Marc Stier
Marc Stier is the director of the PA Budget and Policy Center, a public policy analysis and communications organization based in Harrisburg, PA. Before joining PBPC as director in 2015, Marc served as the executive director of Penn Action, where he worked to protect funding for education and women’s health care and expand Social Security
Phone: (215) 880-6142
Address: 6714 Wissahickon Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19119
Phone: (215) 880-6142
Address: 6714 Wissahickon Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19119
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The philosopher who, on the standard interpretation, seeks above all others to escape ambiguity is Plato. The world of forms is, after all, portrayed as a attractive realm precisely because everything is just what it is and nothing else. Yet, at the same time, Plato presents his philosophy is a literary form that, if only we could recognize it as such, is highly ambiguous in nature. In recent years, the importance of the dramatic character of the Platonic dialogue has been widely recognized. Scholars have paid greater attention to who says what to whom and under what circumstances. The irony of having an ironist—Socrates—as one’s main spokesman has been duly noted.
This essay on Plato’s Symposium follows a very few contemporary philosophers in taking this new way of interpreting Plato one step further. He takes seriously the challenge that is put to Socrates in the Symposium, a challenge that touches not just or mainly his philosophy but his way of life. Along with other new interpreters of Plato, the essay suggests that Plato’s ideas may be found in not just in Socrates’ words but in the speeches of other characters in the Platonic dialogues. Stier, however, goes further in suggesting that, however noble it is, Socrates’ life may not be the Platonic model for the rest of us human beings. The picture presented of Socrates in the Symposium suggests that he is too different from even the best of other human beings to serve as a model for us. Socrates is a profoundly strange creature, whose qualities suggest that he has partly escaped from the usual circumstances of human life, circumstances that are best presented in Aristophanes account of how we were mutilated by the gods. As a result, Socrates escapes from human eros as well. Yet because he lives among us, and seeks to understand us in order to understand himself, Socrates must pretend to share a common nature with us. The ambiguity of Socrates position—and the danger that accompanies that ambiguity—is revealed when Alcibiades burst into the drinking party and tells tales about his mentor / tormentor. As the drama ends, the ambiguity of Socrates position is shown to parallel the ambiguous nature of the dialogue itself, in which tragedy and comedy are intertwined.
Pragmatism is typically thought of, or presented as, a skeptical or historicist view. This, for example, is Richard Rorty’s view of pragmatism. I argue, however, that properly understood, pragmatism transcends the debate between skepticism or historicism and foundationalism. On my view, a pragmatic philosophy legitimates the broadest range of political and moral theory both about the questions moderns often do not like to talk about—the human good and God—and those that they do like to talk about—rights, utility and tolerance. Pragmatists are not committed to skepticism but to fallibilism, the view that, with only a few exceptions, there are no theories or beliefs whose truth is unquestionable. I will argue that fallibilism, and the procedural account of rationality it leads to, provides the most powerful argument for freedom, equality, and democracy. This argument is very different, however, from that found in most versions of modern and post-modern political and moral theory. For it rests not on skepticism about reasoning about the good and God but, rather, on the possibility of such reasoning. At the same time, the fallibilism and proceduralism of pragmatism leads us to a vision of a free, egalitarian, and democratic community. Such a community, I suggest, can live and prosper without any but the most minimal theoretical consensus. Indeed, I argue that a pragmatic politics will be an agonistic politics. Pragmatism legitimates democratic political struggles of the deepest sorts as well as the broadest range of outcomes, provided that the minimal constraints of procedural rationality are respected in these disputes.
Thus, pragmatism (re-)opens old possibilities for political and moral theory while diminishing the central role of theory in guiding political life. It encourages theoretically engaged efforts to improve our political community without insisting that political and social reform and renewal requires ideological direction or agreement. It is open to historical development and change while denying that we can know that history will take a particular path. Pragmatism limits the roles of theory, ideology, and history in our communal life. In their place, it calls for political debate and engagement, without any expectation of, or necessity for, agreement and consensus. This, I suggest at the end of the paper, is a political philosophy appropriate for the diverse, yet global, society that is emerging as we approach the new millennium.
