Communitarianism

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Under communitarianism ( lat. Communitas Community ") refers to a political philosophy that the responsibility of the individual towards his environment and the social role of family stresses. Communitarianism emerged as a critical reaction to the philosophy of John Rawls in the United States around 1980 . The main representatives include Alasdair MacIntyre , Michael Walzer , Benjamin R. Barber , Charles Taylor , Michael Sandel and Amitai Etzioni .

Basics

The debate between liberals and communitarians was the main discourse of the 1970s and 1980s in Anglo-American political theory . In 1982 Michael Sandel's book Liberalism and the Limits of Justice was published . In it, Sandel takes a critical look at an important work of political theory in the 20th century, the theory of justice by John Rawls from 1971. In his work, Rawls tries from a liberal perspective to formulate universally valid principles of justice and their validity through theory of the social contract  - which is based on the individual reasoning of free and equal people as well as the general ability to consent.

The communitarists are of the opposite opinion here; Their assumption is: Only someone who is embedded in a linguistically, ethnically, culturally, religiously or otherwise defined community is able to judge the principles of justice. In the community, certain shared values, morals and traditions prevail. Only on the basis of these common values, above all on the basis of a common conception of the good , can the principles of justice be meaningfully negotiated. Communitarians emphasize the dependency of the individual on the community, which is in sharp contrast to certain liberal views, which view man as an independent individual. But this does not exclude his individuality and his independent and reasonably justified judgment. It would therefore be better to see people as a social individual. Sandel, Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre in particular worked this out. Communitarianism advocates the free development of the individual as long as it is socially acceptable. In liberalism, however, the free development of the individual is often seen as more important - it should only be restricted for very important reasons.

Criticism of Liberalism

“Communitarianism diagnoses a crisis of modern societies in the sense of postmodernism (desolidarization; decline in values; crisis of legitimacy , identity and meaning), the cause of which it identifies as a radical individualism promoted by the ideology of neoliberalism , in return for the necessary return to meaning and to demand the value of community. "

Communitarianism understands man as a social being that is necessarily shaped by the culture and tradition of his community. The liberalism is considered among the communitarians as self-destructive. The economic benefit maximization, self-realization and an overemphasis on the individual, which goes at the expense of the common good, are characteristic of liberalism. Liberalism is therefore accused of undermining the common foundations of its own culture. In turn, this would have made democracy and freedom possible.

The communitarians see in liberalism and the associated “atomized society” the danger that the market will take power and rule.

In contrast, the communitarians pursue a policy geared towards the common good. To this end, they demand more civic engagement, the strengthening of civil society and a return to the civic virtues of republicanism . For example, they see the decentralization of state tasks as a means of achieving these goals. This is intended to promote local communities, direct democracy and greater political education .

Proposals of communitarianism

The communitarians see the origin of advancing individualization in the industrial capitalism that began in the 20th century . In the 18th and 19th centuries, individual rights were still integrated into a network of family, community and religious community. In the course of industrial capitalism, the social balance was shifted in favor of maximizing economic benefits. Restrictions based on morality and religion became less and less important. The result was that people withdrew more and more into privacy and civil engagement was largely lost. At the same time, a welfare state was established that allegedly severely restricted citizens' initiative.

Robert N. Bellah therefore sees two strategies to counteract this development - here in American society. On the one hand, old forms of community are to be revitalized. In order to achieve this, he wants to fall back on traditions, customs and religious and civic communities. He argues that these so-called “social habits” have shaped community action in the US for a long time.

Second, Bellah is concerned with creating new forms of community. Bellah is of the opinion that if old forms of community have been destroyed and cannot be revived, new forms of community must be created. Neighborhood structures and interpersonal friendships should give rise to new community structures. Bellah's intended goal is to restore a "good society". In this “good society”, individualism and a sense of community are in balance.

Similar to Bellah's views is that philosophical variety of American communitarianism which "primarily criticizes the supposedly atomized list of the concept of individualism". She argued that the “modern liberal self can only develop in a social context”.

The “good” before the right is therefore a guiding principle of the communitarians. The “good” describes the shared ideas and values ​​of a community. Any philosophy that sees the individual as the sole bearer of rights is also criticized. The reason is that "rights can only be anchored in social practice".

