AMITAI ETZIONI
217
burden." Indeed, Rawls contends that a "well-ordered society" founded on
the principles ofjustice possesses "shared final ends and common activities
valued for themselves." Rawls sees just institutions as "good in themselves"
because they provide each individual's life with "a more ample and rich
structure than it would otherwise have." That is, individuals may see and in–
deed benefit from ajust society, but it is
they
who change it, for
their
indi–
vidual purposes. Dworkin, too, has argued that attempts to impose any pre–
ferred way of life are illegitimate.
In sum, moderate formulations of CLP allow for some vision of com–
munity, beyond a mere aggregation of self-interested individuals; however,
CLP, including Rawls and Dworkin, hold the community to be secondary,
derivative and reflecting a rational choice of the individual- with whom
all
basic rights rest. Yet CLP have shown some flexibility: recently, both Rawls
and Dworkin have modified their positions in response to communitarian
criticisms. In his essay, "Justice as Fairness," Rawls conceded that the basic
values of the representative moral agent - now called the"citizen" - derive
not from intuitions but from "an 'overlapping consensus' that undergirds the
modern state." Further, Rawls acknowledges social and historical particulars–
namely, the "democratic society reflected in contemporary, advanced, West–
ern, industrialized nations" - that implicitly inform
A Theory
ofjustice.
In kind,
Dworkin now considers his fundamental concept of "equal concern and re–
spect" to be historically and politically embedded. As John
R.
Wallach ob–
served in "Liberals, Communitarians, and the Tasks of Political Theory":
Contrary to communitarians who fault Rawls and Dworkin for not
paying attention
to
the "shared meanings and understandings" of
historical societies, each claims that the ideas he previously called in–
tuitive presuppose them.
It seems that CLP, both through their critics and their advocates, have
moved toward recognizing an important sphere beyond the individual.
However, despite these steps, CLP remain committed to principles that must
be modified and supplemented if the middle ground is to be evolved. As
Wallach notes, to
claim
that "the debate between liberals and communitarians
has collapsed ... overstates the distance Rawls has traveled since 1971."
First, liberals continue to hold that individual liberty, protected by individual
rights, takes priority over any and
all
common good, rather than treating (as
I
will
attempt to) individual and community as moral equals. Second, the lib–
eral concept of the individual remains atomistic at least in that liberals do not
recognize community as a constitutive element of the sel£
Moderate Communitarianism.
While CLP maintain the primacy of the
rights-bearing individual, communitarians seek to establish moral coherence
