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DOI: 10.1177/072551369102800103 1991 28: 18Thesis Eleven

The Limits of Liberalism: On the Political-Ethical Discussion On Communitarianism Axel Honneth

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THE LIMITS OF LIBERALISM:

ON THE POLITICAL-ETHICAL

DISCUSSION ON

COMMUNITARIANISM

Axel Honneth

One of the experiences which decisively shapes consciousness in contempo-rary Western industrial societies is the perception of an accelerated process of

personalindividualization.

Althoughthis

processhas been evaluated in both

positive and negative terms, the individuals increasing detachment from pre-given social forms has come to be understood as a determining feature of ourage, even to the point of heralding a new social epoch. The socio-structuraldevelopments which are the objective basis for the changed nature of experi-ence have in the meantime been approximately defined by sociology: taken asa whole, the social liberation from traditional role expectations, the econom-ically conditioned expansion of individual options for action, and finally thecultural erosion of social milieus which created a sense of community, have theeffect of granting the individual the ability to exhibit an ever greater measure ofautonomous achievement and thus augment the degree of individualization.l 1In philosophy, the idea of &dquo;post-modernism&dquo;which arose from a critique ofreason was the first reaction to these changed social conditions. This approach

understands the specific process of the accelerated pluralization of individuallife-orientations to be a result of the definitive overcoming of universalisticmoral principles; and, in an affirmative mode, declares this to be the liber-ation of consciousness from false &dquo;generalities&dquo;.2In the meantime, however,the new situation of experience has also been reflected in an incomparablymore important form-more important because it is philosophically instructiveand theoretically elucidating-by a debate which has thus far ensued for themost part in the United States and which focuses on the foundations of politicalethics as a whole. I am thinking of the criticism which various authors currentlylevel at the atomistic premises of the liberalism represented above all in thework of John Rawls. Here, an awareness of the growing individualization of

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our society takes the form of an increased attention paid to the intersubjectiveconditions of human socialization. The philosophical questioning of the liberaltradition goes hand in hand with sociological investigations which attempt todemonstrate that the dissolution of value communities based on tradition givesrise to increased suffering among subjects owing to an absence of social con-tact. The confluence of philosophical and sociological critiques of liberalismyields a powerful theoretical current which has meanwhile come to be termed&dquo;communitarianism&dquo;.3

It would at first glance seem possible to reduce the point of contentionin the debate between the liberals and the so-called &dquo;communitarians&dquo;to the

question of the normative priority accorded either to the ideal of equal rightsor to the vision of successful communities. The liberal position, indebted asit is to the tradition of contractarian theory, regards the expansion of legally-guaranteed liberties as the key point on which political ethics must focus, andthis is a point, incidentally, which can only be justified in rational terms. Bycontrast, the communitarian position, which for its part is bound to the Clas-sical Greek doctrine of the polis, or Hegels notion of ethical life, advocatesthat all successful forms of political coexistence depend on the presence ofcommonly-shared values. In other words, whereas for liberals the idea ofmaximum, equally-distributed rights serves as the overriding standard of po-litical justice, the idea of socially-binding value orientations functions amongthe communitarians as the decisive normative criterion for judging societies.However if the difference is left in such simple terms, then the importance ofthe controversy may well be overlooked, especially in a philosophical senseand, moreover, in its significance for an interpretation of the current state ofexperience. For the core of the debate hinges on the question of how a politi-cal ethics must take account of the conditions of freedom of socialized subjectsif it is to arrive at a convincing concept of a just society. It is upon this bone ofcontention between the liberals and the communitarians that I shall focus: an

attemptwill be made to trace the debate in terms of the

sequencethat would

rationally emerge if the arguments exchanged thus far were reconstructed interms of their rational content. In so doing, I shall defend the liberals po-sition up to the point where, in my view, the communitarians have a better,albeit not yet very clear, argument. The ultimate goal of my reconstruction isto make a contribution to the question of which philosophical considerationscan be adduced as the basis for an appropriate judgement of the trends towardindividualization in our society mentioned at the outset.

I shall begin with the objection with which Michael Sandel to a certainextent opened the debate in question: namely that John Rawlss theory ofjustice presupposes an atomistic concept of the subject and that this preventshim from recognizing the necessary priority of the good, in other words, ofcommonly-shared values, over the dimension of &dquo;rights&dquo;.Rawls is able tocome up with plausible arguments to refute this criticism by sacrificing the



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overly &dquo;narrow&dquo;concept of the subject which he had taken from the traditionof contractarian theory, while not losing sight of the heuristic aims of his theoryof justice (I). The communitarians can only react to Rawls taking this step, asI will then attempt to show, by relating their proposal, namely the priority ofthe good, to the dimension of individual self-realization rather than to that ofpersonal autonomy.-In other words, they incorporate the distinction between&dquo;negative&dquo;and &dquo;positive&dquo;liberties into the justifications they propose. AlthoughRawls has to accept the argument if it is couched in these terms, he can, for hispart, now put the same question to the communitarians, asking whether theycan distinguish normatively between various substantive contents of the &dquo;goo(II). The third will establish that the communitarians are inadvertently forcedto sacrifice their neo-Aristotelian premises in their attempt to supply an answerto Rawlss return question. For they can only uphold their idea that individualself-realization must be linked back to an horizon of commonly-shared values,in the face of the liberals skepticism, by substituting the moral justification ofmorality with a normative concept of ethical life (III).