These arguments raise two serious problems for those of us who want to encourage both strong communities and participatory democracy. The first is that, under modern circumstances of life, homogeneous communities are becoming ever more difficult to find or create. The freedoms found in liberal market economies and the economic incentives they create undermine homogeneity. Liberal market economies encourage geographic and social mobility of all kind. And, even where, a community is fairly homogeneous—in, say, a rural hinterland or an exclusive suburb—contemporary forms of communication bring people in touch with other people and ideas very different from those familiar to themselves.
The second problem is that homogeneity raises concerns for those of us who would like to secure liberal freedoms. And that is why most liberal theorists have been suspicious of the call for homogeneity. Liberals insist on tolerance for those who have views of the good life different from that of the majority. They welcome this diversity as a spurt to developments of all sorts: moral, religious, political and scientific. They are dubious about any efforts to reduce the multiplicity of points of view found in the liberal political community. While they know that diversity may undermine the pursuit of the common good, many liberals think this is an acceptable trade-off. For the tolerance of difference that is central to the liberal project. Indeed, many theorists argued that liberal politics works best when citizens are diverted from public to private and from politics to economics. When that happens, the contentiousness of politics is reduced. Political decisionmaking is then left in the hands of a few professionals who, while ultimately responsible to the judgment of the people, are free to act as they think is best for the whole community.
The tensions between strong communities and liberal ideals can never be entirely resolved. But, in this paper I suggest a number of ways in which that tension can be moderated. In the first part of the paper I examine some traditional solutions to this difficulty and show how they can be modified to suit contemporary circumstances. These solutions mainly rely on pluralism and decentralization as a means of creating more or less homogenous local communities.
In the second, and more original, part of the paper, I reverse direction. The common approach is ask what characteristics must be found in a place and time if people are to have one kind of political community or another. This is a perfectly legitimate question. But to ask that question alone might blind us to the way in which certain kinds of political institutions and practices can shape or transform a whole political community. The central claim of this part of my paper is that establishing democratic institutions and practices can not only foster diversity but create the kinds of diverse communities that are communitarian in nature. In other words, I challenge the assumption that homogeneity is required for strong communities or for participatory democracy. Contemporary conditions of life not only create the conditions under which diversity is impossible to avoid, they also create conditions under which diversity is welcomed by many citizens, especially those in the middle classes.
The frisson and excitement of diverse communities is, in many places in the US and Europe, spurring the redevelopment of older urban communities. Yet, a barrier to the creation of such communities is that political institutions have not been developed to manage the conflicts that diversity inevitably creates. Local democratic institutions and practices, I suggest, can provide an institutional framework within which conflicts of these kinds can be resolved. More importantly, they provide a forum in which the members of a diverse community can strengthen their ties to one another; appreciate one another; and thereby create the political and social unity that holds their community together. In other words, opportunities for democratic practices can, on my view, shape a diversity of people community into a new kind of a strong community.
In the third part of the paper, I provide a concrete example of this kind of community. This part of my paper is drawn from my own practical political work as a community activist in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mt. Airy is one of only ten fully racially integrated middle class communities in the United States. It is a community that was deliberately created forty years ago as an integrated community—in which half the residents are white and half black—by the organization I now head. And, for the last forty years, our organization has worked to create strength out of our diversity, primarily by encouraging broad participation and involvement in the resolution of community problems. While aspects of our community are distinct and unlikely to be replicated elsewhere, our experience suggests that diversity and democracy are, under the right institutional forms, are compatible with one another.
Rather than start with abstruse theoretical conflicts between liberalism and communitarianism, the first part of this paper addresses the most pressing practical problem, the proper extent of civil liberty and state action. Most contemporary liberals defend a broad right to freedom on the grounds that a liberal state must be neutral between competing conceptions of the human good. And, on these same grounds, they argue that government must not use its powers to tax, subsidize, and regulate our activities in order to help people pursue one view of the human good rather than another. Communitarians, however, explicitly defend a non-neutral state. And they seem willing to limit human freedom in order to form citizens of a certain kind. My suggested resolution to this debate is that communitarians accept the most extensive civil liberty while liberals accept government action in support of one or another conception of the human good, so long as (1) that action is taken in as decentralized a manner as possible and (2) freedom remains unrestricted. On my view, the state may not set any limits on what we think, say, and, in the privacy of our homes, do. But, at the same time, the state can encourage, honor, and subsidize particular ways of life. In doing so, however, it must adopt the principle of subsidiarity: government endorsement of a particular conception of the good must be undertaken in as local a form of government as is consistent with the good in question. I apply this general principle—which I call the principle of freedom—to a number of contemporary debates concerning such matters as abortion, schooling, and sexual orientation.
