Twilight of the Republic
Liberalism, communitarianism and republicanism
Ying Qi and Liu Jianjian, eds
Jilin Publishing Group Co., Ltd.; 2007-08.
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The main text is about 4600 words, the abstract is about 550 words, please pay attention to the context of the contact.
The red characters are the original title, and the bold characters are the original standards. Editor: Yang Yuanping.
Evaluate communitarian critiques of liberalism
[U.S.] Alan Buchanan/Wen
Zeng Jimao Mao Xinggui/Translation
Ying Qi/School
introduction
summary:
Liberal Political Thesis:
The State should enforce the fundamental civil and political rights of individuals, which, by and large, can be found in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution and in John Rawls' first principle of justice.
These rights include the right to freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom of association, the right to political participation (including the right to vote and the right to stand for office) and the right to be tried in due process of law in judicial proceedings.
The proper function of the State is to guarantee fundamental individual freedoms, not to make its citizens more virtuous or to impose on them any particular or substantial conception of good life. -p158
The most legitimate criticism of the liberal political thesis of communitarianism is the view that liberals who support the primacy of individual civil and political rights fail to realize that the prioritization of these rights can sometimes be justifiably revoked in order to protect the interests of the community or to preserve the values of the community. -p159
Radical communitarians will agree with the universality of reasons that the whole framework of individual rights should be dismantled and replaced by a teleological political morality in which a commonly held conception of social goodness is the fundamental end;
Moderate communitarians, on the other hand, can acknowledge that the Bill of Rights, including individual rights to freedom of expression, has its role, but argues that the interests of the community should sometimes take precedence over those rights, or at least can be used to justify limiting the scope of these rights. -p160
Unless communitarianism completely contradicts liberal political discourse, or requires major revisions to liberal political discourse, communitarian perspectives on self, justice, obligation, commitment, choice, and community values will not be so radical or as exciting as they seem. -p161
body:
P156
In Western countries, liberal government is the dominant form of political organization, so liberalism is also prevalent in Anglo-American political philosophy. Over the past few years, however, under the banner of "communitarianism," there has been a strong challenge to liberal political philosophy, which has also meant challenging the political system that liberal philosophy seeks to defend. In the writings of Alasdale McIntyre, Charles Taylor, michael Sandel, and others, the challenge of communitarianism to liberalism is most powerfully expressed. My task in this article is to articulate the most critical elements of the communitarian critique of liberalism, and then to evaluate the merits of these critiques by examining whether liberalism responds effectively to them.
There are as many communitarian scholars as there may be communitarian positions. However, there are some common ideas that run through most important communitarian writings. [2] The basic critique of liberalism by communitarianism seems to have the following:
(1) Liberalism has belittled, ignored, and/or eroded community, which is a fundamental and irreplaceable component of the human good life.
P157
(2) Liberalism underestimates the importance of political life—it understands political union as merely an instrumental good— and it does not see the fundamental importance of full participation in the political community for the good life of mankind.
(3) Liberalism fails to provide a sufficient explanation of, or is incompatible with, the importance of certain types of obligations and commitments. These obligations and commitments are not chosen or explicitly undertaken by us by way of contract or promise, such as the obligation of the family to safeguard our community or the state.
(4) Liberalism presupposes a flawed notion of the self, failing to recognize that the self is "rooted" in, and to some extent constituted by, shared commitments and values that are not objects of choice.
(5) Liberalism inappropriately exalts justice as the "primary virtue of the social system," failing to see that justice is at best a remedial virtue that is only needed when the higher virtues of the community collapse. (My purpose, however, is not to interpret the original meaning of those communitarian writings.) My aim is to reconstruct and evaluate the most interesting positions that can be called communitarianism, without limiting myself to the explicit views of any particular communitarian scholar. ）
[2] Here I do not intend to classify Unger among the communitarians I will examine, partly because some of the characteristics of his writings make one wonder whether he should be considered a communitarian, and partly because he is more closely concerned with criticism of the liberal legal system than the theorists I examine. Nor is this article directly discussing Michael Walzer's masterpiece, and while he may have shared some of his tenets with major communitarians such as McIntyre and Sandel, it seems to me that he is closer to liberalism in some ways.