I.

The normative core of Rawlss theory consists of two principles which areintended to balance out the relation between the goal of maximum rights andthe law of economic justice. As is well-known, he initially attempted to justifythe claim that his theory of justice made to universality by means of a con-ception based on contractual law. Rawls begins with the fictitious conditionsof an original position in which subjects, with a purposive rational orientationand under a veil of ignorance vis-d-vis their future social position, deliberatewith each other as to which organizational form of society they should con-tractually agree upon. Under these conditions, they would, in all likelihood,decide on those two principles of justice which Rawls previously designated asnormative. Rawls conceives of the conclusion of a contract as a constitutionalchoice that can be traced by decision theory-made between subjects orientedtowards utilitarian benefit. The assembled individuals agree when drawing uptheir decision on the principle of the greatest possible freedoms and the prin-ciple of difference. This occurs because, taken together and under conditionsin which the parties do not know what their future positions in society will be,the two principles can guarantee them an optimum of primary goods necessaryfor the self-realization of each person.4Now, the concept of the human subjectlatent in this contractarian conception is initially taken up by Michael Sandel tosupport his philosophical critique of liberalism and this set the specific coursethe debate would subsequently take. To Sandels mind, liberalism is linked sys-tematically to the above concept of the subject by maintaining that the idea ofequal rights can only be given normative priority over a concept of the &dquo;gooif the

subjectsare

erroneously thoughtof as

beings who monologicallyselect



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their goals.5Sandels original criticism of Rawls consequently comprises twosteps: he first has to demonstrate the inappropriateness of the model of thehuman subject presupposed in contractarian theory in order then to prove thatthe fundamental liberal idea depends substantively on this incorrect conceptof the subject.

In order to effect the first task Sandel utilizes an anthropology which, whileremaining indeterminate in terms of methodology, largely takes an implicitlyphenomenological approach. 6 According to Sandel, if, as in Rawlss theory, theconclusion of a contract is conceived of as a process made in terms of decision

theory then the following characteristics are necessarily attributed to humanbeings: they are isolated and autonomous, and choose individual goals fortheir lives in terms of a purposive-rational calculation of their respective inter-ests. To speak here of a &dquo;choice&dquo;also means that the persons relationship tohis life goals is construed as one of subsequent control. For the subject is as-sumed always to possess sufficient distance from all possible value orientationsto enable him/her to choose amongst them free from external constraint as ifs/he were in the act deciding to buy something. To this degree, however, themoral person presumed to exist in this conception is not only isolated and au-tonomous, but rather also an initially unsituated, and to a certain extent neutral,subject: we have to do with &dquo;asubject of possession, individuated in advanceand given prior to its ends&dquo;.7Opposing this concept, Sandel initially proposesthat subjects cannot be meaningfully described independently of the life goalsand value orientations which respectively determine them. Sandel argues thatevery human person has already been shaped so constitutively by some lifegoal or other that s/he in principle cannot ever be in that situation presupposedfor the act of selection-namely, of being able to adopt a distanced attitudetoward all possible life goals. It is therefore wrong to proceed from a conceptof a subject that is unsituated and ethically neutral. Rather, we must alwayscount on there being persons who are already &dquo;radicallysituated&dquo;, 8or, in otherwords,

peoplewho have

alwaysconceived of themselves within the horizon

of specific notions of value and who have acted within that framework. AsSandel notes:

The problem here (is) not the distance of self from its ends, but ratherthe fact that the self, being unbounded in advance, (is) awash withpossible purposes and ends, all impinging indiscriminately on itsidentity, threatening always to engulf it. The challenge to the agent (is)to sort out the limits or the boundaries of the self, to distinguish thesubject from its situation, and so to forge its identity&dquo;.9

Given that these identity-generating life goals are, in addition, only ac-quired intersubjectively, namely by means of communicatively-mediated pro-cesses of cultural socialization, the initial underlying assumption of indepen-dent subjects who are isolated from one another is untenable in theoretical



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terms. For no matter how individually distinct a person may be, s/he drawshis/her understanding of himself/herself from a cultural store of intersubjec-tively-shared value orientations; consequently, it is, philosophically speak-ing, impossible to conceive of the human subject as a solipsistic, pre-societalbeing.

