Democratic Community: Nomos XXXV

5. Communities and the Liberal Community: Some Comments and Questions

5 COMMUNITIES AND THE LIBERAL COMMUNITY: SOME COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS MARTIN P. GOLDING Ryan's chapter, "The Liberal Community," encompasses a great deal of subject matter for discussion. Here, I can only briefly consider two rather substantial issues: first, the relation of theories of the self and methodologies of social inquiry to moral and political commitments; and second, the concept of community and constitutional restraints in the liberal community. Ryan's general thesis suggests that the liberal-communitarian conflict has been misconceived; it is in fact "a figment of the imagination." He distinguishes four matters that have been involved . These are (1) a debate between atomist and holist theories of the self and (2) a debate over the methodology of social and moral inquiry, which divides along holistic (or anti-abstractionist) and individualist lines. For reasons to be mentioned shortly, Ryan maintains that these two matters are not communitarianliberal debates at all. The metaphysics of the self and the methodology of inquiry are indeterminate with respect to liberalism versus communitarianism, he argues. The other matters are (3) a debate between collectivist and 115 116 Martin P. Golding individualist substantive moral commitments; and finally (4) a debate between traditionalist and innovativist attitudes regarding social, moral, and political change. According to Ryan, these two issues "will be glossed as a conflict between communitarianism and liberalism by those who think liberalism must be both individualist and innovative and that any invocation of communal values is necessarily collectivist and traditionalist." As he suggests, the conflict on these issues may be a matter of degree rather than all-or-nothing. In the last part of his chapter, Ryan develops, at "arms length" he says, the idea of a liberal community in terms of a liberalism that has absorbed, as it apparently can do without difficulty, both the Idealists' critique of the notion of the "punctual" self propounded by some older liberals and the Durkheimian critique of an atomistic social methodology. This notion of a liberal community , Ryan allows, is beset by various tensions internal to liberalism itself. One striking thing about Ryan's chapter is that no definition is presented of the terms "liberalism" and "communitarianism." Perhaps it is too late in the day for that. We do get the suggestion that modern liberals are committed to an ideal of equality as well as to liberty, where "equality," I think, stands for some greater or lesser degree of equalization of welfare as well as for equality of civil rights. That there are tensions internal to liberalism is therefore hardly surprising. Yet, many varieties of communitarianism also accept these values, and their commitment to some equalization of welfare is expressed in their endorsement of the problematic idea of positive freedom. I suspect that as liberalism became welfare liberalism, it became more amenable to holistic notions of the self and holistic methodologies ofsocial inquiry. Why should that be? What is the connection between these holisms and political ideology? Ryan points to cases. T. H. Green has a holist theory of the self and is disposed toward the social program of liberalism; Durkheim has a holist methodology and is a political liberal; Mill, the paragon of liberalism if anyone is, leans toward the communitarian or holist side of the line in his emphasis on character and the "internal culture of the individual." Other examples ofline-crossing are also given. Ryan's purpose in presenting COMMUNITIES AND THE LIBERAL COMMUNITY 117 information of this sort is to establish that the metaphysics of the self and individualist and holist approaches to social inquiry do not direcdy translate into a conflict between liberalism and communitarianism, and these theories are indeterminate with respect to liberal and communitarian ideologies. This claim can be interpreted to mean that the parties to the dispute are simply confused if they think that accounts of the nature of the self and social bonds provide a basis or foundation for their political ideologies and social programs; political ideologies and social programs are matters of commitment, to which all talk of foundations is entirely irrelevant. But this understanding does not seem to be Ryan's own position . Nor does it represent the views of most, if not all, of the writers he mentions. These writers, liberal communitarians and communitarian or welfare liberals, if I may use these labels, are anxious to attack individualistic accounts ofselfand society. And they are anxious to do so not merely for the...