Once we try to interpret these rather abstract and complex manifestos and depict the connections between them, the task of refactoring becomes daunting. It is fair to say that the eloquence and rhetorical power of communitarian scholars often exceeds their ability to articulate their thesis, beyond their ability to articulate the logical structure of their arguments. Another obstacle to wisely assessing the challenge of communitarianism to liberalism lies not in the elusiveness of the critiques posed by communitarians, but in an accurate understanding of what the targets of its critiques really are. When communitarians criticize liberalism, they sometimes seem to be refuting a fairly specific view of political philosophy, according to which the most basic political principles are those that recognize the civil and political rights of the individual. But sometimes communitarians seem to be directing their firepower at liberalism as a more universal idea—a unique view of people and society. A typical communitarian strategy,perhaps most evident in Sandel and Taylor's writings(p158) is to critique liberal political discourse by showing the flaws in those deeper beliefs about people and society on which liberal political discourse is supposed to depend. I will point out, however, that communitarians fail to realize the diversity of the frameworks of defense that can be used to underpin liberal political arguments. I think liberal political theories can survive even if those views that communitarians properly criticize.
P158
My strategy, therefore, is not to define liberalism as a self-theory, or a theory of human nature, or as a theory of society, but as a minimum political philosophy, or more precisely, as a single thesis on the proper scope and limits of state power. The most obvious benefit of this strategy is that it allows us to clearly distinguish between a view of individual rights (which is often associated with liberalism) and the various reasons that might be used to support it (including those that can be considered "liberal" and those that cannot be considered "liberal").
By my definition, the liberal political thesis is that the state should enforce the fundamental civil and political rights of the individual, which, by and large, can be found in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution and in John Rawls' first principle of justice. These rights include the right to freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom of association, the right to political participation (including the right to vote and the right to stand for office) and the right to be tried in due process of law in judicial proceedings. This thesis is closely related to another one associated with liberalism, and in fact it seems to imply the thesis that the proper function of the state is to guarantee fundamental individual freedoms, not to make its citizens more virtuous or to impose on citizens any particular or substantial conception of good life. The connection between these two theories is clear: if the state implements basic civil and political rights, it will freely pursue their own ideas of goodness within loose restrictions, and will avoid imposing on citizens any particular idea of goodness or virtue.
The liberal political thesis thus defined is neutral on the question of whether or not the state can or should implement redistribution. This should also be the case, because those who call themselves liberals are often divisive when it comes to redistribution. Classical liberals limited the proper functioning of the state to the protection of individual civil and political rights (although private property rights were added to this list). Liberals who support the welfare state, while generally giving priority to the protection of individual civil and political rights, still recognize the redistributive function of the state, at least when conditions exist to allow for the "meaningful" exercise of these rights. [1] (p159) However, as far as I know, contemporary communitarians do not argue that appreciating the good of community requires a concept of state redistribution that differs from the concept of state redistribution of functions advocated by welfare state liberalism. Interestingly, they do not argue, at least not explicitly, that communities, rather than individuals (or not only individuals, but communities) have the right to share in the wealth of society. [2] In this article, the concept of group distribution rights will not be examined. Instead, I will focus on the idea that I think communitarian writings more clearly imply that there is a major problem, or at least an exaggeration, of the primacy of individual civil and political rights, which are often associated with liberalism.
[1] See, e.g., J. Rawls， Theory ofJustice（Cambridge，Mass： Harvard University Press，1971），pp.244-245。 (For Chinese translation, see Rawls: On Justice, translated by He Huaihong et al., China Social Science Press, 1988, pp. 234-235.) —Translation)
[2] For example, it is assumed that the protection of the unique culture of a minority within a nation-state depends on the protection of its language. Under what conditions , if so , can such a group be said to have the right to have its language recognized as the official language of the state, with public resources paying for all the expenses incurred therefrom, or at least the right to finance the education of that language with a portion of the revenue? A more fundamental idea of distributive right would be the fundamental right of certain peoples or political groups within the nation-state to share in the wealth of society for any (legitimate) purpose chosen by that group or its leaders or their representatives, just as individuals have this right (in the view of standard welfare-state liberals). If we understand in the strict sense the idea that groups have the independent moral status that liberalism confers on individuals, then the general idea of the right to distribute groups seems reasonable at first glance. Another, more familiar example of collective rights is the right to political self-determination or sovereignty.