Assuming that this approach does demonstrate that the concept of thesubject presupposed by Rawls is theoretically untenable, indeed wrong, thenthe next step in this refutation of Rawlss position must consist in proving thatthe basic liberal idea does hinge substantively on such a concept of the sub-ject. Sandel embarks on solving the problems this entails by attempting toshow that the idea of equal rights can only be granted normative precedenceover a concept of the good life given the anthropological premise of isolatedand unsituated subjects. For, according to his argument, it is only meaning-ful to regard the legal protection of the individuals freedom of decision asthe central goal of a just society if subjects are thought of as beings each ofwhom monologically chooses his or her goals. If we assume of subjects thatthey define their value premises in an isolated process of choice, then theymust initially have their individual autonomy protected from the normative in-fluences of the community. The institution of equal rights constitutes such aneutral protection facility which, because it involves no further-reaching defini-tion of the common good, leaves every individual subject to make his/her owndecision. For this reason, the basic liberal idea of universal basic rights is thenecessary complement to an atomistic conception of the moral person: &dquo;Onthe right-based ethics, it is precisely because we are essentially separate, inde-pendent selves that we need a neutral framework, a framework of rights thatrefuses to choose among competing purposes and ends. If the self is prior toits ends, then the right must be prior to the good&dquo;.10If the subject, on the otherhand, is conceived of as having been socialized through communication andas searching for his/her life goals not on his/her own but through intercoursewith others, then the

preferentialrelationship of &dquo;rights&dquo;and &dquo;values&dquo;has, as

it were, to be inverted. For in order to be able to arrive at an appropriate un-derstanding of him/herself free from external constraints, the individual has tobe able to presume the existence of an intact community in which s/he can besure of the solidarity of all others. To this extent, the concept of the &dquo;radicalsituated&dquo;person derived from the critique of atomism necessarily engendersthe normative precedence of the vision of commonly-shared values over theidea of equal rights.

It is this second step in Sandels argument which Rawls can now criti-cize with good reason in order to defend the underlying idea of his theory ofjustice. Even if, or so one might argue if putting the case on his behalf, theidentity of an individual is always constituted by a specific interpretation ofthe good life, the idea of equal rights has to be accorded a preferential sta-

tus in responding to the question of what the form ofa

well-ordered society



7/18

23

should be. For the individual search for the good-and it would in fact bemore appropriate to describe this as a process of communicatively-mediatedself-understanding than as an act of monological choice-requires that the so-cial collective protect certain basic rights and a basic standard of living. The

legal guarantee of personal autonomy is not something which stands in theway of the intersubjective process of personal identity formation, but rather,conversely, first makes it feasible in society. Without a certain measure of eco-nomic prosperity and without legally guaranteed basic liberties the individualsubject would not be in a position in the first place to deal with alternativeideas of the good without being subject to external constraint and if neces-sary to derive benefit from them for his own life plan. There is consequentlyno logically compelling link that obtains between the atomistic concept of the&dquo;unsituated&dquo;subject and the liberal idea of equal rights. Rather, granting basiclegal liberties a normative status can even be justified if Sandels anthropologi-cal criticism is accepted and the subjects are conceived of as &dquo;radicallysituated&dquo;beings who have always already undergone socialization through communi-cation. One cannot precisely infer the normative priority of the good overthe &dquo;right&dquo;from the ontological&dquo;precedence of the good in the context ofhuman life.11 By contrast, the &dquo;right&dquo;merits normative priority because only ifthe individual autonomy of every person is respected can the human beings&dquo;ontologically&dquo;driven search for the &dquo;good&dquo;become possible without beingsubject to coercion

Now, Rawls can in fact go even another step beyond this mere defence ofhis basic model by posing to Sandel the question of whether he can avoid thereference to a normative standard of basic equal rights when judging politicalevents. One example which Rawls would be able to deploy here is that ofthe American civil rights movement cited by Sandel. As Sandels thesis has it,both the Rawlsian liberal and the communitarian would want to defend themovements political objectives in normative terms, but would have to makeuse of very different arguments in order to do so: &dquo;Thecivil rights movementof the 1960s might be justified by liberals in the name of human dignity andrespect for persons, and by communitarians in the name of recognizing thefull membership of fellow citizens wrongly excluded from the common life ofthe nation&dquo;.13Rawls will object at this point that what the term &dquo;wrongly&dquo;issupposed to mean in this case can after all only be concluded from the im-plicit reference to that standard of universal and equal civil rights for whichthe theory of justice seeks to provide justifications. For if one fails to presup-pose the basic principle of universal human rights-such as is contained inthe US constitution-then one is not in a position to justify the normative as-sertion that a particular group of people are &dquo;wrongly&dquo;denied the legal statusof fully-fledged citizens. However, before Rawls can bring the full potentialof this argument to bear against the communitarians approach, he first hasto

acknowledgethe differentiations which the

opposingcamp has meanwhile



8/18

24

made in reply to his detachment of the normative principle of law from theatomistic concept of the person on which it was founded.

H.

The first part of our reconstruction has shown that John Rawls can jus-tify the normative priority of justice over the good even after conceding atthe ontological level that subjects have always already orientated themselvestowards certain values which they share in common with others through inter-action. For the principles of justice he develops are initially intended only fora negative purpose, namely to protect the individual within the commonalityagainst social and economic sanctions which would constrain him/her whenpractically exploring his/her individual life goals. Of course, Rawls also hasto concede at the same time that an acceptance of Sandels anthropologicalobjection compels him to revise the justifications he had initially provided forhis project. The fiction of a contract between individuals-whose purposive-rational calculation generates the hub of justification in Rawlss theory-is no

longer possible once human subjects cease to be conceived of as isolated andneutral beings, and are, by contrast, grasped as beings who have already be-come socialized and bear value orientations.

This may help to explain the direction which Rawls took when he furtherdeveloped his conception of the &dquo;theoryof justice&dquo;. Although he does not re-nounce the proceduralist construction of an &dquo;originalposition&dquo;,he neverthelessmoves towards a new interpretation in which the value of the construction forthe justifications of the principles of justice is treated in more communitarianterms. In &dquo;Justiceas Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical&dquo;,an essay of centralimportance for this development in his theory,l4 Rawls initially emphasizesthat his conception of justice is context-specific. The conception is thoughtof as a &dquo;political&dquo;not a &dquo;metaphysical&dquo;project: &dquo;itstarts from within a certainpolitical tradition&dquo;,namely the political tradition of Western democracies. Itshould be noted that this assertion runs against the grain of Rawls prior under-standing of his theory.l5 The ideal person which forms the normative basis ofthe theory is not some abstract subject furnished with certain abilities; rather,the subject involved is the &dquo;normal&dquo;citizen of a Western democracy. In linewith the communitarian approach, moral persons are now introduced as &dquo;sit-uated&dquo;subjects who share common convictions. In the new construction, theassumption is made that in their striving to set cooperative goals these sub-jects accept the thought experiment of an &dquo;originalposition&dquo;as a &dquo;deviceofrepresentation&dquo;. 16Given factual conditions in which divergent notions of thegood exist, the fictitious restrictions of such a situation of consultation appearto the subjects as the adequate expression of the normative ideals that theyshare with regard to a just system of social cooperation. Rawls consequently

regardsthe idea of contractual agreement as a normative

procedurewhich is



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25

in turn first founded in the collectively shared value-convictions of citizens ofWestern democracies. This contextual link of the &dquo;originalposition&dquo;back to acertain tradition of morality can be understood as a compromise between hisoriginal proceduralism and the objections of his communitarian critics.

The communitarians, however, are compelled in their reaction to Rawlsscounterargument to specify more closely the normative content of their critiqueof liberalism. Yet, the anthropological verification of the priority of the socialcommunity over the individual should not be applied in order to cast theoreticalaspersions on the moral principle of individual autonomy. This is so becausethe process of ethical self-assurance, if conceived of as intersubjective in nature,has to be safeguarded against social and economic limitations. It is correctto pursue individual autonomy as a moral principle even if we assume thatthe personal identity of the subject only takes shape given a socially intactcommunity. For it is a legally guaranteed liberty of action which first enablesthe individual to come to terms with the ethical values of the world in whichs/he lives and, if necessary, to adopt them for himself/herself, without beingsubject to external constraint in the process. The communitarians are ableto react to this preliminary conclusion theoretically by shifting their critiqueof liberalism back from the level of individual autonomy to that of personalself-realization. Given such a shift, the conviction that normative claims can bemade for the process of realizing personal life goals irrespective of the referenceto commonly-shared values seemingly renders the liberal position flawed. Thiscritique of liberalism is somewhat more moderate than Sandels formulation,and its argumentative underpinnings are to be found in Charles Taylors theoryof liberty as well as in Alasdair Maclntyres model of personality.

In order to present his reservations about the liberal model of societyTaylor draws on the distinction developed by Isaiah Berlin between negativeand positive conceptions of liberty. However he accords the two notions asomewhat different meaning than that given to them by Berlin in his famousessay. 17Taylor contends that the idea of negative liberty-a key achievement ofthe political liberalism tradition-merely represents a concept of how individualliberty might be possible. It is limited because it only represents an answerto the question as to which social safeguards enable the individual subject todetermine autonomously his/her individual life goals within the framework ofthe commonality. On his own account Taylor believes that the idea of positiveliberty which emerged from the critique of liberalism holds the seeds of a modelfor the practical realization of individual freedom. For such an approach alsoendeavours to answer the question as to which social preconditions have toexist if the individual is in reality to be able to avail himself/herself of his/herlegally foreseen right to self-realization:

Doctrines of positive freedom are concerned with a view of freedom

which involves essentially the exercising ofcontrol over ones life. On



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this view, one is free only to the extent that one has effectivelydetermined oneself and the shape of ones life. The concept of freedomhere is an exercise concept. By contrast, negative theories can relysimply on an opportunity-concept, where being free is a matter of whatwe can do, of what is open to us to do, whether or not we do anythingto exercise these options.18