While my proposal cuts the knot of conflict between liberalism and communitarianism, it needs some defense. The second part of the paper argues that the principle of freedom rests on the notion that human beings have the capacity, in both our political and individual lives, to pursue a reasoned account of human nature, the human good, and our own good here and now. I suggest that we think of reasoning about the human good as a fallible, empirical activity. There are no guarantees that any features of human nature are broad enough and widely enough shared to sustain an account of the human good. Nor are their any guarantees that we will reach consensus about the human good. But we do not need such guarantees in order to explore questions of our own nature and our good. Nor do we need consensus in order for reasoning about the human good to be productive of individual and political and social enlightenment. Moreover, the mere possibility of reasoning about the human good mandates that we have the freedom, in both our individual and collective lives, to examine and test different conceptions of a good life. This freedom is most likely to be found, I argue, when we protect the most extensive civil liberty to express our ideas and to do as we please in our private lives and when local and regional governments can support a particular conception of the good life.
In the third part of my paper, I examine two important consequence of my proposed reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism. I argue, first, that communitarians should not see community and civic virtue as ends in themselves. Liberals, I argue, are quite right to think that civic virtue and a communal spirit can lead to trouble. Trouble can arise, as liberals have pointed out, when the pursuit of civic virtue and community takes illiberal forms or leads to the kinds of conflicts that cannot easily be constrained in a liberal polity. It can also arise, however, when community and a civic spirit make it more rather than less difficult for human beings to lead a fulfilling life. Community and civic virtue are only defensible ideals when they take a form that helps human beings live a good life. If they accept the principle of freedom, communitarians will be pluralists, who value a wide range of experiments in community. But while, as a matter of principle, communitarians should allow for the greatest variety of conceptions of civic virtue and communal solidarity, they should not be reluctant to express their preferences for one idea of virtue and community over another. They should, in other words, encourage free people to choose well and wisely.
There is no principled way to accomplish that task, however. If reasoning about the human good is a fallible, empirical activity, then we cannot know in advance what kinds of troubles will result from our pursuit of civic virtue and community. Nor is there any algorithm than can tell us when even attractive forms of communitarianism—those that might help people sustain a fulfilling way of life—can threaten the central ideals of liberalism. For, we should not kid ourselves: there are likely to be tensions between individual and collective freedom, and thus between civil liberty and the pursuit of a good polity and society. In the principle of freedom, I propose a clear line between what we might call the communitarian good and the liberal right. But, while helpful, no such line can solve all our problems. It cannot warn us when political and social institutions and practices meant to realize a good life are likely to set off a movement that threaten our freedoms. Nor can it tell us what kinds of communitarianism are likely to help us live better lives. So, the second consequence of my reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism is the recognition that, in any sound political theory, principles must be supplemented by prudence or practical wisdom.
Finally, if we are to defend an account of reasoning about the human good that supports the principle of freedom and makes room for prudence, and we need a sound philosophical psychology or anthropology. Thus I agree with Michael Sandel in holding that some view of human action and of human desires underlies our conception of the task of politics. But, in the fourth part of this paper, I sketch a philosophical psychology that transcends the difference between the two views he presents in Democracy’s Discontent. The self, I argue, is neither entirely prior to its ends nor entirely defined by its ends. Rather I see the self as capable of both the discovery of our deepest ends and the invention of new ways of life that best enable us to satisfy those ends. The self is, in other words, a product of an intertwining of nature and culture. As we seek our own good, we also search for the best way to understand how our ends are the product of both nature and culture. Precisely because we can do this, however, we can stand apart from our ends and evaluate them from a distance. We are not so constituted by our ends that distance from them is impossible. Nor are we capable of a standing so far from our ends that they lose all importance. It is the tension between what we are by nature and by culture that creates the occasions for and the possibility of distance. And it is the congruence between what we are by nature and by culture that makes our way of life inescapably important to us.