P159
Even if we settle for this initial simplification, which focuses on liberal political discourse, the nature of the communitarian accusations remains unclear. We can distinguish between two rather different objections to liberal political discourse. The first is a radical communitarian view that falsely rejects the civil and political rights of individuals, attempting to replace the discussion of individual rights either with teleological talk about the interests of the community or with a discussion of the rights of the community. On the contrary, moderate communitarians recognize the civil and political rights of individuals, but do not recognize that they have the same priority that liberals attribute to them. However, this latter proposition remains ambiguous, depending on how strong we think the priority of liberalism really is. For Rawls, this priority seems to be as strong as it is, because he gives basic freedom lexical priority. (p160) I will explore later the possibility that the most legitimate criticism of libertarian political discourse by communitarianism is the view that liberals who support the primacy of individual civil and political rights do not realize that in order to protect the interests of the community or to preserve the values of the community, the priority of these rights can sometimes be justifiably revoked.
P160
This statement is useful because it identifies the main theoretical and practical differences between liberals and communitarians without imposing on liberals the irrational view that the civil and political rights of the individual are absolute, that is, that there can never be a legitimate reason to intervene or restrict them. More appropriately, the focus of the disagreement is the question: on what grounds is it justified to interfere with or restrict these rights? Moderate communitarians can be seen as denying that only the need to protect the rights of other individuals can justify interfering with or restricting those rights.
Of course, it may be difficult to say whether the very dismissive comments of communitarians about individual rights are based on a fundamental rejection of the framework as a whole (because of the preference for a teleological approach in which the purpose is the interest of the community) or on the more moderate accusation that individual rights are not as important as liberals believe to be, and that they can be interfered with or restricted on the grounds of community interests. For example, in briefly addressing the controversy over the legal prohibition of "pornography," Sandel argues that a community should be empowered to protect itself from an activity that "offends its way of life." Both radical communitarians and moderate communitarians can agree with Sandel that an individual's right to free speech under the First Amendment should not prevent communities from passing ordinances prohibiting "pornography." But radical communitarians will agree on the grounds of universality that the whole framework of individual rights should be dismantled and replaced by a teleological political morality in which a commonly held idea of social good is the fundamental end, while moderate communitarians can recognize the usefulness of the Bill of Rights, including the individual right to freedom of expression, but argue that the interests of the community should sometimes take precedence over these rights, or at least can be used to justify limiting the scope of these rights.
The radical communitarian view is a bold and fundamental challenge to mainstream Western political philosophy and is therefore well worth exploring. (p161) In addition, reading some communitarians like McIntyre and Sandel who emphasize their teleological obsession and hostility to the theory of rights is at least strongly reminiscent of the radical communitarian view.
P161
Radical communitarians have two basic strategies to choose from. On the one hand, it can directly attack liberal political theories, and a society in which liberal political theories are practised — a society in which the state imposes the basic civil and political rights of the individual — ignores a fundamental human interest, the interest of the community, or fosters a flawed view of self or choice, or undermines commitments. Communitarians, on the other hand, can argue that the justifications used to justify liberal political discourse either contain invalid reasoning or unacceptable clear preconditions, or indirectly attack liberal political discourse by relying on unspeakable false presuppositions about choice, obligation, human nature, self, or the nature of society. In sum, a successful radical communitarian critique must either attack the consequences of pursuing liberal political arguments, or the clear justifications used to support them, or the assumptions of those justifications. If we distinguish between these different lines of attack, considerable progress has been made.
So there are two reasons to single out liberal political discourse as a target for communitarianism. In the first place, it becomes obvious that liberal political thesis is a conclusion (a normative conclusion), and it reminds us that the same conclusion can be supported by more than one line of defense. Second, focusing on liberal political discourse will allow us to determine the practical implications of communitarian criticism. Unless communitarianism completely contradicts liberal political discourse, or requires major revisions to liberal political discourse, communitarian perspectives on self, justice, obligation, commitment, choice, and community values will not be so radical or as exciting as they seem.
directory
The mourning of the setting sun, or the anticipation of the sun?