The difficulties which Taylor has in mind in this context with respect todistinguishing between &dquo;opportunity&dquo;and &dquo;reality&dquo;stem from the claims thatare implicitly associated with the word &dquo;essential&dquo;in the context of &dquo;exercis-ing control over ones life&dquo;.The modern idea of exercising a legally securedliberty includes the notion that we only follow and implement those personalgoals of which we can be sure that they &dquo;really&dquo;are our own. All individualwishes are &dquo;real&dquo;or &dquo;factual&dquo;if we are able to identify with them, and arenot compelled to do so, because we have been able to explore them bothindependently of external influences and without there being any inner com-pulsion to do so. In turn, such an &dquo;inner&dquo;freedom points to a certain degreeof &dquo;self-awareness&dquo;and &dquo;moraldiscrimination&dquo;,&dquo;self-control&dquo;and transparentneeds To this extent, the &dquo;realization&dquo;of freedom presumes the existence ofcertain abilities among the individuals involved, which are not taken into con-sideration by negative notions. Further, Taylor assumes that the developmentof these abilities depends on the existence of intact communities.

The arguments which Taylor deploys in order to attempt to buttress thiscentral proposition in his critique of liberalism originate in an &dquo;anthropologicaconcept of the human person which, in common with Sandels notion, con-centrates on human evaluative self- understanding. 20Human subjects are, forTaylor, beings who exhibit the special ability of being able to adopt an evalu-ative stance towards their own intentions or wishes.2~ We normally encountersuch &dquo;secondorder desires&dquo;in the form of feelings or moods which signal to uswhether our current

primaryintentions

agreeor conflict with the convictions

that guide us. However, such feelings are themselves not &dquo;directly&dquo;given, butdepend on interpretations that are imbued with a cognitive knowledge both ofthe conditions of our situation and our personal abilities. The cognitive con-texts of our affective self-interpretation are open to correction by the externaljudgement of others given that these contents can be true or false, i.e. canreproduce the corresponding conditions or abilities either appropriately or in-appropriately. Nevertheless, such a helpful correction to our self-interpretationcan only be forthcoming from beings who share our orientation towards thegoal of self-realization. To this extent, the formation of inner freedom presup-poses the existence of a social community whose members know that theyagree on the positive evaluation of the self realization.Z2

It follows from the arguments outlined above that the individual subjectcan never be completely sure of his &dquo;authentic&dquo;life goals without resorting



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to communicative aids. Indeed, s/he is not even capable of securing them forhimself/herself. Rather, I only find out which values I actually want to guide mein my life to the degree that I interact with others who support me in ascertain-ing my needs and who will, if necessary, protect me from self-deceptions. As a

consequence, the presence of legal provisions for individual self-determinationonly ensures that liberty is possible, whereas the practical creation of freedomdepends on the existence of an additional prerequisite-namely, a life formin which the subjects can mutually panicipate empathetically in the ethicalself-assurance of their respective partners in interaction. In his essays, Taylormentions a series of social conditions on which such a culture of empathyin solidarity must rest. These include above all a republican form of politi-cal morality &dquo;forwe have not only to maintain these practices and institutionswhich protect liberty but also those which sustain the sense of liberty&dquo;.23Thisbeing the case, other forms of mutual recognition which encourage the indi-vidual to continue on his/her path to self-realization must also be involved.Taken together, these definitions point to a model of community in which thesubjects are able to establish a relationship based on mutual solidarity pre-cisely because they regard liberty as their common possession. The individual,in other words, is only rendered capable of practicing his/her legally guaran-teed liberty if s/he is an active member of a social community, the cohesion ofwhich has emerged from a mutually-shared value orientation toward freedom.

This train of thought implies that Rawlss basic liberal model will inevitablyrun into difficulties as soon as the principle of self-determination and theconditions for its realization are taken into consideration. For the prerequisitesfor individual realization of freedom obviously cannot be adequately definedwithout reference to such commonly-shared values, and it is these which theliberal specifically seeks to exclude in order to preserve the ethical neutralityof the theory. However, only with the solidarity of partners in interaction canlegally guaranteed liberties be realized in practice, and this presupposes that asocial community exists whose members know themselves to be of one accordin their commitment to specific ethical values.24 Alasdair Maclntyre comes to asimilar conclusion when investigating the conditions of personal self-realizationin order to question the premises of modern &dquo;liberalindividualism&dquo;.25He isinterested in demonstrating that, unlike the dominant. opinion on the matter,we are today still compelled to understand individual life as an occurrence,the success of which depends on the acquisition of certain virtues. To thisend, he endeavours to show that human individuals must interpret their livesas the search for the &dquo;good&dquo;.Maclntyre proceeds from the assumption thatfor individual existence to be experienced meaningfully it must be able to bedescribed in terms of a story. If I am not able to present my life narratively inthe formal framework of a beginning and end, then it has no point of referenceto instil it with unity, no point from which it can become instilled with &dquo;sense&dquo;or

&dquo;meaning&dquo;for me.

Accordingly experiencingones life as

somethingthat can



12/18

28

no longer be narrated in terms of such a teleological schema usually goes handin hand with the painful experience of existential meaninglessness, somethingthat can be heightened to the point of an intention to commit suicide.26 Everylife must be aimed at a goal if it is to be open to narration; from such a goal onehas to say that in a certain, weak sense it exhibits an ethical quality. For, only tothe extent that every overarching goal must also contain &dquo;criteriafor success offailure&dquo;27of the form I have given my life, i.e. that it include moral claims, canit serve via reference back to a constructed beginning as the reference pointfor such a narrative account of my life. As a consequence, the narrative formof organizing human life demands the depiction of the &dquo;questfor the good&dquoin terms of which the individual episodes can be construed meaningfully as&dquo;harms,dangers, temptations and distractions&dquo;. 28However, in order to be ableto view all the disparate episodes of a life from one such uniform vantage point,it is necessary also to refer to the mediating authority of social roles, by meansof which the subject always remains subliminally connected to the history ofa humane society. If stripped of the tasks and traditions which allow me tobe a member of a community, my life would lack the overarching point oforientation and the social framework through which I can provide a narrativeaccount of a steadfast, if not continuous search for the &dquo;good&dquo;:

For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of thosecommunities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past;and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, isto deform my present relationships. -

To this extent, every form of individual self-realization necessarily presupposesreference to socially-shared values for it must be possible to render it in the formof a narrative, just as every narrated life, in turn, implicitly contains referenceto a social community.

It need not presently concern us that Maclntyre develops his analysis ofthe

narratabilityof human life with a view to

rehabilitatingthe

classicaldoctrine

of virtue; that is, his attempt to derive the normative validity of certain charactertraits in the present from the demands which the &dquo;questfor the good&dquo;placesupon behavioural features.30 All that is pertinent here is the fact that he arrivesat the same conclusion as Charles Taylor, namely, that the self-realization ofthe individual subject is tied to a social precondition, more precisely, thatthe community is constituted by common value references. Both Taylor andMaclntyre believe that the context of a social community must necessarily figureamong the preconditions for an authentic realization of freedom, that is, asocial community whose inner commitment to certain values is shared by thesubject. For in the absence of such an ethical consensus the individual wouldbe deprived of the consent which s/he must be able to rely on when attemptingto realize his life goals within society. This proposition marks the point in the

debate at which a definite limitation of liberalism would appear to emerge.



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Given that the liberalist tradition insists that normative status may not be grantedto any specific ethical value, it is not possible within the framework of suchtheories to develop the idea of a community that is integrated in terms of anotion of ethical life. Even though, it is precisely this which we evidently haveto presuppose when trying to explain the process of the individual realizationof freedom. Liberalism is also forced to conceive of the process by whichone puts ones life goals into practice in terms of the very same pattern whichit employed, initially with good reason, when conceiving of the creation ofpersonal autonomy through a notion of rights-namely, the neutralization ofoverarching community ties.

Ihe basic error of atomism in all is forms is that it fails to take account

of the degree to which the free individual with his own goals andaspirations, whose just rewards it is trying to protect, is himself onlypossible within a certain kind of civilization; that it took a longdevelopment of certain institutions and practices, of the rule of law, ofrules of equal respect, of habits of common deliberation, of common

association, of cultural self-development, andso

on,to

producethe

modern individual; and that without these the very sense of oneself asan individual in the modern meaning of the term would atrophy.31

In this sense, the reproach with which Sandel already attempted unjustifi-ably to annul the liberal principle of the precedence of equal rights-i.e. that itwas atomistic-is, and only in a certain sense, now justified at this, the secondstage in the debate. For the very reason that liberalism has categorically un-coupled moral subjects from all intersubjectively shared references to values,it cannot adequately clarify those social preconditions under which these sub-jects can individually put the liberties which are legally accorded to them intopractice. Rawls will have to concede that this is lacking in liberalism. Afterall, he stumbled upon the necessary connection between self-realization and

commonly-sharedvalues when

devisinghis

conceptof &dquo;self-esteem&dquo;.How-

ever, he can now, in return, put the question to the communitarians as towhich normative principles they can deploy in order to provide justificationsfor distinguishing between right and wrong notions of the good life.

ill.

