Raz. The strengths of the book are the careful analysis and what seems to be fair analysis of all the figures treated in the book. The authors try hard to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of all arguments. They generally feel that liberal political thinkers, particularly Rawls, do well in meeting most of the communitarian critique though they feel that state neutrality is a chink in the liberal theorists' armor. There are some defects. The principal one is what might be called the Rawlsian writing style. In an effort to be very specific and careful in their analysis, the authors have produce a lot of fairly labored prose. I think a lot of the authors' thinking could have been presented in a more clear and direct style. The authors omit an important fact about the most impressive communitarian thinkers - MacIntyre and Taylor. Both are Roman Catholic theists and this is responsible, at least partly, for their fairly teleological views. While the authors conclude with some paragraphs about the potential weaknesses of liberal positions, more than anything, they leave one with an impression of the power of liberal theory, particularly Rawls' theories.