Q&A: Communitarianism
Communitarianism
Question
Lately I’ve been spending some time with books by communitarian thinkers—Taylor, MacIntyre, Sandel, Scruton (also Navon’s book that just came out, Putting Down Roots, deals with this)… On the one hand, I very much identify with the claim that a person is a social animal, and with taking this aspect of human identity into account in making social decisions (as opposed to extreme atomistic liberalism)… And on the other hand, it bothers me when morality too is tied to that context, and things slide in the direction of relativism (perhaps not in the general principles)… Maybe one can respect the social order in choosing the form through which to implement a more moral reality, but morality itself would seem to be completely objective (and, in principle, laws connected to it should have been the same everywhere)…. What is the Rabbi’s position regarding this line of thought? In the area of identity, (when the Rabbi is a well-known libertarian), and in the area of morality, (when the Rabbi is a well-known Kantian—another Enlightenment view that differs from this one)…
Answer
I don’t really deal with these topics and books, because usually I don’t find any real novelty there. Conservatism can be either a substantive claim or a technical one: substantive—being conservative is good because the values of the community are binding simply by virtue of being such. Technical—the wisdom accumulated over the years has value, and it is not worth dismissing it out of hand. I oppose the former and am skeptical about the latter.
If people anchor their identity in some collective, that is a psychological fact. What exactly should my opinion about that be? Some do, and some do not.
If you want to discuss a specific question, it would be better if you raised it, or gave some example.