Rawlsscounterquestion opens up what has as yet been the final round inthe debate which is taking place between the representatives of liberalism andcommunitarianism in American philosophy. This latest stage in the discussionhas focused on a problem which is difficult to solve. This is the question of howI can assign normative validity to one of the numerous models of a commonly-shared &dquo;good&dquo;once I concede that well integrated communities play a constitu-

tive part in the realization of individual freedoms. However, this question toa



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certain extent affects both sides in the politico-philosophical debate. For, hav-ing in recent years dropped the system of justifications based on contractariantheory, Rawls has-and this has to do with the communitarian objections-alsorelinquished the claim his theory made to the universality and has limited thedomain for which it is valid to the horizon of the tradition of Western democ-racies. Consequently, he also confronts the question as to what reasons canbe given for granting the tradition of ethical life of this particular community anormative status above all others. The communitarians, on the other hand, andto the extent that they are challenged to provide an explication of their conceptof community, begin to become increasingly embroiled in a theoretical self-contradiction. For as soon as they attempt to explicate concrete concepts ofthe collectively good, they intuitively make use of universalistic principles. Wehave already seen this to be the case in Sandels use of the word &dquo;wrongly&dqandin Taylorscase, it comes to light in the consistent reference to the moral ideaof individual autonomy. It also comes to the surface in Maclntyres work whenhe states that a stance of argumentative openness is the feature characterizing arational tradition. At the same time, however, all three communitarians are suf-ficiently convinced of their contextualist premises that they do not make theseimplicit principles normatively restrictive conditions which have to be imposedon every definition of a collectively good. Rather, they tend to mn the dangerof having to distinguish every form of community formation as normative if itfulfils the function of generating value-related forms of solidarity.

The problem this brings with it cannot, however, be answered withoutresponding to the decisive question as to which level of aggregation of socialintegration is normatively desirable in community formation. There is, afterall, a great deal of difference in the cornmunitarian argument between speak-ing of value-related communalization solely with a view to the intermediategroups and associations involved or with regard to the interactive relationshipbetween all citizens, in other words, Hegels notion of ethical life in the state.The first option amounts merely to a diluted form of communitarianism, for itsimply asserts that membership of some form of &dquo;valuecommunity&dquo;is part andparcel of the conditions for realizing individual liberty. As Michael Walzer hasshown, such a thesis can in principle be reconciled with liberalism since thestate would have to transcend its ethical neutrality only in the narrow realmof active, legal promotion of group solidarity (family policy, educational andcultural policies for minorities, etc.).32 Things are different, however, if it isassumed that &dquo;ethical&dquo;communalization is necessary for the level of overallsocial integration. Such a position could be justified if, following Taylor, itwas asserted that the formation of group solidarity within societies can alsoonly succeed completely if it receives social backing in the shape of the ac-tive, value-related agreement of all citizens on the forms of solidarity. Such aproposition would first take us truly beyond the political-philosophical limitsof liberalism.



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For this reason, and leaving aside the special problem for the communi-tarians, both sides currently find themselves in very much the same dilemma.They no longer have any supra-contextual criterion with which to distinguishwith justifications between morally acceptable and morally objectionable con-

cepts of the collective good. The reason for this is that they wish, in theiremployment of contextualistic arguments, to abstain from providing a univer-salist foundation for the principles of morality anchored in the constitutionalprinciples of western democracy. Yet, both sides are at the same time all themore dependent on such a criterion because in the meantime they widelyagree that without any link to value convictions there is an inability to clarifythe conditions under which individual freedom is realized. Evidently, the onlyway out of this theoretical cul-de-sac in which the politico-philosophical de-bate presently threatens to get stuck is to adopt a formal model of ethical life.Such a model conceives of the universalistic principles of a post-conventionalmorality as constituting the delimiting conditions of every community-basedmodel of the good. For, in such a case, all those collective notions of the goodlife would be acceptable which are sufficiently reflexive and pluralistic as notto violate the principle of the individual autonomy of each and every subject.In my opinion, discourse ethics currently offers the most suitable point of de-parture with respect to providing the justifications for such a post-conventionalprinciple of morality. It is, on the one hand, not affected by the anthropologi-cal criticisms which the communitarians justifiably raised with regard to Rawlssoriginal approach because the methods of justification using the rules of lin-guistic interaction departs from subjects who are both socialized and situated.Yet, on the other hand, given that it is concerned with justifying the principlesfor granting equal respect to the autonomy of every individual, its moral goalcoincides with the approach Rawls takes to a theory of justice.33Needless tosay, the ethics of discourse must at the same time conceive of its principle ofmorality as a delimiting condition of a concept of the good which has still tobe developed if it is to be able to fulfil the task of liberating both communi-tarianism and contemporary liberalism from their contextualist premises; thatis, by offering them a normative concept of community. It can, however, onlyacquire such a formal model of ethical life if it takes on the great challenge ofHegels philosophy for a second time.

Translated by Jeremy Gaines

Notes

I would like to thank the following for their fruitful comments and objections: RainerForst, Lutz Wingert as well as the members of the Philosophy Working group at theBerlin Institute for Advanced Studies (Dagfinn Foellesdal, Hasso Hofmann, OnoraONeill, Ulrich K. Preuss and Elaine Scarry).

1. cf. for anexemplary

model: UlrichBeck, Risikogesellschaft: Auf

demWeg

in eine



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andere Moderne (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1986) and my own discussion of it, "Sozi-ologie : Eine Kolumne" in Merkur 470 (1988), p. 315ff.