Against this view, political theorists such as Judith Shklar, Stephen Macedo, William Galston, Rogers Smith, and George Kateb have argued that liberalism does have a distinctive moral ideal and an accompanying set of liberal virtues. Liberal regimes, they say, inculcate a particular, and demanding, set of virtues. Liberalism demands that citizens be tolerant and that they be principled, reasonable, and active participants in their political life.
This paper calls for a new understanding of both liberal virtues and what I will call communitarian or substantive virtues. In it, I make four claims. First, the liberal virtues are not sufficient. Liberal virtues, and the view of liberalism that emphasizes these virtues, cannot define a satisfactory form of communal life. For these virtues, like the moral philosophy of liberalism itself, are largely procedural in nature. They tell us, in general, how to conduct our common life. But they do not tell us what ends we should seek together. Without common ends, however, human beings will often have little reason to actively exercise the liberal virtues. A failure to exercise liberal virtues, however, will ultimately lead to their atrophy. This will result, in part, from simple disuse. The deeper problem, however, is that the individualism of life in the liberal democracies often rewards liberal vices rather than liberal virtues. Unless we temper that individualism by encouraging men and women to find at least part of their own good in common ends, the virtue of our citizens will always be threatened. To live a life devoted to some common good is to accept not only procedural virtues but substantive or communitarian virtues, virtues that are necessary to the life of a community that aims at particular ends.
My second claim is that both procedural and substantive virtues can be sustained only in strong local communities. The kinds of shared human ends necessary to the creation of virtuous citizens are not likely to be found in a liberal political community as a whole. Those who seek to restore civic virtue in America and the other liberal democracies must look, instead, to a revival and expansion of local, participatory communities in which men and women work together in pursuit of common ends. Civic virtue can, and will only, be created in local organizations of all kinds: religious, ethno-national, vocational, and recreational as well as political associations. These strong local communities will teach particular understanding of both substantive and procedural virtues. On my view, then, all virtue is, like politics itself, local.
My third claim is that, in a pluralistic, liberal community, the procedural and substantive virtues inculcated in strong local communities will be very different from those found in non- or pre-liberal regimes. Given the nature of liberal regimes, they will be necessarily shaped by liberal expectations about the central role of individual initiative, autonomy, and responsibility in our common life. To put the point another way, a revival of a more communitarian form of life will not and can not lead us back to a pre-modern conception of either morality or community. I agree with Macintyre that there is much to be learned from the Aristotelian tradition. Yet, a contemporary conception of substantive virtues will not be able to address the circumstances of our lives, nor gain a large following, if it is not very different from the pre-liberal ideas. In the contemporary world, the virtues cannot be defined solely in terms of the ends of particular communities or of the roles that people play in these communities. For our communal identity is often chosen not inherited. And people can be members of more than one strong community. Thus among the most important virtues are those that enable men and women to reflectively choose and balance their commitments to the common goods of different communities. In making these choices, men and women will necessarily begin to acquire the procedural virtues.
My fourth claim is that, the substantive virtues inculcated in strong local communities together with the realities of liberal politics, are likely to further encourage people to accept liberal, procedural virtues. Some strong local communities will undoubtedly arise that reject modern views of all kinds. These local communities will often be tied to larger, anti-modern, and, at times, intolerant political and social movements. But the distinctive features of the substantive virtues found in a liberal community, together with the necessity of forming broad coalitions in a pluralistic polity, will favor the emergence of substantive political and social ideals that recognize the intrinsic value of the liberal procedural virtues. Moreover, the stronger local communities are, the less likely it will be that intolerant movements arise.
Finally, my fifth claim is that a pluralistic liberal political community broadly committed to the liberal virtues and composed of strong local communities committed to substantive virtues will, itself, realize a liberal ideal. It will be a community that is, in the words of Rawls, a social union of social unions. This ideal goes back to the work of von Humboldt and Mill. It holds that a liberal community composed of strong local communities can, at its best, encourage both individuality and community, both tradition and innovation, both engagement in one’s own way of life and an appreciation for other ways as well, both procedural and (a variety of) substantive virtues. This ideal is the one truly common end of liberalism. But it is not an ideal at which we can directly aim. The task of the liberal state is to create the political and social conditions under which a plurality of strong local communities can flourish. It is these communities, and the interaction between them, that can sustain both communitarian and liberal virtues, both the narrow ends of each group and the broader ends of a liberal way of life.