The main concern of the communitarians is to (re) establish a balance in society. The goal is an active society of free and equal citizens. Social justice and community responsibility play an essential role here. To achieve a “good society”, turning away from statism , that is, turning away from the service and welfare state, is necessary. According to the communitarians, statism encourages social and economic engagement to decrease or be reduced. The administrative-bureaucratic system also promotes the dismantling of human and interpersonal virtues.

However, communitarianism does not call for the denationalization of all areas. His main concern is to encourage citizens to fall back on old traditions. This means, for example, self-help, i.e. help from the family, neighborhood and community. Not the state with its welfare offer should help, but the "self-healing powers of the diverse communities and associations of the citizens". “What can be done in the family should not be delegated to an intermediate group. What can be done at the local level should not be delegated to the state or the federal level ”.

Communitarianism thus aims at the middle path or an intermediate link. Communities, associations and associations are supposed to function as an intermediary between the state and the individual. This intermediate link is the basis for an active civil society. The intermediate link connects social and moral foundations and provides them. This gives the individual support and is socially "protected".

Another guiding principle of communitarians is that every member in a community owes something to everyone in that community and vice versa. So it is not surprising that communitarianism promotes a balance between individual rights and social obligations. Social justice is a virtue for the communitarians and is based on the simple saying "none of us is an island".

The communitarian theory neglects the full support of the state and instead prioritizes the help for self-help based on a pronounced self-organization of the citizens among themselves. To achieve this goal, the theorists of communitarianism propose to prepare citizens for self-organization in kindergartens, schools and universities. In conclusion, it can be said that communitarianism aims to convey the idea that “a political community is ultimately supported by the commitment of its citizens to public affairs”.

Forms of communitarianism

Religious counterculture

In the USA, “communitarians” were primarily understood to mean religious groups, militaristic sects and communities that formed so-called “exclaves of difference” at the beginning of the 19th century. An example would be the Oneida Commune of John H. Noyes. Communitarian currents later found their way into the American evangelical movement .

Today, their ideological successors can be found in the New Age movement or in the founding of new religious groups such as the Neo Sannyas movement by the Indian Osho , who was also known in the West as "Bhagwan".

Republicanism

Republicanism draws on the ideas of the Greek polis and the Roman republic in its theory . The Greek polis and republican Rome were characterized by a free community committed to the common good that was essentially based on civic virtue and patriotism .

Republicanism is shaped by two lines of tradition: on the one hand, in the continental European tradition with the identitarian democracy of Rousseau , on the other hand, as Anglo-Saxon or Atlantic republicanism. Continental European republicanism is important to the founding and history of the United States.

Republicanism today attaches great importance to putting the common good above private interests. Through political education, the participation of the citizens in political decisions should be increased and the commitment to social issues should be awakened.

Republicanism has recently been experiencing a renaissance in the United States. However, this new republicanism is not limited to the history of ideas. In various recent papers on democratic theory it becomes clear that “republican”, communalist and grassroots democratic accents are becoming increasingly important.

"The participation of the citizens in the political process should consolidate (or create) the republican public spirit - the participation in a common cultural tradition should promote (or even enable) participation". Michael Sandel's idea of ​​republicanism, on the other hand, is more oriented towards the basic moral and political values ​​of the community and notions of the “good life”.

The new republicanism is criticized that z. B. minority rights may be jeopardized by the consensus of the majority. Another point of criticism is that public civic education could harbor the risk of becoming an “educational dictatorship”.

Communitarianism in the Social Sciences

In the social sciences, communitarianism developed primarily from criticism of John Rawls' "theory of justice" and of the " rational choice theory ". Both theories have in common that the human being as an acting person has to detach himself from his socio-cultural background. In John Rawls' theory, this serves as a prerequisite for expressing generalizable assumptions about a just society. According to the “Rational Choice Theory”, this is the only way to make a rational choice. The rational choice is only made according to the “idea of ​​advantage”, the goal is “profit maximization”.

The danger here would be that individuals would mainly join interest-bound communities that result precisely from their interest-bound actions. In return, however, no social obligations could be developed towards the communities into which the individual was born, e.g. family, neighborhood, ethnic group or the nation.

The social sciences today endeavor, taking into account the communitarian idea, "to combine the formally differentiated system rationalities of modern societies (...) with their institutional and cultural context, to understand them from this and to criticize them from this context".