--Written before the Republic Translation Series- Ying Qi... 1
The Problem of the Republicans ([American] Don Herzog) ... 1
Republicanism: A Conceptual Journey ([Us]) Daniel Rogers) · 24
The Bankruptcy of the Republican School ([Italian] Rigi Marco Bassani)...· 64
Natural Rights VS. Common Law: A Hopeless Dichotomy... 65
Republican Synthesis... 69
The republican as a cowardly communitarian... 80
Rousseau: The True Hero of Republicanism... 86
Counter-revolution in historiography... 89
Machiavelli's Opposition to Republicanism: On the "Guichardini Moment" of the Cambridge School ([American] John McCormick)...· 94
Introduction... 94
Machiavelli, Republicanism and Democracy... 97
The Cambridge School's Interpretation of Machiavelli and Republicanism... 100
Pokock and Guicciardini's republican model... 100
Skinner and Republican Liberalism... 108
Veroli, the balance of the people and the indulgence of the elite... 113
Petit's controversy with the elite... 116
Conclusion... 120
The Elegy of Liberalism: Constitutional Freedom and the Resurrection of Community ([U.S.] H. N. Hirsch)··· 128
Evaluating communitarian critiques of liberalism ([American] Alan Buchanan) · · 156
Introduction... 156
Dissent: Liberalism belittles, ignores, and/or erodes communities... 161
How liberal individual rights protect communities... 163
Why insist on individual rights? 168
Dissent: Liberalism did not actively support communities and hindered their creation... 172
Connecting the self with others in a liberal society... 174
Can radical communitarians accommodate commitment? 179
Explaining the normative effects of apparent obligations... 180
The Status of Justice and the Pluralist Assumption... 185
Integrating the values of the community into the core of liberal theory... 187
Conclusion... 191
Communitarian Critique of Liberalism (Michael Walzer)...) 193
The Liberal/Communitarian Controversy and the Ethics of Interaction ([U.S.] Kenneth Burnes) · 215
Legal, Political, and Community Advocacy ([U.S.] Stephen Gardbaum)...· 235
Introduction... 235
Communities in Contemporary Moral and Political Theory... 240
A. Three communitarian claims... 240
B. Three communitarian arguments... 242
C. Cultivating the value of community... 246
D. Agency Debate· 253
E. Meta-Lun Theory Debate· 258
F. Political Debate: The Nature and Diversity of Substantive Communities... 274
Communities in Contemporary Legal Theory... 290
A. Anti-atomism... 290
B. The Community of Metaethics... 294
C. Conservative Community· 305
D. Republican revivalists... 308
E. Critical Jurists 312
Conclusion... 317
Rethinking: Republicanism vs. Liberalism? ([Beauty] Jeffrey Isaac)...) 321
What liberalism and republicanism have in common... 324
Republicanism: A Theoretical Overview... 330
Take Harrington, for example... 336
The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie: Taking Adam Smith as an Example... 349
The Revision of Liberalism... 354
Conclusion... 357
Republican Critique of Liberalism ([U.S.]Alan Parton)...) 361
Skinner's account of instrumental republicanism... 365
Skinner's Critique and Liberal Rebuttal 367
1. Liberal belief in the doctrine of the "invisible hand"... 368
2. Liberal belief in the superiority of rights over duties... 369
3. The flaws of liberalism in the concept of law... 370
4. Liberal hostility to utilitarianism... 371
5. Misconceptions about negative freedom... 372
Taylor's Reconstruction... 375
Civic Virtue and Patriotism... 377
Patriotism, Neutrality and Justice... 381
Conclusion... 384
Liberal and republican views of liberty ([American] Charles Larmor) · 386
Three Concepts of Freedom... 387
Freedom and autonomy... 391
Freedom and Pluralism... 394
Republican vs Liberal... 397
Domination and respect... 403
Twilight of the Republic? ([f] Jean-Spiez)...· 411
Political Republicanism and The Supreme Good Republicanism ([U.S.] Paul Weissomann) · 427
The Cosmopolitan Vision of Republican Citizenship ([plus] Roy Zhang) · · 456
David Miller on Republican Citizenship and Nationalism... 458
The Liberal Approach to Institutional Cosmopolitanism... 465
Cosmopolitan democracy and divided sovereignty... 466
From electoral representation to polemical democracy... 469
Conclusion... 472
Acknowledgements... 476
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The above is for reference only, thank you!
If the two do not have the same heart, how can they go together? (Amos 3:3)
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