The philosopher who, on the standard interpretation, seeks above all others to escape ambiguity is Plato. The world of forms is, after all, portrayed as a attractive realm precisely because everything is just what it is and nothing else. Yet, at the same time, Plato presents his philosophy is a literary form that, if only we could recognize it as such, is highly ambiguous in nature. In recent years, the importance of the dramatic character of the Platonic dialogue has been widely recognized. Scholars have paid greater attention to who says what to whom and under what circumstances. The irony of having an ironist—Socrates—as one’s main spokesman has been duly noted.
This essay on Plato’s Symposium follows a very few contemporary philosophers in taking this new way of interpreting Plato one step further. He takes seriously the challenge that is put to Socrates in the Symposium, a challenge that touches not just or mainly his philosophy but his way of life. Along with other new interpreters of Plato, the essay suggests that Plato’s ideas may be found in not just in Socrates’ words but in the speeches of other characters in the Platonic dialogues. Stier, however, goes further in suggesting that, however noble it is, Socrates’ life may not be the Platonic model for the rest of us human beings. The picture presented of Socrates in the Symposium suggests that he is too different from even the best of other human beings to serve as a model for us. Socrates is a profoundly strange creature, whose qualities suggest that he has partly escaped from the usual circumstances of human life, circumstances that are best presented in Aristophanes account of how we were mutilated by the gods. As a result, Socrates escapes from human eros as well. Yet because he lives among us, and seeks to understand us in order to understand himself, Socrates must pretend to share a common nature with us. The ambiguity of Socrates position—and the danger that accompanies that ambiguity—is revealed when Alcibiades burst into the drinking party and tells tales about his mentor / tormentor. As the drama ends, the ambiguity of Socrates position is shown to parallel the ambiguous nature of the dialogue itself, in which tragedy and comedy are intertwined.
Pragmatism is typically thought of, or presented as, a skeptical or historicist view. This, for example, is Richard Rorty’s view of pragmatism. I argue, however, that properly understood, pragmatism transcends the debate between skepticism or historicism and foundationalism. On my view, a pragmatic philosophy legitimates the broadest range of political and moral theory both about the questions moderns often do not like to talk about—the human good and God—and those that they do like to talk about—rights, utility and tolerance. Pragmatists are not committed to skepticism but to fallibilism, the view that, with only a few exceptions, there are no theories or beliefs whose truth is unquestionable. I will argue that fallibilism, and the procedural account of rationality it leads to, provides the most powerful argument for freedom, equality, and democracy. This argument is very different, however, from that found in most versions of modern and post-modern political and moral theory. For it rests not on skepticism about reasoning about the good and God but, rather, on the possibility of such reasoning. At the same time, the fallibilism and proceduralism of pragmatism leads us to a vision of a free, egalitarian, and democratic community. Such a community, I suggest, can live and prosper without any but the most minimal theoretical consensus. Indeed, I argue that a pragmatic politics will be an agonistic politics. Pragmatism legitimates democratic political struggles of the deepest sorts as well as the broadest range of outcomes, provided that the minimal constraints of procedural rationality are respected in these disputes.
Thus, pragmatism (re-)opens old possibilities for political and moral theory while diminishing the central role of theory in guiding political life. It encourages theoretically engaged efforts to improve our political community without insisting that political and social reform and renewal requires ideological direction or agreement. It is open to historical development and change while denying that we can know that history will take a particular path. Pragmatism limits the roles of theory, ideology, and history in our communal life. In their place, it calls for political debate and engagement, without any expectation of, or necessity for, agreement and consensus. This, I suggest at the end of the paper, is a political philosophy appropriate for the diverse, yet global, society that is emerging as we approach the new millennium.
These arguments raise two serious problems for those of us who want to encourage both strong communities and participatory democracy. The first is that, under modern circumstances of life, homogeneous communities are becoming ever more difficult to find or create. The freedoms found in liberal market economies and the economic incentives they create undermine homogeneity. Liberal market economies encourage geographic and social mobility of all kind. And, even where, a community is fairly homogeneous—in, say, a rural hinterland or an exclusive suburb—contemporary forms of communication bring people in touch with other people and ideas very different from those familiar to themselves.
