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effective boundaries against collectivism; and they do not provide a sound
basis for the self to transcend social roles and assume a critical stance against
society. Sandel's position illustrates the problem:
As
a self-interpreting being, I am able to reflect on my history and in
this sense distance myself from it, but the distance is always
precarious and provisional, the point of reflection never finally
secured outside the history itself.
Macintyre does not dearly separate the self from its social roles and
corresponding ends. He claims that "what is good for me has to be the good
for one who inhabits these roles." Such a separation is necessary
if
individuals
are to evaluate the moral status of practices; indeed , Macintyre concedes
that "there
may
be practices ... which simply are evil ... " for example,
"torture." But in Macintyre's world persons could not criticize evil practices,
for they would not be able to transcend the social roles tied to these practices.
Affirming some measure of individual rights guarantees autonomy. But
Macintyre claims that "natural or human rights ... are fictions." Rights pre–
suppose "the existence of a socially established set of rules ... [in] particular
historical periods under particular social circumstances." Macintyre'S project is
thus one ofduties, of the obligations ofmembership.
Individual rights are not soundly protected in Walzer's philosophy, ei–
ther, as his treatment of personal autonomy demonstrates. "Justice," Walzer
contends, "is relative to social meanings . . . Every substantive account of
distributive justice is a local account." Bound to the particular social meanings
of the community, individuals may be unable to evaluate the moral standing
of their community, that
is,
to be autonomous and critical.
As
James S. Fishkin has indicated in "Defending Equality: A View from
the Cave," Walzer's work "lack[s] shared understandings about how to
interpret whatever shared understandings actually exist among us in our
culture," that
Spheres of justice
establishes no sure footing for the au–
tonomous individual, no map for how to disagree with or how to challenge
shared meanings.
Individual rights, then, are not secured in these communitarian visions.
Communitarians indirectly have acknowledged this difficulty; indeed, in their
attempts to avoid collectivistic implications of their work, they point the way
to a synthetic position. Macintyre, for example, writes that exercising the
virtues does not entail "... the liquidation of the self into a set of demarcated
areas of role-playing." Sandel talks of the "enduring attachments and
commitments which taken together
partly
define the person I am." Walzer
admits (although vaguely) that individual persons may not be entirely
subjected to "shared meanings" when he refers to "those deeper opinions that