Communitarianism as a social movement

In the United States, communitarianism also appears as a social movement. In a practical way, it calls for the "domestication (defusing) of the principle of egoism in the economy and society". This struggle is to be supported "by a newly established public morality and the strengthening of local community building". Communitarianism as a social movement advocates an alternative political conception. It acts as the middle ground between laissez-faire liberalism and statist socialism .

In Germany, Axel Honneth in particular dealt with communitarianism. Even Richard David Precht refers in his reflections for the transformation of politics and the economy and curb the selfish principle to communitarianism.

precursor

Communitarianism stands in the tradition of republicanism , which does not place the emphasis on the community, but on political participation .

The proximity to the analyzes by Ferdinand Tönnies ( Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft , 1887) is striking . While Ferdinand Tonnies, however, an inevitable development of the community ( community ) to Gesellschaft ( society ) accounted ( spirit of modern times , 1935), modern communitarians go such. B. Amitai Etzioni assume an exactly opposite development (more community, less society) and consider this to be desirable.

Communitarianism as a political term in France

In the political debate in France , the word communautarisme does not designate communitarianism as a political philosophy, but something else: there, this expression describes a political attitude that protects the rights of a linguistic (Corsican, Bretons, Alsatian, Catalan, Basque), ethnic Maghrebians) or religious (Catholics, Jews, Muslims) community ( communauté ) vis-à-vis the nation and citizens as a whole. These include demands for government support for minority languages ​​such as Corsican, Catalan or Breton or the demand that Muslim students and teachers be allowed to wear headscarves in public schools. This has a negative connotation in the French political culture des universalisme républicain , which in the Jacobin tradition emphasizes national sovereignty, the indivisibility of the republic and the separation of state and church ( secularism ) and called for the assimilation of immigrants to national culture . This tradition is upheld primarily by Gaullist parties such as the UMP , but also by left-wing parties.

Therefore, the term communautarisme is mainly used by his opponents to devalue political opinions and demands. Thus, Pierre-André Taguieff that "Communitarianism is usually several decades operator of delegitimization functions as ... Communitarianism is defined by its critics as a socio-political concept primarily a word that political discourse in French, with the purpose that To subject members of a certain group to the norms that are regarded as characteristic of that group or community, in short: to control the opinions, religious beliefs and behavior of those who in principle belong to that community. "

Representative

Thinkers who are attributed to communitarianism, even if they may - such as B. Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor - not to be called communitarians.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Communitarianism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulf Bohmann, Hartmut Rosa: The good and the right. The communitarian democratic theories, in: Oliver W. Lembcke, Claudia Ritzi, Gary S. Schaal (Eds.), Contemporary Democratic Theory, Volume 1: Normative Democratic Theories. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 127–155, here: p. 127.
  2. ↑ Rieger, 2004a, p. 433.
  3. ↑ See Rieger, 2004a, p. 433.
  4. ↑ a b See Vorländer, 2001, p. 19.
  5. ↑ Vorländer, 2001, p. 19.
  6. ↑ Ulf Bohmann, Hartmut Rosa: The good and the right. The communitarian democracy theories . In: Oliver W. Lembcke, Claudia Ritzi, Gary S. Schaal (Eds.): Contemporary Democratic Theory . 1: Normative democracy theories. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8100-4144-9 , p. 127–155, here: p. 127 .
  7. ↑ Vorländer, 2001, p. 19.
  8. ↑ See Vorländer, 2001, p. 20.
  9. ↑ Vorländer, 2001, p. 20.
  10. ↑ Vorländer, 2001, p. 21.
  11. ↑ Vorländer, 2001, p. 21.
  12. ↑ cf. Kallscheuer, 1995, 261
  13. ↑ cf. Rieger, 2004b, 833
  14. ↑ Kallscheuer, 1995, 261.
  15. ↑ cf. Kallscheuer, 1995, 261.
  16. ↑ cf. Rieger, 2004b, 833.
  17. ↑ a b cf. Lange, 2000, 256
  18. ↑ Kallscheuer, 1995, 264.
  19. ↑ Lange, 2000, 255
  20. ↑ Lange, 2000, 256
  21. ↑ cf. Lange, 2000, 256
  22. ↑ Richard David Precht: The art of not being an egoist. Why we want to be good and what keeps us from doing it. Goldmann 2010, p. 422ff.
  23. ↑ http://www.scienceshumaines.com/-0acommunautarisme-2c-une-notion-equivoque-0a_fr_3959.html