The second problem is that homogeneity raises concerns for those of us who would like to secure liberal freedoms. And that is why most liberal theorists have been suspicious of the call for homogeneity. Liberals insist on tolerance for those who have views of the good life different from that of the majority. They welcome this diversity as a spurt to developments of all sorts: moral, religious, political and scientific. They are dubious about any efforts to reduce the multiplicity of points of view found in the liberal political community. While they know that diversity may undermine the pursuit of the common good, many liberals think this is an acceptable trade-off. For the tolerance of difference that is central to the liberal project. Indeed, many theorists argued that liberal politics works best when citizens are diverted from public to private and from politics to economics. When that happens, the contentiousness of politics is reduced. Political decisionmaking is then left in the hands of a few professionals who, while ultimately responsible to the judgment of the people, are free to act as they think is best for the whole community.
The tensions between strong communities and liberal ideals can never be entirely resolved. But, in this paper I suggest a number of ways in which that tension can be moderated. In the first part of the paper I examine some traditional solutions to this difficulty and show how they can be modified to suit contemporary circumstances. These solutions mainly rely on pluralism and decentralization as a means of creating more or less homogenous local communities.
In the second, and more original, part of the paper, I reverse direction. The common approach is ask what characteristics must be found in a place and time if people are to have one kind of political community or another. This is a perfectly legitimate question. But to ask that question alone might blind us to the way in which certain kinds of political institutions and practices can shape or transform a whole political community. The central claim of this part of my paper is that establishing democratic institutions and practices can not only foster diversity but create the kinds of diverse communities that are communitarian in nature. In other words, I challenge the assumption that homogeneity is required for strong communities or for participatory democracy. Contemporary conditions of life not only create the conditions under which diversity is impossible to avoid, they also create conditions under which diversity is welcomed by many citizens, especially those in the middle classes.
The frisson and excitement of diverse communities is, in many places in the US and Europe, spurring the redevelopment of older urban communities. Yet, a barrier to the creation of such communities is that political institutions have not been developed to manage the conflicts that diversity inevitably creates. Local democratic institutions and practices, I suggest, can provide an institutional framework within which conflicts of these kinds can be resolved. More importantly, they provide a forum in which the members of a diverse community can strengthen their ties to one another; appreciate one another; and thereby create the political and social unity that holds their community together. In other words, opportunities for democratic practices can, on my view, shape a diversity of people community into a new kind of a strong community.
In the third part of the paper, I provide a concrete example of this kind of community. This part of my paper is drawn from my own practical political work as a community activist in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mt. Airy is one of only ten fully racially integrated middle class communities in the United States. It is a community that was deliberately created forty years ago as an integrated community—in which half the residents are white and half black—by the organization I now head. And, for the last forty years, our organization has worked to create strength out of our diversity, primarily by encouraging broad participation and involvement in the resolution of community problems. While aspects of our community are distinct and unlikely to be replicated elsewhere, our experience suggests that diversity and democracy are, under the right institutional forms, are compatible with one another.
Rather than start with abstruse theoretical conflicts between liberalism and communitarianism, the first part of this paper addresses the most pressing practical problem, the proper extent of civil liberty and state action. Most contemporary liberals defend a broad right to freedom on the grounds that a liberal state must be neutral between competing conceptions of the human good. And, on these same grounds, they argue that government must not use its powers to tax, subsidize, and regulate our activities in order to help people pursue one view of the human good rather than another. Communitarians, however, explicitly defend a non-neutral state. And they seem willing to limit human freedom in order to form citizens of a certain kind. My suggested resolution to this debate is that communitarians accept the most extensive civil liberty while liberals accept government action in support of one or another conception of the human good, so long as (1) that action is taken in as decentralized a manner as possible and (2) freedom remains unrestricted. On my view, the state may not set any limits on what we think, say, and, in the privacy of our homes, do. But, at the same time, the state can encourage, honor, and subsidize particular ways of life. In doing so, however, it must adopt the principle of subsidiarity: government endorsement of a particular conception of the good must be undertaken in as local a form of government as is consistent with the good in question. I apply this general principle—which I call the principle of freedom—to a number of contemporary debates concerning such matters as abortion, schooling, and sexual orientation.
