AMITAI ETZIONI
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members of relevant communities will consider compatible with their princi–
ples? For example, in 1983 Morris Janowitz highlighted the problem by citing
a study of young Americans, who seek to have the right to be tried before a
jury of their peers, but not the obligation to serve as jurors.
A more complex application is to be found in the pornography debate.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, for example, has written an interesting article on the
philosophic implications of the opposing positions taken by feminists and civil
libertarians (as well as neoconservatives) on the question of pornography,
"The New Porn Wars: The Indecent Choice Between Censorship and Civil
Libertarianism"
(The New Republic,
June 25, 1984). Feminists, she noted,
have chosen to fight pornography with the same conceptual tool that liber–
tarians use to defend it - the language of individual rights. Feminists argue
that pornography violates the civil rights of (individual) women; libertarians
respond that limiting pornography violates the right to free speech. Elshtain
concluded that ". . . the idea of [individual] 'rights' cannot bear
all
the weight
being placed upon it. But without reference to rights, how can someone press
the case for cultural change in a
liberal
society?" She approached the problem
partly from a communitarian perspective, suggesting that "communities
should have the power to regulate and to curb open and visible assaults on
human dignity. Thus, Elshtain implicitly conferred upon the community a
prerogative to determine the boundaries of a particular value - human dig–
nity. She limited this prerogative, however, by warning that communities
"should not seek, as groups avowedly do, to eradicate or condemn either
sexual fantasies or erotic representations as such."
In her book,
Democratic Education ,
Amy Gutmann, seeking to formu–
late a position recognizing both individual rights and a substantive good, has
developed some basic principles for the I &We paradigm. Gutmann's posi–
tion rests on the belief that the democratic society, broadly conceived, is a
"good" society, and thus worth preserving. In all societies, she argues,
institutions shape members; only in a democratic society do members have
an
effective voice in shaping those institutions.
Gutmann further contends that each generation must be educated "to
deliberate criticaIJy among a range of good lives and good societies." Two
principles secure this deliberation against the possibility that democratic com–
munities may undermine themselves. The first, nondiscrimination, requires
that all members of the community acquire the capacity to deliberate, for
otherwise, the participation necessary to democracy will be endangered. The
second principle, nonrepression, prevents the state and any group within it
from restricting access to alternative views, enabling "rational consideration
of different ways of life." In Gutmann's terms, nonrepression thus maintains
that "nobody be
required
not to be exposed to alternative viewpoints"
(private communication).
. Gutmann's approach is usefuIJy applied in situations such as a Ten-
