Vol. 57 No. 2 1990 - page 215

Amitai Etzioni
LIBERALS AND COMMUNITARIANS
I.
Toward the I
&
We
Communitarians charge contemporary liberal philosophers (CLP)
with an excessive focus on individual rights and with neglect of obligations to
the community, to shared virtues and common purposes. While CLP evince a
measure of commitment to a moderate vision of community, they contend
that communitarians provide an insufficient basis for individual rights. Com–
munitarians, in turn, indirectly acknowledge the need to ensure these rights in
order to avoid collectivism. Out of these charges and countercharges, a syn–
thesis begins to suggest itself.
Less Individualism.
In
A Theory ofjustice,
John Rawls founded a con–
ception ofjustice on respect for the individual. Individual persons and their
self-chosen ends are primary, the common good or general welfare, subordi–
nate:
Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even
the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason
justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a
greater good shared by others.
Rawls arrived at his notion ofjustice by considering what individuals in
the "original position," a reformulation of the state of nature, would choose as
"principles of a justice for the basic structure of society." In this hypothetical
"original position" individuals are "rational persons concerned to advance their
interests," stripped of particular attributes. They debate behind a "veil of ig–
norance" which prevents them from knowing their future position in society.
This uncertainty leads these rational individuals to choose ajust order. For
example, no one in the original position would rationally argue for a system
that favors men, because that person might "end up" a woman. Rawls's phi–
losophy thus emphasizes the primacy of the individual, and it derives social
attributes mainly from the aggregation of individuals' rational choices. What–
ever concept of community or substantive good Rawls's theory allows for is
based on the preferred choices of individuals. The CLP conception of the self
is
based on the Kantian transcendental ego - a subject given prior to its ends.
Rawls reformulates the Kantian subject, stripping away its metaphysical
trappings, recasting it within "the canons of a reasonable empiricism." How–
ever, the basic concept of the Kantian ego remains intact: the native of the
Rawlsian original position, the abstract self, "is prior to the ends which are
affirmed by
it. ..."
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