While my proposal cuts the knot of conflict between liberalism and communitarianism, it needs some defense. The second part of the paper argues that the principle of freedom rests on the notion that human beings have the capacity, in both our political and individual lives, to pursue a reasoned account of human nature, the human good, and our own good here and now. I suggest that we think of reasoning about the human good as a fallible, empirical activity. There are no guarantees that any features of human nature are broad enough and widely enough shared to sustain an account of the human good. Nor are their any guarantees that we will reach consensus about the human good. But we do not need such guarantees in order to explore questions of our own nature and our good. Nor do we need consensus in order for reasoning about the human good to be productive of individual and political and social enlightenment. Moreover, the mere possibility of reasoning about the human good mandates that we have the freedom, in both our individual and collective lives, to examine and test different conceptions of a good life. This freedom is most likely to be found, I argue, when we protect the most extensive civil liberty to express our ideas and to do as we please in our private lives and when local and regional governments can support a particular conception of the good life.
In the third part of my paper, I examine two important consequence of my proposed reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism. I argue, first, that communitarians should not see community and civic virtue as ends in themselves. Liberals, I argue, are quite right to think that civic virtue and a communal spirit can lead to trouble. Trouble can arise, as liberals have pointed out, when the pursuit of civic virtue and community takes illiberal forms or leads to the kinds of conflicts that cannot easily be constrained in a liberal polity. It can also arise, however, when community and a civic spirit make it more rather than less difficult for human beings to lead a fulfilling life. Community and civic virtue are only defensible ideals when they take a form that helps human beings live a good life. If they accept the principle of freedom, communitarians will be pluralists, who value a wide range of experiments in community. But while, as a matter of principle, communitarians should allow for the greatest variety of conceptions of civic virtue and communal solidarity, they should not be reluctant to express their preferences for one idea of virtue and community over another. They should, in other words, encourage free people to choose well and wisely.
There is no principled way to accomplish that task, however. If reasoning about the human good is a fallible, empirical activity, then we cannot know in advance what kinds of troubles will result from our pursuit of civic virtue and community. Nor is there any algorithm than can tell us when even attractive forms of communitarianism—those that might help people sustain a fulfilling way of life—can threaten the central ideals of liberalism. For, we should not kid ourselves: there are likely to be tensions between individual and collective freedom, and thus between civil liberty and the pursuit of a good polity and society. In the principle of freedom, I propose a clear line between what we might call the communitarian good and the liberal right. But, while helpful, no such line can solve all our problems. It cannot warn us when political and social institutions and practices meant to realize a good life are likely to set off a movement that threaten our freedoms. Nor can it tell us what kinds of communitarianism are likely to help us live better lives. So, the second consequence of my reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism is the recognition that, in any sound political theory, principles must be supplemented by prudence or practical wisdom.
Finally, if we are to defend an account of reasoning about the human good that supports the principle of freedom and makes room for prudence, and we need a sound philosophical psychology or anthropology. Thus I agree with Michael Sandel in holding that some view of human action and of human desires underlies our conception of the task of politics. But, in the fourth part of this paper, I sketch a philosophical psychology that transcends the difference between the two views he presents in Democracy’s Discontent. The self, I argue, is neither entirely prior to its ends nor entirely defined by its ends. Rather I see the self as capable of both the discovery of our deepest ends and the invention of new ways of life that best enable us to satisfy those ends. The self is, in other words, a product of an intertwining of nature and culture. As we seek our own good, we also search for the best way to understand how our ends are the product of both nature and culture. Precisely because we can do this, however, we can stand apart from our ends and evaluate them from a distance. We are not so constituted by our ends that distance from them is impossible. Nor are we capable of a standing so far from our ends that they lose all importance. It is the tension between what we are by nature and by culture that creates the occasions for and the possibility of distance. And it is the congruence between what we are by nature and by culture that makes our way of life inescapably important to us.
Against this view, political theorists such as Judith Shklar, Stephen Macedo, William Galston, Rogers Smith, and George Kateb have argued that liberalism does have a distinctive moral ideal and an accompanying set of liberal virtues. Liberal regimes, they say, inculcate a particular, and demanding, set of virtues. Liberalism demands that citizens be tolerant and that they be principled, reasonable, and active participants in their political life.
