A Moderate Communitarian Proposal

Abstract

O N SOME OF THE long-debated issues between libertarians and communitarians, the two sides are narrowing-if not settling-their differences.' Recognizing this progress makes it possible to focus on the remaining issues that contain some rather challenging and less often discussed topics. Among the issues in which convergence is already progressing are the social nature of the person (an ontological issue), the relations between a community-based definition of virtue and ones provided by individuals (a normative issue), the need to balance individual rights with social and personal responsibilities, and the ways to defend against community majoritarianism. This essay focuses on two of the remaining issues: the source of values that contextuate communities and the implications of one's characterization of human nature for the issues at hand. In this essay, I circumvent the customary review of the relevant literature on the grounds that such reviews have been carried out often and very well.2 Instead, I proceed directly to a modest suggestion for a moderate communitarian position.