2. Jean-Francois Lyotards The Postmodern Condition, trans. G. Bennington andB. Massumi (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984) is still a text of

central importance in this regard.3. In addition to the authors discussed here, Richard Rorty and Michael Walzer are, for

respectively different reasons, judged to belong to the philosophical wing of thismovement. A communitarian position is upheld in sociology above all in the majorstudy by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler andSteven M. Tipton (Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in AmericanLife (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985)). For a brilliant overview ofthe inner link between sociological and philosophical critiques of liberalism, seeMichael Walzer, "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism", Political Theory 18, 1(1990), p. 6ff.

4. cf. the summary of Otfried Hffe,"Kritische Einfhrungin Rawls Theorie derGerechtigkeit" in 0. Hffe(ed.), ber JohnRawls Theorie der Gerechtigkeit (Frank-furt/Main, 1977), p. 11f.

5. Michael Sandel, "Introduction" in Sandel (ed.), Liberalism and Its Critics (New York,1984), p. 5.

6. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofjustice (Cambridge, Mass., HarvardUniversity Press, 1982), p. 50 for a definition.

7. ibid., p. 59.8. cf. for example, ibid., p. 21.9. ibid., p. 152.

10. Sandel, "Introduction", p. 5.11. On this distinction between the "normative" and "ontological" levels of argumen-

tation with reference to the critique of liberalism cf. the clarifying essay by CharlesTaylor, "Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate" in Nancy L. Rosen-blum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UniversityPress, 1989), p. 159ff.

12. Similar objections have been forthcoming to Sandels critique of Rawls from variouscamps. Amy Gutmann has thus attempted to show in her discussion of the "Com-munitarian Critics of Liberalism" (Philosophy of Public Affairs 14 (1985), p. 308ff)that Sandel must of necessity misunderstand the underlying normative orientationof liberalism for the simple reason that he does not take its historical point of refer-ence into account. As soon as we have to assume that people in principle championdifferent notions of the goodi.e.following the decay of traditional worldviews&mdajustice or the idea of equal rights must be regarded to be the central "virtue" of thepolitical order, for freedom to realize ones own goals in life becomes the propertyto which the greatest value is attached. If, however, this is based on historicallyrelative premises, and this runs contrary to Rawlss original intention, then themethodological limits to Sandels anthropological objection soon become apparent.For even the expanded "communitarian" notion of the individual does not exclude



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that "we may accept the politics of rights not because justice is prior to the good,but because our search for the good requires society to protect our right to certainbasic freedoms and welfare goods" (ibid., p. 311, footnote 14).

13. Sandel, "Introduction", p. 6.

14. In Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985), p. 223ff.15. ibid., p. 225.16. ibid., p. 236.17. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty" in his Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford,

1969), p. 118f.18. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 213.19. ibid., p. 215.20. On this concept of personality, which Taylor develops following Harry Frankfurts

famous conception of "second order desires", see my "Postscript" in Charles Taylor,Negative Freibeit: Zur Kritik des neuzeitlichen Individualismus (Frankfurt/Main,Suhrkamp, 1988), p. 295ff.

21. "Was ist menschliches Handeln", ibid., p. 9ff.22. Taylor, Philosophical Papers, p. 229.23. ibid., p. 310.24. It is this linking of individual self-realization and reference to social community that

Charles Larmore would appear to ignore completely in his defence of liberalismagainst the challenge of Romantic "expressivism". By attempting to disprove theidea of social community by means of the classical distinction between "private"and "public" spheres he imputes to human subjects that they are able to find andrealize their personal goals without needing any backing or solidarity from a cul-ture of commonly shared convictions. In the light of this "foreshortened" concept ofself-realization, the sharp criticism which Larmore levels at the political-theoreticalclaims made by the Hegelian concept of ethical life would appear to be somewhatpresumptive. Hegel can, like Durkheim at a later point, be understood as attempt-ing to justify the necessity of communalization that goes beyond that of modernlegal relations by suggesting that subjects are only able to realize their particularidentities in the framework of an overarching value community. cf. for example,Raymond Plant, "Community: Concept, Conception and Ideology", Politics and So-ciety 8, 1 (1978), pp. 79ff. To my mind, Stephen Holmes, like Charles Larmore,neglects the degree to which individual self-realization depends on a communitywhen defending "modus vivendi" liberalism bluntly against communitarianism; seehis "The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought" in Nancy L. Rosenblum (ed.),Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989),p. 227f.

25. MacIntyre, After Virtue, chapter 15.26. ibid., p. 202.27. ibid., p. 203.28. ibid., p. 204.



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29. ibid., p. 205.30. See ibid., p. 208.31. Taylor, Philosophical Papers, p. 309.32. Michael Walzer, "The Communitarian Critique... ", in particular p. 16ff.

33. cf. as an exemplary model, JrgenHabermass chapter on discourse ethics in hisMoral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. WeberNicholsen (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1990).

honneth comunitarismo.full

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