This paper calls for a new understanding of both liberal virtues and what I will call communitarian or substantive virtues. In it, I make four claims. First, the liberal virtues are not sufficient. Liberal virtues, and the view of liberalism that emphasizes these virtues, cannot define a satisfactory form of communal life. For these virtues, like the moral philosophy of liberalism itself, are largely procedural in nature. They tell us, in general, how to conduct our common life. But they do not tell us what ends we should seek together. Without common ends, however, human beings will often have little reason to actively exercise the liberal virtues. A failure to exercise liberal virtues, however, will ultimately lead to their atrophy. This will result, in part, from simple disuse. The deeper problem, however, is that the individualism of life in the liberal democracies often rewards liberal vices rather than liberal virtues. Unless we temper that individualism by encouraging men and women to find at least part of their own good in common ends, the virtue of our citizens will always be threatened. To live a life devoted to some common good is to accept not only procedural virtues but substantive or communitarian virtues, virtues that are necessary to the life of a community that aims at particular ends.
My second claim is that both procedural and substantive virtues can be sustained only in strong local communities. The kinds of shared human ends necessary to the creation of virtuous citizens are not likely to be found in a liberal political community as a whole. Those who seek to restore civic virtue in America and the other liberal democracies must look, instead, to a revival and expansion of local, participatory communities in which men and women work together in pursuit of common ends. Civic virtue can, and will only, be created in local organizations of all kinds: religious, ethno-national, vocational, and recreational as well as political associations. These strong local communities will teach particular understanding of both substantive and procedural virtues. On my view, then, all virtue is, like politics itself, local.
My third claim is that, in a pluralistic, liberal community, the procedural and substantive virtues inculcated in strong local communities will be very different from those found in non- or pre-liberal regimes. Given the nature of liberal regimes, they will be necessarily shaped by liberal expectations about the central role of individual initiative, autonomy, and responsibility in our common life. To put the point another way, a revival of a more communitarian form of life will not and can not lead us back to a pre-modern conception of either morality or community. I agree with Macintyre that there is much to be learned from the Aristotelian tradition. Yet, a contemporary conception of substantive virtues will not be able to address the circumstances of our lives, nor gain a large following, if it is not very different from the pre-liberal ideas. In the contemporary world, the virtues cannot be defined solely in terms of the ends of particular communities or of the roles that people play in these communities. For our communal identity is often chosen not inherited. And people can be members of more than one strong community. Thus among the most important virtues are those that enable men and women to reflectively choose and balance their commitments to the common goods of different communities. In making these choices, men and women will necessarily begin to acquire the procedural virtues.
My fourth claim is that, the substantive virtues inculcated in strong local communities together with the realities of liberal politics, are likely to further encourage people to accept liberal, procedural virtues. Some strong local communities will undoubtedly arise that reject modern views of all kinds. These local communities will often be tied to larger, anti-modern, and, at times, intolerant political and social movements. But the distinctive features of the substantive virtues found in a liberal community, together with the necessity of forming broad coalitions in a pluralistic polity, will favor the emergence of substantive political and social ideals that recognize the intrinsic value of the liberal procedural virtues. Moreover, the stronger local communities are, the less likely it will be that intolerant movements arise.
Finally, my fifth claim is that a pluralistic liberal political community broadly committed to the liberal virtues and composed of strong local communities committed to substantive virtues will, itself, realize a liberal ideal. It will be a community that is, in the words of Rawls, a social union of social unions. This ideal goes back to the work of von Humboldt and Mill. It holds that a liberal community composed of strong local communities can, at its best, encourage both individuality and community, both tradition and innovation, both engagement in one’s own way of life and an appreciation for other ways as well, both procedural and (a variety of) substantive virtues. This ideal is the one truly common end of liberalism. But it is not an ideal at which we can directly aim. The task of the liberal state is to create the political and social conditions under which a plurality of strong local communities can flourish. It is these communities, and the interaction between them, that can sustain both communitarian and liberal virtues, both the narrow ends of each group and the broader ends of a liberal way of life.
Second, Miles Davis was well aware of these post-modern currents in Western intellectual and artistic life and that they influenced him by the 1970s, and perhaps as early as the 1950s where there is perhaps some influence on his turn to modal music.
And third, that we can fruitfully point to the ways in which On The Corner is a revolutionary and ground breaking album in by identifying key features of post-modern philosophical and atheistic approaches.
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The Best Offense is a Good Defense:
A critique of Rorty's Philosophy and Politics