Community and Morality

Bibliographic Data

ID6397752
AuthorsMilton Fisk (corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume55
Issue4
Pages593-616
Publication date1993-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500018015
OpenAlexW2061801637
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited24

Communitarian thinkers have counterposed their views to those of liberalism as providing a more adequate basis for a political morality—a morality that deals with issues relevant to a political unit, such as liberty, equality, and fairness. Communitarians face the difficulty that the common understandings they rely on to back up a political morality are not easy to find in the form they need. This is because social units fracture along various lines, giving rise to diverse and often conflicting discourses. Where, despite such fractures, common understandings emerge as a result of either desperation or the manufacture of consent, they do not seem appropriate as a basis for a valid political morality. To avoid the weaknesses of communitarianism, it is not necessary to abandon the importance of social context for political morality. Instead, one can make use of a social theory that stresses social divisions in order to lay the base for political morality. A political morality appropriate to a group can be developed on the basis of the interests associated with such divisions

Communitarianism · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Liberalism · Morality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics